Mikhail Larionov: Rayonism: Pencil on paper
Mikhail Larionov: Rayonism: 1908 watercolour
Parascientific theories had a lot to do with shaping Mikhail Larionov's theory of Rayonism. These theories, although long debunked, have always held great fascination for myself, because of their poetic potential, rather than their failed scientific veracity. Larionov's imagery was based on “invisible” rays, that he said were similar to ultraviolet waves, x-rays and radioactivity.
Alternative thinking traditions, especially those that had embedded into them ideas of energy and invisible forces, as ways to understand what constitutes reality, were often associated with ideas about the nature of matter and space. “Radiant matter” was an extension of the concept of Röntgen's X-rays, this, coupled with the discovery of radioactivity and the effects of radium as discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie, was in Larionov's time, fuelling an interest in how to visualise invisible forces. The theories which we now accept as truths, such as electromagnetism and cosmic rays, were at the time in competition with other theories, such as Mesmer’s universal principle of fluid matter or Reichenbach’s Odic force. Invisible rays were very popular and Prosper-René Blondlot’s N-rays, Louis Darget’s V-rays and the Y-rays of Serge Youriévitch, were all at one point or another taken seriously, before being dismissed as quackery, as non of them stood up to experimental testing. Rayonist forces it was argued, were invisible rays emitted by the human body. A similar concept, but this time rooted in the human brain, was Naum Kotik’s invisible ray concept, which was focused on “brain rays”, things he believed were emitted as the brain occupied itself with thinking processes. His theory reminded me of the Jean Grey character in X Men, who was often, like Professor X, shown in the comics emitting psychic mental waves of energy. Larionov also taps into this idea and he stated that Rayonist pictures are born from the intersection of radiant thoughts and the ether’s invisible radiant forms, thus uniting the human / nature divide. In essence Rayonism engages non-human actants alongside humans operating as invisible ray transmitters, in this interplay of invisible forces.
Jean Grey of X Men
The Rayonist visualisation of triangular emissions seems very closely modelled on Julian Ochorowicz’s “rigid rays” or “physiological polar energy”, which he developed from visualisations of the magnetic fields that you can see surrounding the poles of magnets. These rays it was argued, were transmitted by all living organisms, a concept that reminded me of the Élan vital or vital force of Henri Bergson, an idea I then tried to visualise myself.
A visualisation of body energy
Ochorowicz wrote a fascinating account of how as a scientist he became aware of the power of invisible energies. In his text, 'Mediumistic Phenomena' from 1913 he writes of 'A New Category of Phenomena' and asks himself "What Is Impossible?" He reflects on the fact that in 1878 he was investigating the reality of the discovery of the microphone, in which three pieces of coke, arranged in a certain way and connected through an electric battery with the telephone, were to send speech over a distance. Together with an engineer, Mr. Abakanowicz, and Mr. Bodaszewski, an assistant at the Department of Physics, they experimented doing everything according to the description, but their attempts failed. Ochorowicz wrote in his records at the time, “Humbug,” I thought to myself, “how could a piece of coal transmit speech?” Several days later it turned out that the pieces of carbon were poorly connected and under better conditions the microphone did transmit speech. During the same time period Professor Bouillaud had accused Edison of ventriloquism, stating that a metal plate could never imitate an instrument as complicated as the human larynx. These experiences persuaded Ochorowicz that invisible energies did exist and that there were a whole range of them. The transmission of sound and the popularity of the new technologies emerging as theoretical understanding became technology, such as the telegraph, the telephone and radio, was a model that was often used during this time.
One way to explain that various invisible energies could be seen to occupy the same space, was made popular by the invention of radio and then eventually further refined by the introduction of TV. It was the concept of 'tuning' that explained how all these invisible rays and forces could be in place but not in evidence. Think of a radio initially not plugged into the electric power system and turned off. It is subject to all the 'normal' energy forces and we see it via the reflection of electromagnetic light, can feel its temperature or solidity by touching it. It could be licked if we wanted to continue testing it out as an object. However if we now turn it on and begin to tune into the invisible radio waves that are out there, (which we can think of as invisible rays continuously passing through ourselves and the radio), then we can access vast amounts of information, each type of which is stored within a different band width, which the radio can then be tuned to. Because we cant tune ourselves into these invisible waves, doesn't mean they don't exist, it simply means that we don't have the right sensors. However, in very rare cases a person's mouth can act as a radio receiver and their body as an antenna. A metallic filling can act as a semiconductor that detects an audio signal, and the speaker may be bridgework or possibly a loose filling, basically anything that is loose enough to physically vibrate and convert electrical energy into vibrating kinetic energy, that would in turn then create sound waves. These rare cases, were often used as evidence that the body could in certain circumstances pick up subtle energies.
