Robert Welsh: French Symbolism and Early Abstraction

 

One of 19 essays in the catalog of "Abstract Art :  Abstract Painting 1890-1985" ..for the  1986 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Paul Serusier,  Talisman , 1888, 10 x 8 "

Robert Welsh, the author of this catalog essay, does not mention this piece,

but I’ve put it at the beginning of this post because I like it.

 It’s almost abstract - and Welsh does mention some other pieces by this artist.

The painting appears to have begun as a view of autumn trees beside a pond that reflects them. But then other areas are added that make sense as a painting but not as a landscape.  That kind of back-and-forth is more common now than then.

Regretfully, there were no other abstract, or near abstract paintings by Paul Serusier that I could find.

Paul Serusier, Blind Force, 1892,  36 x 28"

Walsh’s essay, like the above painting that he shows, really does not belong in the catalog of an exhibition of abstract painting.

It's primarily about the symbols used by the Nabis - a group of figurative artists.

Yes - many of their symbols are geometric - but no, a painting with clearly identifiable human figures is not abstract art. (Unless all paintings are)

The author does tell  us that the above Serusier piece "without its single figure would be as abstract as the solar disks of Robert Delaunay and  Frantisek Kupka"  (which is, BTW, the only mention of the abstract work of either of those two artists)

But then we might also say that without that brief mention, this essay would have  nothing to do with abstract painting.  It does not appear that notable French abstract painters were much involved with Theosophy, Anthroposophy, or any other kind of spiritualism trending  at that time among the cultural elite.   And even the Nabis and Symbolists are connected by the thinnest of threads:

  Gauguin’s documented awareness during his year spent in the South Pacific of such encyclopedic studies of universal religious systems as JA Moerenhout Voyages aux iles de grand ocean (1837) and Masseys, A book of the beginnings,  is less indicative that he had accepted the basic tenets of modern theosophy than that he shared in the belief that all religions, including down at the Polynesian Maori people’s participated in a common metaphysical dualism between the realms of heaven and earth.

Paul Ranson,  Witches around a Fire, 1891, 14 x 21"

It’s not abstract - and nor would I call it a great painting.

But Welsh shows it —- it’s a lot of fun with three naughty nude babes in the forest -

and as Welsh might note - it would be abstract except for so many figures.

Here are the Delaunay and Kupka shown and mentioned:

Frantisek Kupka, Disks of Newton, 1910-11

Paul Delaunay, Circular Forms, 1912,  28 x 42"

Both feel cosmic in scope 

and might well depict the birth, original or ongoing, of our 13.7 billion year old universe.

Is that a spiritual theme?

I think so - even if it is unconnected to any specific faith or cult or metaphysical discipline.

It confronts/expresses the infinite - which might be one definition of spiritual.

(Kupka’s abstract work is shown and discussed in Tuchman's essay )

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Maurice Denis, Catholic Mystery, 1889, 38 x 56"

Welsh also shows us this surprising conflation of the Immaculate Conception 

with the daily devotion of a young cleric and his well behaved altar boys.

One  website identifies the cleric as the deacon who presents an open Bible to the priest during the Mass.

Such a hush of silence

Such a glow of illumination.

Such a tasty interaction of cool whites with flashes of brilliant red.

And what about that expression on the face of the Virgin.

Both loving and severe,

like a young mother who won’t be taking  any more nonsense from her boys.

Look at that  stare!  She can see right through them.

The older male  behind them responds by closing his eyes.

If it weren’t for the liturgical robes and halos, this could be older brother who has caught his two younger siblings stealing sugar from the pantry and now presents the contrite youngsters to mother.

In other words - there is an emotional reality of family life about this  scene. 

Maurice Denis, Way to Calvary, 1889, 16 x 12

Another masterpiece from the teenage artist - and again contemporary church workers are interacting with divinity - though this time,  their heartfelt devotion is palpable.

