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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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