Many religious beliefs include divine energies. For instance the uncreated light of the Godhead, the light in which Christ was transfigured before his disciples on Mount Tabor, the so called 'light of Tabor,' or the “Taboric light”, which is a hesychast concept that emerged from Eastern Orthodox Christian Church practices. Saint Gregory Palamas in reference to Christ’s Transfiguration says, “And His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light”. This wasn't the light of the sun, (created light, as in God said 'Let there be light'), it was the uncreated light; the energy of God himself, the energy that comes from God’s being and is transmitted to man. It was thought that Christ affected the eyes of the Apostles so that they could be able to see this uncreated light. In the icon tradition these rays of light energy were often depicted as triangular emissions. Russian Orthodox icon of the Transfiguration: Theophanes the Greek ca. 1408
As a Russian, Larionov would have been very aware of the orthodox icon tradition, and the triangular emanations that surround Christ in the icon above, are not too far away from the triangular rays that we see in Larionov's work.
Larionov: Rayonist drawing: 1913
Rayonist drawings were not always made up of triangular rays, in the image above we have intimations of cell division and a more biological approach to the problem of how to depict the 4th dimension. This idea is perhaps linked to then current visualisations of etheric energy. I have posted in the past on Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater's depictions of 'thought forms' and sound, and they also wrote about a subtle energy-based force that was a transitional point between the flesh and spirit body; an 'aura' or plane of existence composed of etheric energy. Alice Bailey expanded the then thinking about etheric energy and her book 'Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle' is still available, as well as there being an active Facebook page devoted to quotations from her work.
The seven layers of the aura
The alignment of the etheric body, the astral vehicle and the mind nature:
The conjunction of positivist science and occultism was an essential aspect of turn-of-the-century culture and I think this was what T. S. Kuhn was writing about in his book, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', where he described the proliferation of esoteric theories that often emerged, just before there was to be a paradigm shift in scientific knowledge. During this time Newtonian physics was being questioned by new discoveries and the new science of quantum mechanics and concepts such as spacetime and the forth dimension were yet to be fully articulated. As Mikhail Matiushin, who in his text 'Reference of Colour', developed his own theory of the 4th dimension, states in his memoirs, 'The question of dimensions was an issue that was on everybody’s mind, especially in the artist’s. There was a bunch of literature being written about the fourth dimension. Everything new in the arts and science was seen as something coming from the depths of this dimension'. The expression “materialisation of the spirit”, which Larionov uses, refers to a specific term that was widespread among spiritualists. 'Materialisation', as understood by Theosophists, was produced by what they called the larvae, the eidolons, or Kamalokic "ghosts" of the dead, the occasional apparition of such shells was, it was argued, as natural as that of electric balls and other atmospheric phenomena.
In relation to Rayonism, Larionov stated, that what he was seeking as an artist was “A form that results from the intersection of different objects and the artist’s will. The fourth dimension. Spiritualism, transversality”, and that, “All living things are immersed in a sea of radiant matter”. He believed that “All bodies give off rays, and the universe is therefore filled with a myriad of overlapping rays”. This was how Larionov imagined the radiant space in his paintings and drawings, often drawing lines that operated as rays that speed out of objects, instead of objects as such. It looks to me as if the rays from the objects he draws find themselves criss-crossed by the rays coming from other objects, a process which generates new forms that emerge in the space between them.
Natalia Goncharova: Rayonist composition 1912
I actually prefer the Rayonist drawings by Natalia Goncharova, who was Larionov's wife. I think that she had a better 'touch' or feeling for the materials she drew with. We still try to visualise invisible rays, high-energy gamma rays and cosmic rays being our more current rays of interest. Comic book artists have depicted them and of course scientists also use computer aided visualisations to do so but they still often have to rely on artists to make their ideas visual.
Jack Kirby visualises cosmic rays
Cosmic-ray muons: simulation of a particle shower hitting the atmosphere 20 km above Earth
An air shower photographed in a bubble chamber
I thought it fascinating that an image of an air shower, (a cascade of subatomic particles and ionised nuclei, produced in the Earth's atmosphere when a primary cosmic ray enters it), is not that dissimilar to Kirby's idea of using broken lines to depict cosmic rays. Jack Kirby went on to develop a very powerful body of work that was focused on how to visualise invisible energies, but I shall look at that in a separate post.