In the art of the fervently Roman Catholic Maurice Denis the use of geometric signs remains within a distinctly Christian context, but the means of utilization are by no means traditional. Hence the positioning and truncation of the cross in The Way to Calvary, 1889, renders it readable as both a Latin and a Saint Andrew's cross, the X form of which defines a set of triangles, and it may not be incidental that the number of female followers present is seven. Blavatsky explained the X cross as pointing to the four cardinal points, hence infinity, and as indicating the presence of God in humanity, ideas that, if known to Denis, might not have seemed inimical to his Christian faith. In the three finished versions of Denis's Catholic Mystery, from the years 1889-91 (see, for example, above), cross forms are present not as a necessary part of the annunciation theme but as defined by the window mullions, their dematerialized shadows on the curtains at left and right, and the design on the sleeve of the figure at left. This figure is not a winged archangel but an officiating priest accompanied by two altarboys. The priest (and the boys in one version) is depicted with a halo conforming to no orthodox representation of a scene from the life of the Holy Virgin. These iconographic liberties combine to suggest that the geometric figures of the cross and circle (according to esoteric doctrine each in its own way is indicative of immortality are as essential to understanding this Catholic mystery as the narrative scene. In similar fashion various forms of crosses, sometimes ringed with circles, so frequently appear in Denis's woodcut and lithographic illustrations (made in the 18gos but only published in 1911) for Paul Verlaine's poem cycle Sagesse that they assume a symbolic identity in whole or in part independent of any imaginable narrative meaning. 

Welsh’ s essay considers these paintings only as places where certain geometric symbols may be  found - and makes no other  link to spirituality.   How sad - though well within the parameters of this catalog - as well as the discipline of art history as now practiced.

Christian themes are anathema to a rigorously secular narrative of Modern Art.

Maurice Denis, The Mass, 1890

Priest as magician - standing between the natural world of the altar boy in the foreground and the supernatural in the background.

Is he  sanctifying the host? As a non-Catholic, that’s my best guess.  A critical biography of the artist might answer that question - or an academic paper on JSTOR - but I’ve yet to locate one online.   Welsh offers his best guess below:

In a painting of the same period known as The Mass, circa 1890 , Denis depicts a priest who wears a Tobe with a large cross, at the intersection of which is placed an oval. The priest looks and gestures toward a yellow disk suspended in front of an altar. With no further indication provided as to the liturgical significance of the act being depicted, independent of any narrative context, the viewer is left to ponder the ultimate mystical meaning of the cross and circle for Christianity specifically. One may not presume that Denis viewed Christian symbols as merely a single expression of esoterically uncovered truths common to all world religions. Yet his close association with Sérusier and other occult-inclined Nabis makes it unthinkable that he would have remained unaware of such doctrines. It might be safest to suppose that he simply accepted the syncretic view of the origins and cosmologies of the ancient religions that preceded Christianity while believing that the latter had superseded the others by the depth of its mystical teachings. 

Though he does not belong in an exhibition of abstract painting ,  Maurice Denis,  while still not yet twenty, wrote his very famous epigram :   Remember that a picture - before it becomes a battle-horse, a nude woman or any sort of anecdote - is essentially a flat surface covered by colours arranged in a certain order.

That the flat surface may indeed characterize Modern painting - this assertion is the first sentence of an essay he called "A Definition of Neo-Traditionalism" (1890)

An English translation can be found online on Peter Brooke's website.  BTW - Brooke has plenty of material on that site that is quite relevant to  spirituality in French painting at the end of the 19th Century. He’s a painter himself , and a serious scholar of Albert Gleizes  and colleagues, but he does not appear to be associated with any university.  You might call him an independent thinker.  His website offers a fine discussion of the issue of subject versus  object as raised among certain artists of that period.  Subject concerns the details of identifiable narrative - object concerns the physicality of the piece itself. 

