The diagram as art and spirit guide

Walter Russell

Walter Russell was an impressionist style painter, but his most important contribution to visual imagery and its ability to carry ideas was in the development of a range of diagrammatic descriptions of mystic energy forces. These diagrams have recently come back into fashion, probably because of a rise in interest of artists such as Hilma of Klint. 

Hilma of Klint

Both Walter Russell and Hilma of Klint were in their own ways influenced by Theosophy and they were drawn to an exploration of alternative ways of envisioning the world that were attempts to uncover the underlying spiritual and metaphysical aspects of reality. At the time they were regarded initially as 'interesting' but very quickly dismissed as odd balls but we must not forget that many artists at the time were involved in theosophy including Kandinsky and Mondrian. Perhaps artists like Walter Russell and Hilma of Klint asked too many difficult questions of the art dealers and art audience of the time, because they were not just making images, they were producing diagrams for action, their art was part of a much larger ideal, one that would have involved participants in massive social change. In times of upheaval like the one we are in now we often need to look for an alternative understanding of reality. The one we have seems to be failing, in particular truth seems to be something for people to make up as they go along and this has caused many of us to distrust 'the powers that be' and we therefore perhaps need to forge another vision that seems more spiritually up-lifting. However to do this artists need to think of their practice as being not an isolated reflection on our times, but as a way of working that is integral to the forging of new ways to think. Our current undermined social systems and belief structures, need new foundations if we are to move onwards and become able to deal with huge issues such as global warming and the failure of our democratic processes. At the end of the 19th century theosophy seemed to offer an answer to a series of failing belief systems, and several artists at the time saw in its belief system an opportunity to rethink their practices, both as artists and as social thinkers. However it was to be Dada and Surrealism that carried the anti-rationalist flag into the centre of twentieth century art practices, and as Rosalind Krauss stated, it soon became “embarrassing to mention art and spirit in the same sentence". However Massimiliano Gioni’s 2013 Venice Biennale, entitled 'The Encyclopedic Palace' was a turning point in critical reception amongst the art community. As you entered the first pavilion in the Arsenale you were confronted with Marino Auriti's museum of imaginary knowledge, a three dimensional diagram that echoed the structure of memory theatres. We were being informed that it was ok to once again be in touch with that other side of creativity, the one we never talk about, but which we often draw upon when feeling spiritually exhausted. Since that time several artists have emerged from obscurity who put spirituality at the centre of their practices, such as Marjorie Cameron a follower of Thelema, a spiritual practice developed by Aleister Crowley, Agnes Pelton, Georgiana Houghton, who's 'spirit drawings' were shown at the Courtauld and Emma Kunz who's work was shown at the Serpentine Gallery recently. The exhibition 'Language of the birds' at New York University’s 80WSE Gallery, was an exploration of art inspired by Kabbalah, alchemy, hermeticism, and Tarot and Grisha Bruskin's work (someone I have been looking at and been influenced by for some time) is now becoming much more well known. 

Grisha Bruskin

In Bruskin's work we find a conjunction between the structures of soviet Russian society and the imagery of Jewish mysticism and he has in the past set out his ideas in diagrammatic form. 

However it is probably in the diagrams of Rudolf Steiner that we see the most powerful influence of the spiritualist/socialist mind on contemporary art. 

Rudolf Steiner diagrams

Steiner developed a system of thinking that he called anthroposophy and he aimed to regain traction in the the spiritual world by mirroring the information obtained by science when investigating the physical world. This split between the world of the social (spiritual) and that of science, would be raised yet again in the work of both Joseph Beuys and Bruno Latour. 

Beuys was deeply influenced by Steiner's diagrams, in particular those produced during his blackboard lectures. In fact a Beuys diagram at first sight looks very like one of Steiner's. 

Joseph Beuys diagrams

Bruno Latour has developed a system of thinking that is an "anthropology of science". It explores the dualistic distinction that modernity has made between nature and society. Pre-modern peoples argues Latour, made no such division and a tidy nature/culture dualism was in fact never possible. He cites a particular moment in time as the beginning of this separation, the argument between Hobbes and Boyle as to what constitutes evidence. Hobbes is someone that saw evidence as something that comes from the masses of people that experience the world, evidence being something that emerges from social discourse, while Boyle points to another type of evidence, that which was embedded within a scientific experiment, such as in his case the proof of the existence of a vacuum by experiment. The tacit practice of the air pump and the dexterity it required is witnessed not by texts or languages but by silent things such as air pumps and Hobbes could not accept that this type of evidence could outweigh the voices of many people. 

 

It was Beuys as an artist that made us aware that being an artist was more akin to being a shaman type figure, one that operated as a catalyst between people and the various ways that they came to understand the world. He was very interested in systems and saw his work as interventions that might change what were becoming ossified systems that pervaded Western society. As well as looking back to Steiner he looked as Eastern philosophies and religions as signs of alternative approaches to living and he began to integrate various aspects of his life into a larger diagram that was continually evolving. For instance he might focus on money and how it could be both used to lever change and at the same time be subject to a rethinking, whereby as a capitalist form of support for commercial exchange it was becoming redundant. This particular tendency within the various strands of contemporary practice has been brought together in the net exhibition, Diagrams of Power which showcases a range of artists working in this territory at the moment. However what seems to be missing is the touch of the esoteric, we need to remember that Thomas Edison was fascinated with the occult and that he initially invented the telephone to talk to the dead. The existence of an invisible, non-material realm is still with us but we now call it 'dark matter', these unknown territories will hopefully always be with us, they are the gaps in our knowledge that allow us as artists to do the things we do, without having to always justify ourselves in the court of rationality. 

Emma Kunz Visionary Drawings: Serpentine Galleries

Coda:

I have looked at this area of work myself at times, in particular now that I'm part of the group, 'Life hacks for a limited future', I have developed a diagram for the group to help envisage the various stages of ageing.

The stages of ageing

The idea was to create a diagram with an image embedded within it, in this case a scarab beetle was the rough guide to the overall shape. In Egyptian times it was a symbol of immortality, resurrection, transformation and protection, so seemed a good model on which to base a diagram that was designed to get older people to think about facing up to death. Because this is an age of the mobile phone I then had to redesign my diagram to fit a phone screen, a note to self about the fact that technology moves on. 

Louise Despont is perhaps the artist who is working most powerfully in this area at the moment. She uses stencils to create large scale 'spiritual diagrams' often using old ledger paper as a surface to work on.

Louise Despont 

Another addition:

My old friend Terry Hammill on seeing this post sent me a story about when in 1971 he was in the USA and came across the work of Soleri, who had published a wonderful book called ‘Arcology: the city in the image of man’. Paolo Soleri had published his ‘Arcology' book just two years before in 1969 and his spiritual ideas are very similar to the ones introduced above, the difference being that Soleri was an architect and was determined to erect real buildings that would reflect his cosmological ideas. 

Paolo Soleri: Diagrams from Arcology: the city in the image of man

See also:

We Have Never Been Modern: Bruno Latour pdf

Eye Music

Quantum entanglement

‘Arcology: the city in the image of man’ available here

Diagrams: Visualising the invisible