Jack Kirby visualises invisible energies
Lightening is another visual trope that has often been used to depict invisible forces, because when seen, it is always dramatic and suggestive of great power unleashed from the unknown.
Gaspard Dughet: Landscape With Lightning
William Jennings: The first known photograph of lightening 1882
An artist's rendition of the detection of a cosmic ray by the Telescope Array experiment. When high-energy cosmic rays reach Earth's atmosphere, they collide with and break apart atomic nuclei, creating a shower of particles that is picked up by detectors on the ground.
Osaka Metropolitan university and Kyoto university
Ryuunosuke Takeshige
In Ryuunosuke Takeshige's illustration we can perhaps glimpse a faint memory of Gaspard Dughet's 'Landscape With Lightning', as well as more recent photographic images of lightening and it is perhaps in our exposure to the reality of natural forces, such as sunlight glinting and reflected off water and lightening strikes, that our drawn visual languages for these ideas emerge.
Sunlight reflected on water
Somewhere behind all this I see an ancient Egyptian artist trying to depict the invisible light ray arms that emanate out of Atan, the Sun God. 5,000 years ago someone was creating a visual idea of how to depict invisible forces, a concept that then over thousands of years, weaves its way between astrological, religious, scientific and occult understandings of what things could be like that sit out there beyond our senses, but which still effect us; the most powerful in reality being of course the rays that are captured by green plant life on Earth using photosynthesis. If only plants could draw.
Atan
There are still a variety of approaches to 'invisible ray' healing practices amongst alternative medicine practitioners. These cover such things as energetic healing, subtle-energy fields, acupuncture, radionics, crystal healing, electrotherapy, radiology, psychic healing and other energy therapies all of which attempt to conjoin the physical with spiritual perspectives of health.
There has recently been more interest shown in the work of these 'outsiders'. In particular William Reich and his theories of orgone energy were for many years seen as pseudoscientific, however as research into an integrated understanding of our mental and physical health has developed, it has been argued that his theories were not totally false. Orgone was described by Reich as an esoteric energy or universal life force. It was conceived as the anti-entropic principle of the universe, a creative substratum that pervaded all of nature. Orgone was seen as a massless, omnipresent substance, similar to luminiferous aether, the postulated medium for the propagation of light, a substance that explained the ability of wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. Orgone was in Reich's mind, a central component of a universe consisting of living energy, rather than inert matter. (Something that recent scientific discoveries as to how matter works on a sub atomic scale might agree with). Orgone could work as an organising force at all scales, from the smallest microscopic units, or "bions", to macroscopic structures like humans or anything made of matter such as galaxies, it was the glue that held everything together.
Reich argued that deficits or constrictions in bodily orgone were at the root of many diseases. In order to study these forces, he designed "orgone energy accumulators", that operated to collect and store these invisible energies as they flowed out from the surrounding environment. He stated that this knowledge could be applied medically to improve general health and vitality, in a similar way I think, to an understanding of vitamins. A lack of vitamin 'C' and the onset of scurvy and a lack of orgone energy and the onset of bodily fatigue, would be an analogy familiar to Reich's followers. These accounts of subtle forces or psychic healing were dismissed as pseudoscience at the time, and a United States judge at one point even ordered the banning and destruction of all orgone related materials. Only as a butt of humour was Reich's work brought back into popular culture; Woody Allen's film 'Sleeper' reflected on the fact that in the future Reich's work would be vindicated. When it was released in 1973, the film included a working 'orgasmatron', a fictional orgasm inducing device based on Reich's work.
The orgasmatron from Sleeper
Whether understood as a joke, or as an analogy or believed in as some sort of spiritual force, these ideas fascinate me. They reflect the fact that our human sensory capacity is very limited and that much of what is happening is totally invisible to us. For example, the earth's magnetic field's interaction with electrically charged particles generated by the sun, is at times visible as the aurora borealis and recent sightings of this as far south as Leeds have for many people been magical. The slippage between these sightings understood as scientific as opposed to magical phenomena, is very easy to make and the need to believe in something spiritual is real. Art, is perhaps much more capable of reflecting on these issues than science, its images do not require verification before they are responded to and art has a long history of being able to accommodate both spiritual and scientific understandings of the world. Indeed, people have a right to be wrong and when they are, they are sometimes far more interesting than when they are right.
A visual exploration of the impact of wave energies on a form found on a coastal walk
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