Charles Filiger (1863-1928),  Chromatic Notations, 1886, watercolor

Welsh shows us this kind of  nearly abstract work - and it does nothing for me - at least in this reproduction.  Looks like the design of a playing card or board game.

The apparent mixture of Christianity and geometry in the art of Filiger is even more difficult to unravel than in the case of Denis. In large part this is due to the habits (not the least of which was his failure to date his oeuvre) of this unfortunately obscure artist, whose career, apart from difficulties due to homosexuality and alcoholism, did not produce a clear record of artistic development. Nonetheless he represents the best example of an artist with established connections with Gauguin  

Charles Filiger, Recumbent Christ, 1895

But this piece (which Welsh does not show) is worth puzzling over.

Christ does not appear to be dead -

but has He ever been been depicted otherwise when recumbent?

(Other than on a storm tossed ship on the Sea of Galilee)

I wonder whether the title is accurate?

William Bouguereau, Pieta, 1876,  88 x 59

Here’s a contemporary depiction of Mary and Jesus where the expressions are more theatrical.  It’s quite melodramatic - but then is quieted by the calm, heavy, tableware  in the foreground.

The  artist was also known to be a devout Roman Catholic. 

It’s a fine example of what Maurice Denis called  "the triumph of academic convention, of pathos-filled trompe l'oeil, of a naturalism at once theatrical and pietistic."  Which is not necessarily a negative criticism.  Demis asserted that every depiction of Nature follows one convention or another . 

Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) untitled 1921

Albert Gleizes, Brooklyn Bridge,  1915

An abstract painting despite its title,

without which no bridge would ever come to mind.

But it certainly has the thrill and power of a great American city.

Gleizes was into art theory, not spirituality, so I guess that’s why he was not included in this catalog.  I can’t stand his analytic Cubism - or what he did in his final decades.  But what he did around 1920 - wow!

Eventually, I’d like to append many more early Modern French abstract painters to this post. Maybe I’ll even find one who followed Madame Blavatsky.

Carel Blotkamp : Dutch Symbolism and Early Abstraction

 

One of 19 essays in the catalog of "Abstract Art :  Abstract Painting 1890-1985" ..for the  1986 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Jan Toorop (1858-1928) , Organ Sounds, chalk and pencil on cardboard

Jan Toorop, Song of the Times, pencil and chalk on paper,  30 x 38", 1893

Apparently the organizer of this collection of essays thought that Symbolism had something to do with the emergence of abstract painting.  And so we have this essay about the Dutch Symbolists - as well as the adjacent essay about some French Symbolists.  Neither  essay goes so far as to  assert that the one emerged from the other - but still it’s regrettable that so much attention is given to artists who did not make abstract paintings.

Whether or not Kandinsky, Delaunay, and Mondrian ever thought of their geometric shapes as symbols, obviously they strongly felt them visually. Though, perhaps, that's not so obvious to the art historians of today.

I  can’t stand Jan Toorup’s Symbolist pieces.

The first one is too blurry to feel anything but goofy.

The other is just horrible.

I appreciate the element of ornamental Javanese  (he was born on Java)

But the stiff anorexic figures and claustrophobic, tangled design repel me.

Blotkamp discusses the " Song of the Times" at length,

but it’s too painful for me to view.

Obviously, I could never be an art historian.

It would be a mistake to get really serious about the essence of any so-called art movements.Toorup’s Symbolism may be unviewable,  but  "Isle of the Dead", sometimes said to exemplify Symbolism - is one of my favorite paintings.

Toorup, an otherwise good painter, apparently decided to prioritize idea over visuality in his Symbolist work. That led to visual disaster - and it’s happened  regularly throughout art history - from Old Kingdom Egypt until today.

Jan Toorop, Lady in White, 1886, 39 x 28

Here’s one of his earlier works that delights me.

The weird sense of space under the chair,

the tastiness of the white cloths.

