2021

Günter Berghaus, Monica Jansen, Luca Somigli, Günter Berghaus, Monica Jansen, Luca Somigli

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9783110751024
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110752489
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: History of Modern Art
• Index: Literature

Dieser Band erforscht die spannungsreichen Beziehungen zwischen der futuristischen Kunstbewegung und dem Sakralen. Wie viele Intellektuelle des Fin-de-Siècle waren die Futuristen von verschiedenen esoterischen Strömungen wie Theosophie und Spiritualismus fasziniert. Sie sahen in der Kunst ein privilegiertes Mittel, um Zugang zu Seinszuständen jenseits der Oberfläche der weltlichen Welt zu erhalten. Gleichzeitig betrachteten sie mit Misstrauen die organisierten Religionen als gesellschaftliche Institutionen, die die Modernisierung behinderten. Zunächst wurden deren Symbole ironisch verwendet, doch in den 1930er Jahren entwickelten sie in Italien eine "Futuristische Sakralkunst", und eine neue Periode des Dialogs zwischen dem Futurismus und der katholischen Kirche setzte ein. Die Aufsätze des Bandes umspannen die Geschichte des Futurismus von 1909 bis 1944 in verschiedenen Disziplinen und geografischen Orten, von der polnischen und spanischen Literatur bis zur italienischen Kunst und amerikanischen Musik.

Section 1: Futurism Studies

Futurism and Theosophy: Giacomo Balla and His Circle

Massimo Introvigne

Abstract.

Several books and articles about Giacomo Balla, a key participant in Italian Futurism, mention his relationship with Theosophy and other esoteric movements. Most of them, however, treat it as a mere curiosity. This essay argues that this relationship was long-lasting and significant. I attempt to reconstruct Balla’s esoteric interests in a systematic manner, including his attendance at Theosophical meetings and Spiritualist séances, and his friendship with intellectuals active in the Masonic and Neopagan milieux in Rome after he moved there from Turin as a young, promising artist. The context in which Balla encountered Theosophy and esotericism was marked by several schisms and controversies within the Italian Theosophical Society, and by the political and cultural activities of Ernesto Nathan, a prominent Freemason who became Mayor of Rome. In addition to Balla, other Futurists also discussed here include Umberto Boccioni and Arnaldo Ginna. Unlike other major artists, such as Piet Mondrian, Lawren Harris and Xul Solar, Balla did not produce any theoretical writings about the interaction between esotericism and art, nor did he lecture on Theosophy or promoted the Theosophical Society in public. However, Theosophy and other esoteric currents remained an important feature of his work.

Keywords: Occult and esoteric movements, spiritualism and art, Theosophical Society, Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Arnaldo Ginna, Francesco Randone, Carlo Ballatore, Ernesto Nathan, Giovanni Amendola

A Theosophical ‘Art World’

Giacomo Balla (1871‒1958) was a key participant in the Italian Futurist movement, and a pioneer of abstract art in Italy. He also entertained close relations with the Theosophical Society and other esoteric movements. Theosophy, using the word in the stricter meaning of currents connected with the Theosophical Society and its splinter groups, was never a very large movement. Currently, the Theosophical Society has around 24,000 members.¹ In recent years, however, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in Theosophy, mostly due to its crucial influence on modern art.²

In 1970, Finnish art historian Sixten Ringbom published a study on Theosophical influences on Wassily Kandinsky.³ Although some of his arguments have been thoroughly criticized and can no longer be accepted, the scholar opened a door for subsequent investigations. There is a long way from Ringbom’s pioneering volume of 1970 to the path-breaking exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890‒1985 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1986 and the Amsterdam conference Enchanted Modernities in 2013, with more than 200 scholars discussing the relationship between Theosophy and the arts, with another 2,000 connected via the Internet. Crucial along this road was the work of American art historian Linda Dalrymple Henderson, who discussed in two seminal studies how important Theosophy was for the quest of an understanding of the fourth dimension located not in time but in space, a quest that was in turn crucial for the development of modern art.⁴

An important textbook for the comparatively recent discipline of the sociology of the arts has been Howard S. Becker’s Art Worlds, a study of 1984 that shows how art is socially constructed by a plurality of actors, all of them together forming an ‘art world’. Critics, audiences and patrons play a crucial rôle in determining whether a certain work should be called art, and thus cooperate in its social production. Thus, the ‘art world’, rather than the individual artist, is responsible for creating works of art. Few of Becker’s examples concern religion, but there is little doubt that religious bodies and agencies have been extremely important in creating and sustaining art worlds throughout the centuries.

Since its foundation in 1875, the Theosophical Society, together with a larger Theosophical milieu that existed as a concentric circle beyond the inner group of the Society’s members, was an important part of the process of creating art worlds. The rôle of the Theosophical Society was not typically that of a patron: unlike the Catholic Church, it did not normally influence artists through its commissions. However, the Theosophical milieu was often part of this negotiation, before and after the works were created, and therefore affected the process of a work becoming art.

The Theosophical art world was never uniform. Artists who were card-carrying members of the Society ranged from the Symbolist Jean Delville (1867‒1953) to the pioneer of abstract art, Piet Mondrian (1872‒1944). In entirely different artistic milieux, Paul Sérusier (1864‒1927) from France and Lawren Harris (1885 – 1970) from Canada became members of the Theosophical Society. The range of internal diversity was vast in the Theosophical art world.

The Theosophical Society in Italy

Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831 – 1891), who founded the Theosophical Society together with colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832 – 1907), visited Italy several times. British expatriates established the first Theosophical centres in Italy in the early 1890s,⁵ and on 22 February 1897 the Associazione Teosofica Romana became officially incorporated into the Society. After Blavatsky’s death, international Theosophical leaders such as Olcott, Annie Besant (1847‒1933), Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854‒1934) and Isabel Cooper-Oakley (1854‒1914) took an active interest in promoting Theosophy in Italy. The Society appointed Cooper-Oakley to oversee the work in Italy, where she spent a significant amount of time. Besant herself lectured several times in Rome on behalf of the newly established Società Teosofica Italiana.

The message of Theosophy spread rapidly in Italian cities and attracted Freemasons who, while remaining critical of Catholicism, were not satisfied with the Positivism prevailing in some Masonic lodges and were seeking an alternative spirituality. Leading Italian intellectuals joined the Theosophical Society, including Maria Montessori, who in 1939 gave courses at the Society’s international headquarters in Adyar, India.⁶ On 1 February 1902, the Italian Section of the Theosophical Society was formally inaugurated in Rome, during a convention presided by Leadbeater.

Tensions within the international Theosophical Society, howeve...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editorial
• Section 1: Futurism Studies
• Section 2: Reviews
• Section 3: Bibliography
• Section 4: Back Matter
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• Geographical Index