Anna Cassel, Hilma af Klint, and anthroposophy
Anna Cassel, untitled, 1913, oil on canvas, courtesy The Anthroposophical Society
The Theosophical Society, established in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott, was founded on the study of esotericism and spiritual practices; intended to be a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy, it drew on ideas from Hinduism, and Buddhism, Neoplatonism, and the occult. According to Blavatsky, humanity’s development on earth is part of broader cosmic evolution, guided and overseen by advanced spiritual beings, the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom. After she died, the Theosophical movement, by this time worldwide, began to unravel; it split into two main factions, one in America, the other in India. The German-Austrian branch of the Society remained relatively independent, and following disagreements with the international leadership about the spiritual significance of Jesus and that of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who was considered by the society as the current ‘vehicle’ of World Teacher, most of its members, led by Rudolf Steiner, left the organisation to form the Anthroposophical Society.
Steiner described anthroposophy as the ‘scientific exploration of the spiritual world’, and over the years its influence has been widespread and profound. Anthroposophical ideas have been applied in many fields, including education, both in Waldorf schools and Camphill communities, in agriculture and environmental thinking, as well as in the arts. Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint acknowledged the impact of Theosophical and Anthroposophical thought on their work, and it probably influenced Kasimir Malevich too. More recently, Joseph Beuys and Andrei Tarkovsky both recognised Steiner’s importance, the film director once remarking that ‘Steiner offers us a world view that explains everything - or almost everything - and provides human development with an appropriate place in the spiritual domain… Although it may have been possible in the past to take seriously the materialist position to explain the function and meaning of human life and society on a physical material basis, it is no longer possible to do so’.
The art world, like our society in general, tends to be quick to dismiss such metaphysical notions as fanciful and inconsequential. Hilma af Klint’s contribution to the development of abstract painting has been belatedly welcomed, but her unequivocal beliefs about its spiritual foundations have usually been regarded as eccentric; her work is most often approached from a formalist perspective, although it is possible that its deeper meaning is subconsciously sensed by many viewers. Another challenging aspect of her practice, usually passed over, is the question of collaboration, which af Klint acknowledged but never fully explained. Her most admired and extensive body of work, ‘The Paintings for the Temple’, created between 1906 and 1915, was in part a collaboration with a group of thirteen women, all of whom, according to recent research, contributed to the cycle of images. Anna Cassel, a painter, medium, and close friend of af Klint, seems to have played a particularly important part in the undertaking.
A beautiful book, The Saga of the Rose, styled on the multi-volume af Klint Catalogue Raisonné, has recently been published on Cassel and her work, following the discovery of a substantial collection of her paintings in a house in Järna, the small town that is the centre of the Swedish Anthroposophical Society. A cache of notebooks was also uncovered, in which Cassel gives an account of events that Hilma af Klint also described, and it now appears that the latter’s story may have been written to reflect her worldview rather than conventional notions of accuracy. In any event, Cassel worked on the Temple paintings with af Klint, producing the two series that together constitute ‘The Saga of the Rose’, which deals with the collective memory of mankind, rather like the so-called ‘Akashic Records’ that were an important part of Theosophical beliefs.
The book convincingly demonstrates that Cassel’s works are significant; their pictorial diversity and symbolic depth are remarkable. In the main, her images draw on dreams, visions, and references to varied occult traditions; they include figuration, iconic symbols, and abstract geometric forms. In contrast, there is a selection of Cassel’s landscape and botanical drawings and watercolours that demonstrate her technical skill and academic training, as well as drawings of robed and hooded women in prayer, meditating, reading, and lying in bed, their cloistered mood a reminder that Cassel and af Klint founded a close order of women whose membership was supposed to be spiritual and perpetual. A further group of paintings features crosses with central white roses, the Rosicrucian emblem, while another image shows a bearded man in white robes meditating near a table that holds a holy book and rose, a black cross in a red disc radiating light in the background. The book ends with a group of semi-abstract pieces, painted wet-on-wet, the thin washes of watercolour suggesting a state of fluid immateriality.
Hilma af Klint and the collective of women artists thought that their connections, both personal and professional, were strong and profound enough to overcome death. As af Klint once said to Cassel, who had already passed away, ‘I am still in my physical body and hope to get your and my work into some sort of order before I must leave this Earth. Many circumstances prevented this, but it is now time, and we ought to do this while I am in this world. I dearly hope it will ease your heart to know that I am your friend and I believe we shall work together in the future’. To accept this conviction and their other spiritual beliefs would be to reject or overturn some of the basic assumptions of Western culture, but it would be churlish not to give them consideration. Carl Jung’s ideas about alchemy offer a way of doing so; he suggested that psychological growth emerges from a capacity to hold conflicting elements in conscious awareness, a process he compared to the alchemical ‘coagulation’ of opposites. While this does not ensure a complete resolution of contraries and oppositions, it develops an ability to live with paradox and ambiguity, leading to a deeper acceptance of the wholeness of the psyche.
For further exploration:
https://www.artforum.com/columns/who-painted-hilma-af-klints-otherworldly-visions-252631/
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/who-created-the-paintings-for-the-temple/
Current listening: https://ganavya.bandcamp.com/album/like-the-sky-ive-been-too-quiet
Image on index page: portraits of Anna Cassel (l), and Hilma af Klint(r)
Anna Cassel, ‘Pentecost’. 1915, watercolour on paper, courtesy The Anthroposophical Society