It’s much like the work of his contemporary, Anders Zorn,

but quirkier.

Piet Mondrian, 1908, Devotion, 37 x 24"

Mondrian spent the summer of 1908 in Toorop’s little art colony,

but obviously the 34 year old artist was following his own inclinations.

This essay will mostly be about Mondrian, but before we go there, there are a few other artists under discussion.

Johan Thorn Prikker and and R.P.C. De Basel don’t interest me.

But Jacoba Van Heemskerck(1876-1923) —- Yikes!

Jacoba Van Heemskerck, Composition  1914, 29 x 42"

Jacoba Van Heemskerck , Composition  1922, 24 x 37

One website says she influenced the early work of Georg Muche. (the Zehn Leuchtperpendikel shown in my post about German abstraction) 

She’s practically  a footnote in this essay - which essentially covers Mondrian’s early years as a painter -  but she had such a range of style and feeling - all of it powerful.  A large selection of her work is now online at the Kunstmuseum The Hague.

Relevant to the theme of this book, she practiced Anthroposophy.

Watercolor, 29 x 19, 1917-18

The primal forces of creation.

Composition 107, 1920

As complex as any hour in my day.

Fun on the water.

Composition 13, 1916, 5 x 6 "

resembles the stained glass of a medieval cathedral - except that there is no recognizable narrative.

Could easily become a Jonah and the Whale.

Some of her designs actually were put into glass:

Stained glass window, 1920 , 42" high

Landscape 2, 1913-14

 

a night scene laden with the mystery of a beckoning path

1906

Jacoba Van Heemskerck  was even good at that precise kind of portraiture for which Northern Europeans, like Jan Van Eyck, have been noted since the fifteenth century.

Jan Van Deen (1886-1977) Painting 2, 1913, 23 x 35"

This kind of work was not accepted by critics and the artist  opened a gallery selling the work of others.  Today its understated mystery might have been better received.

Jacob Bendien (1890-1933) Composition 1913, 58 x 137"

Jacob Bendien. Self portrait, 1910

Like this youthful self portrait much more than anything else I’ve found.

Jacob Bendien, Self portrait, 1930

Janus de Winter (1852-1951), Aura of the Egotist, 1916, 22 x 30"

Janus de Winter, Musical Fantasy on Wagner,  1916, 26 x 33"

Janus devWinter , Imagination of a Feeling of Willpower, 1916

Both the paintings and the titles are intriguing - though I can’t see much connection between them. 

He did this work in his sixties and though he lived to 99,  little of his later work can be found online.

Mondrian's adherence to Theosophy was also an important issue in his relationship to van Doesburg, painter, theoretician, and propagandist of De Stijl. In terms of spiritualism van Doesburg's early diaries and literary work are often rather exalted and contain numerous esoteric notions. 58 It is not certain whether he was ever a member of the Theosophical Soci-ety, but he definitely sympathized with Theosophy. In 1914-15 he replaced his naturalistic way of painting with an expressive, semiabstract style, influenced by Wassily Kandinsky and in particular by the Dutch painter de Winter (examples shown above) Van Doesburg was very impressed with the latter's work and per-sonality. His own work of that period (examples below) shows aural images and "spiritual por-traits" similar to de Winter's. Drawings

Theo Van Doesburg, Cosmic Sun, 1915, 9 x 12",  pastel on paper 

 

Theo Van Doesburg, 1915, 12 x 9, pastel on paper

Here’s a few of his cosmic pieces, they’re simple and small - but quite appropriate for a book about art and spirituality.

He’s more like a visionary than a seeker.

Van Doesburg

Van Doesburg

I really like the drama between these truncated triangles.

I’m guessing the golden section has been applied more than once.

Noel Martin, 2006, 28 x 22

By way of comparison, here’s a much later piece from an American graphic  designer.

Similar in their extreme precision in size, temperature, placement, and tone,

yet quite different in effect.

