Spirituality in Modern Art
The Immaterial Frame from Kandinsky to Motherwell
Jewell Homad Johnson [+–]
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Once, the artist expressed religious themes at the behest of wealthy church patrons, but following the Enlightenment, both religion and art took on a more personalised and experimental character. Modern art critics and curators express a preference for secular art, and secular interpretations of art. Overtly religious works gain attention and success mainly through controversy.
Did secularisation strip the artist of their role as the aesthetic scribe of the spiritual? Key figures in the history of modern art, Wassily Kandinsky and Robert Motherwell, would vehemently disagree. As artists and theorists in their own right, Kandinsky and Motherwell affirm the spiritual heart of modern abstraction, revealing, as they do, a long-standing practice of omission and censorship when it comes to artists’ religious concerns.
Spirituality in Modern Art seeks to capture and record aesthetic expressions of the spiritual in all their subjective variety by looking beyond the artwork and illuminating inferred meanings through close analysis of conceptual frames. Here, the artwork gains significance beyond its immediate appearance, becoming a locus manifesting cultural, religious, and biographical elements. Importantly, the book seeks to unravel and dispel historical inaccuracies that accumulate around works of abstraction, to set the record straight.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Jeremy Johnson
Introduction
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
The Immaterial Frame methodology is introduced in relation to Wassily Kandinsky, the ‘father of abstraction.’ As a Russian Orthodox Christian artist who sought to depict the spiritual through his art, Kandinsky is often mistaken for a Theosophist, his non-representative style easily misinterpreted as secular art. Recognising that post-Enlightenment religiosity is increasingly subjective, it is argued that the religious impulse in art remains a consistent presence, though it is often overlooked due to its secular disguise. The Immaterial Frame, then, seeks to trace abstract and subjective forms of spirituality in art by situating the ambiguous image within its contextual frame. This introductory chapter sets the ground for conversations about the “spiritual” in modern art by first establishing this term in relation to traditional religion, atheism, new religions and spiritualities. The spiritual is then considered in light of traditional forms of religious symbolism, noting that modern abstraction tends towards the immaterial.
Chapter 1
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Kandinsky is the archetypal artist of the Immaterial Frame because the artist produced a wealth of autobiographical and theoretical information through which elucidate the spiritual motivations of his creative practice. Concerning the Spiritual in Art is a seminal text for art historians and scholars of religion, yet its meanings are easily misconstrued, and indeed, the linguistic translation of this work has obscured a clear understanding of Kandinsky’s meaning in several instances. Chapter One uses excerpts from this important text, summarising his theories as a basis for understanding later arguments in the book.
Chapter 2
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
In Chapter Two, the Immaterial Frame methodology is explained in detail, outlining the difficulties inherent in studying the immaterial, the abstract, the non-representational and the subjectively spiritual. While challenging, this task is of great importance. The failure to record aesthetic forms of religious history simply because they do not resemble previous forms reveals a certain secular bias among art historians. Applying the Immaterial Frame, the researcher can begin to unveil the abstract artwork, looking past its secular disguise. In this chapter, Motherwell’s 1944 lecture, “The Place of the Spiritual in a World of Property,” is discussed in relation to its published title, “The Modern Painter’s World.”
Chapter 3
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Are all interpretations equal? Chapter Three demonstrates how important it is to identify appropriate frames of reference when theorising about an artist. For abstract artists, biographical information and expressed artistic intent provide essential clues to understanding an artwork’s meaning. Kandinsky, it is shown, has often been mistaken for a Theosophist, his ideas mistranslated and misrepresented, much to the detriment of our understanding of abstraction. Looking at related artists, such as Georgina Houghton and Hilma Af Klint, whose religious views were quite different to Kandinsky’s, points of similarity and difference are outlined.
Chapter 4
Lost in Translation [+–]
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Chapter Four investigates Kandinsky’s biographical records. Here, Jelena Hahl-Fontaine’s research provides invaluable insights regarding the difficulty in translating religious terminology and subjective meanings from one language to another (in this case, Kandinsky’s own Russian translation of his original German text). In translation, potent religious concepts can be rendered meaningless, their original connotations misconstrued by secular scholars reluctant to investigate the possibility of spiritual motivation and religious influence.
Chapter 5
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
In Chapter Five, Motherwell’s 1944 lecture, “The Place of the Spiritual in a World of Property,” is considered within the Immaterial Frame, using the artist’s biographical experiences, ideological influences, and cultural context to shed light on Motherwell’s conception of the ‘spiritual.’ As an active member of the mid-twentieth century American art scene, Motherwell’s relationship to Dada, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism is considered, alongside foundational intellectual influences such as Arthur O. Lovejoy, Meyer Schapiro, and Alfred North Whitehead. In this context, the relationship between the immaterial and the spiritual is explored.
Chapter 6
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Chapter Six considers Fr Pavel Florensky’s religious concept of the invisible world. This unseen spiritual realm is superior to the visible world and is accessible to the artist. Florensky’s Russian Orthodox beliefs are shown to be compatible with Kandinsky’s, insights from the former confirming Kandinsky’s strong connection with the Eastern Church. For Florensky and Kandinsky, the image functions like a religious icon; an encounter with spiritual presence, and a window onto the invisible world. The icon is further discussed in relation to Andy Warhol’s art, who is considered here to be a religious artist.
Chapter 7
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Reflecting on the spiritual histories that this study has unearthed and those false histories that have been justly critiqued, Chapter Seven considers the role of the secular state in perpetuating these errors and omissions. Why has it been necessary for contemporary religious artists to pander to controversy or otherwise clothe their spiritual art in a secular disguise?
Conclusion
University of Sydney
Dr Jewell Homad Johnson held a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Sydney. An exhibiting artist since 1982, Johnson’s academic work is informed by her art practice and experience as a director/scenographer in theatre, television, and film.
Reflecting on the spiritual histories that this study has illuminated through the application of the Immaterial Frame, we conclude with a word of caution. In the post-Enlightenment context, aesthetic expressions of the religious impulse were often dismissed or overlooked because they did not appear in familiar forms. They were too subjective to be neatly categorised. Let us not create new and rigid categories for spiritual art to evade. The frames of reference that we apply should be expansive, elucidating and clarifying knowledge. Always, the researcher must adopt a dynamic approach, with the artwork and the artist guiding the way.
