Book Review: The Forgotten Mystics of Modern Art

Another World. The Transcendental Painting Group, by Michael Duncan (Editor), Malin Wilson Powell, Dane Rudhyar, Scott Shields, Catherine Whitney. DelMonico Books, Crocker Art Museum.

Another World documents an important touring exhibit of paintings by the Transcendental Painting Group, metaphysical artists whose manifesto declared their goal “to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light and design to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual.” They chose – with uncanny precision – precisely the worst time to announce themselves as explorers of the mystical experience of spiritual enlightenment. During the 1930s and 1940s, artists who dared to mention the word “spiritual” committed career suicide, for the power of American political propaganda, first as state sponsored social realism, then after 1939 in the subtler but no less pervasive form of the so-called American avant-garde, dominated art with the absolute authority I described in Kitsch, Propaganda and the American Avant-Garde. In his opening essay, editor Michael Duncan explains how this prejudice prevailed into the beginning of the 21^st century, correctly noting the beginning of a levelling in the past two decades, but also identifying powerful voices from the heart of the art establishment who continue to voice hostility to art outside the restrictive doctrines of social consciousness. Almost a century after the formation of the group, the stars were still aligned against it, and almost as if they were destined by fate to remain unknown, their work loved only by an esoteric elite, the curse of covid crushed attendance, and prevented the rise to glory that should have come to the artists.

Emil Bisttram, Late Afternoon Interior No. 1, Courtesy of University of New Mexico Art Museum

In 1937, New Mexico artists Raymond Jonson and Emil Bisttram, both intrigued by the esoteric pantheism of Theosophy and the mystical philosophy and paintings of Nicholas Roerich, drew together a group of artists from Taos and Santa Fe who were concerned with abstraction “nurtured by spiritual concerns and the dramatic natural settings of the SouthWest.” In 1938, Jonson called a meeting in Santa Fe, attended by the Canadian Lawren Harris, William Lumpkins, Stuart Walker, Gina Knee, Cady Wells, Robert Gribbroek, Horace Towner Pierce, and Florence Miller (who later married Pierce). The influential and important composer and metaphysical author Dane Rudhyar had introduced Jonson to the work of Agnes Pelton, who was familiar with the Taos art scene after spending a winter season there in 1919 and moved to the California desert in 1932. She brought her pedigree as an exhibitor in the famed Armory Show of 1913 and was invited in absentia to become president. Rudhyar suggested to Jonson that the word “transcendental” best described the intention of the group’s work, and wrote a manifesto titled The Transcendental Movement in Painting, which deserves publication as an important document of the group.

Agnes Pelton, Mount of Flame, oil on canvas, 1932, 24" x 20", Courtesy of University of New Mexico Art Museum

After this optimistic and well-organized start, readers might anticipate a glowing history of success, but the group was dogged by bad timing and catastrophes. Walker’s heart failed in 1938 and he died. The Second World War began in 1939. Harris was forced to return to Canada when regulations prevented her from transferring money across the border. Garman and Lumpkins were drafted. Gribboek took a job in Los Angeles. Horace and Florence Pierce went to New York to pursue work in animation, where Horace was drafted and had a mental breakdown. Nevertheless, the group organized two important exhibitions and published a booklet, and established among themselves a feeling of solidarity which was a shield from the isolation which oppressed them as they worked to produce what Duncan describes as “a kind of antidote to the poisonous cultural upheaval of the times.”

Another World cover

Scott Shields provides a contextual essay of American spirituality, uncovering connections to Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had emphasized the individual’s relationship with the divine as an experience of God manifested within nature. Following these literary predecessors, Bisttram equated artist to shaman, as “a priest, a magician… the chosen mediator between God and man.” Wassily Kandinsky’s book, The Art of Spiritual Harmony, was another important source, guiding members of the group toward combining formal abstraction with spiritual feeling. Shields is an observant guide, noting that the art produced by the painters “was not a destination but a passage – a passage into realms that penetrated more deeply than the planar surface of the paper or canvas.” His text is an important correction to the ludicrous neglect of American spiritual art from the official history.

Emil Bisttram, The Flaming One, Oil on Canvas, 48" x 34", 1964, Collection of William Dailey and Nicole Panter Dailey

Profiles of each of the artists follow insightful Shields’ detailed and thorough narrative, each illustrated by beautiful plates of the group’s gorgeous, and seductive art. Jonson emerges as an unjustly underrated abstract painter experimenting with balanced palettes and masks to find harmonious graphic compositions which precede Pop by two decades –  if any of his works emerge on the market they should be acquired with great enthusiasm. Art star Pelton, whose paintings have spectacularly broken auction records in recent years, is well-represented with her delightful spiritual paintings, raising her viewers aloft from material mundanities into the etheric. Bisttram’s abstractions are less connected to the soft metaphysical spell cast by other members of the group, but he has important moments of metaphysical insight in The Flaming One, and Creative Forces, which show him reaching out to the mind of God with longing for unity with the one. Harris is uninteresting and his flat formalism comes off stale. Florence Pierce’s delicate compositions somehow balance hard edged geometry with a softness that is deeply attractive and appealing. Garman was “a dedicated believer in pure abstraction” but like Jonson and Horace Pierce his hard compositions of clipped shapes are surprising precedents to the bright and commercial cheer of Pop loaded with bright color set against delicate studies of grey. Horace Pierce makes an interesting transition between painting and animated film. Gribbroek also crossed into film, and introduced three-dimensional shadows to his compositions, which are sadly almost entirely lost, the solitary survivor rebuking the flat formalism soon to be championed by Clement Greenberg and his Beyond Civilization to Texas promising a body of work combining skilled representation with visionary imagination. Walker and Lumpkins are unremarkable abstractionists, while Rudhyar, who was best known for his music and writing, shows that he made the right choice dedicating himself to those arts and not to painting.

Robert Gribbroek, Beyond Civilization to Texas, 1950. Collection of William Dailey and Nicole Panter Dailey

Malin Wilson Powell contributes an essay about the New Mexico art scene which describes the milieu of the artists in the burgeoning art colony as it developed in the early 20^th century. Walker was the first of the group to arrive, lured to Albuquerque for the sake of his health – like California the desert resorts were touted as restorative destinations for sufferers of tuberculosis and other disease. Catherine Whitney discusses occult imagery in the group’s paintings in her essay, A More Beautiful World, introducing the principles of Helena Blavatsky and Annie Besant’s popular Theosophy, and the urgently important book Thought-Forms, which followed the spirit-guided art of the 19^th century and preceded 20^th century abstraction with non-objective imagery. Whitney correctly identifies Theosophical preoccupations with “formlessness, synesthesia, vibration, and sacred geometries.” Ilene Susan Fort concludes with Women in the Desert, applying closer scrutiny to the two women of the group, Pelton, and Florence Miller Pierce, emphasizing their independence and strength in their respective deserts – Pelton in Southern California, Miller in New Mexico, and the mystical sources that guided them.

Florence Miller Pierce, First Form #1, Oil on Canvas, 1944, Courtesy of University of New Mexico Art Museum

There is nothing whatsoever to complain of in the content of the book, which is excellent and informative material, but the annoying design is jarring, with painfully uneven margins cramming the text to the top and right margin of the pages, making the experience of reading this book – which is nominally about seeking the aesthetic balance between metaphysic and material – feel consistently like someone has left a door left ajar, or a picture slightly tilted, or a cup set hanging on the edge of a table. But this is a minor and churlish moan about a wonderful book which is otherwise a delight. Strongly recommended, and worth every absolutely penny of its price.

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