Much less drama in the Martin piece

but it’s also much more enjoyable.

It’s both relaxed and lively,

Perfect for the office of an optometrist.

Stanley Dean Edwards, 2024

While here’s a contemporary piece that’s more hectic than dramatic.

Nothing profound here - unless you appreciate the importance of chaos.

Way too intense for my gentle temperament.

Van Doesburg, Composition Decentralized, 1924,  11 x 11"

Wow! Kinda like Mondrian - but you know it isn’t.

Feels heavier - with less sense of playful mischief.

Unstable, it wants to rotate clockwise.

Van Doesburg, Counter Compoition XIII, 1925,  19 x 19"

Van Doesburg

These are some really delightful geoforms - simple and quite different from those of his friend, Mondrian - even when he uses similar elements.

His pieces are more assertive and less subtle.

The author has documented how all of the artists mentioned were involved in some kind of metaphysical practice - though he also tells us:

The extent to which these artist expressed their Theosophical convictions in their artwork, is difficult to determine.

***** Mondrian*****

Composition with Colored Planes,  1917, 18 x 23"

A weird, puzzling, understated dynamic where the center of the design is an empty space.

I wonder how it looked when first painted.  I don’t trust the reproductions.

Mondrian, Evening on the Gein,  25 x 33", 1906-7

Earlier in his career he had painted, mainly peaceful landscapes (the above is given as an example)  and a few vaguely symbolic figurative Works, which generally suggest an artist of contemplative nature

Mondrian, Spring, 1908, 27 x 18"

In 1908 Mondrian’s style changed radically, and became more outspoken in content.

(The above as well as "Devotion" were given as examples)

Certainly reminds me of Munch’s "The Scream" of 1893..

Church at Domberg, 1910-11, 44 x 29

Before knowing the title, I assumed this was a university building or even a warehouse as designed by a retro-architect like H.H. Richardson - with some kind of important meeting  taking place behind those really tall windows on the third floor.  More like an illustration than a painting for me. 

 With few exceptions Mondrian stayed away from the use of fanciful occult images of the kind that can be found in Besant's and Leadbeater's work, images in which aural appearances play a large role. Mondrian's point of view is reminiscent of Thorn Prikker's fifteen years earlier, when he rejected the affected symbolism of his fellow Symbolists. Mondrian's opinion was that one could obtain higher knowledge within visual reality, a view that Rudolf Steiner had advocated during his lectures in the Netherlands in 1908. The booklet in which these lectures were published was treasured by Mondrian for the rest of his life. Even Mondrian's ordinary themes could hold a deeper meaning for the already initiated. 

For example, one is able to perceive in Mondrian's series of high-rising towers on a flat ground (example given above)both a traditional Christian reference to God and a non-Christian symbol of the combination of the male and female principles.

Neither of those references occurred to me.

But they certainly do in the piece shown below:

Constable, Salisbury Cathedral, 1825

Sea After Sunset, 1909, 16 x 29"

His series of coastal scenes could be interpreted as the unity between water, earth, fire, and air, or in their poorest state, with only water represented as an image symbolizing the beginning of things.

A  piece that I interpret the same way.

The wonderful miracle of planet earth.

Evolution, 1910-11, each panel about 70 x 33

A foray into figurative religious-like art that I would call brave but goofy.

He may have felt the same way since he did not continue in this direction.

It reminds me of Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze of 1902.

 An important change occurred in Mondrian's art at the end of 1909 and beginning of 1910. The loose brushwork is replaced by a more controlled design, in which colors are evenly applied in clearly defined fields. Without a recognizably strict system, the paintings show a strong preference for symmetry and geometric division of the surface along its horizontal and vertical axes, further defined by a grid of oblique lines. These characteristics are most strikingly present in the monumental triptych Evolution, 1910-11 Mondrian's clearest confession of his theosophical conviction and as such quite exceptional in his entire oeuvre because of its unnatural character and overt symbolism. The triptych represents the theosophical doctrine of evolution, man's progression from a low and materialistic stage toward spirituality and higher insight. One can easily follow the process from the left panel, then to the right panel, and finally to the center panel. Virtually everything plays a part in Mondrian's symbolization of evolution: the position of the figure's head, the eyes, the shape of the nipples and navel, the flowers - all details supported by subtle changes of color.

Large Nude, 1911, 55 x 38

I would call this another failure - it’s dull  as both a figurative and non-figurative painting. 

 Mondrian was very receptive to the influence of Cubism, when in 1911 he encountered the first real examples at an exhibition of the Moderne Kunstkring (modern art circle) in Amsterdam, which he assisted in organizing. ……Mondrian developed his work into a radical Cubism within a short period of time, while maintaining his theosophical concepts of art and life. 

Steenhoff recognized this when he described Mondrian's new paintings at an exhibition in Amsterdam in October 1912: "I perceive a favorable development now, in spite of very daring abstractions, in terms of spiritual self-containment and introspection. The work is less pretentious; the painter has found himself in a purer sense; even if it seems to me that he groans naively under the constraints of the preconceived notion that art should totally negate matter. "

I agree with Steenhoff . (BTW, he was a big fan of Van Gogh, and highly critical of Cubism)

 

Oval Composition, 1914, 44 x 33"

Why were viewers left to guess at its obvious  name:  "The Egg of Life" ? 

 Mondrian also deviated from orthodox Cubism by making line and color, his visual means, absolute (example shown above). In his evolutionary thinking line and color, reduced to essential contrasts between horizontal and vertical and between the three primary colors, were supposed to express the unity that was the final destination of all beings, the unity that would resolve harmoniously all antitheses between male and female, static and dynamic, spirit and matter. This all-encompassing visual system, of the utmost importance for the future evolution of his work, is already rudimentarily indicated in a few sketchbooks with annotations. Thus the foundations for Mondrian's Neoplasticism were laid in Paris from 1912 to 1914. Back in the Netherlands during World War 1, he further developed his concept in a critical, but stimulating dialogue with the artists with whom he started the magazine De Stijl in 1917, particularly Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck.

This is what I would call a successful piece of religious art - and yes, it does deviate, in a good way, from Cubism.

Composition, 1919, 33 x 41

Perhaps a Go master would appreciate something subtle.

Is it really any more compelling that the Ellsworth Kelly pieces that were arranged by chance:

Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum Colors arranged by chance, 1951

Not as tedious as the example shown below - but almost.

Agnes Martin, untitled V,  1981

For an infinity of variations, AI could certainly do the job.

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Here’s some more early Mondrian that appealed to me:

Mondrian, Nude, 1908, 33 x 16"

Very good at figure drawing

Mondrian, self portrait, 1918

Very good at portraits, too.

  Mondrian, Irrigation Ditch with Cows, 1901

Smells cold, damp, and lonely - as well as like cows.

Mondrian, Sea after Sunset, 1909

A love song to our planet. 

A piece I would like to own.

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We can’t deny that Mondrian identified with Theosophy as Heemskirck did with Anthroposophy.

The author of this essay  notes that a only a few Dutch abstract painters did not.

Erich Wichman ( 1890 - 1929), Small landscape 1912

No dimensions were given - I’m guessing that it’s the size of a postcard.

Apparently this artist struggled to make a living , and his pieces still sell for little.

Wichman, lithograph, 1918

This essay has examined only a narrow aspect of early Dutch abstract art, a major part of which was esoterically oriented, particularly toward Theosophy. There were only a few exceptions, the sharp-minded Erich Wichman, for example, a painter of extremely interesting abstract works, who never had anything to do with the high ideas of most of his colleagues and made fun of them. 

Note:  the author, Carel Blotkamp, is an artist as well as critic and historian.. I think I’ll follow him on Instagram