Afterthought forms

The changing role of esotericism between modern and contemporary art

Marco Pasi University of Amsterdam

POSTHUMOUSNESS

Posthumousness is the inability or

unwillingness to have one’s artistic work

promoted and recognised during one’s

life, which projects the work into a

temporal limbo of obscurity that may last

decades or even forever.

The Eye of God, 1862

Georgiana Houghton (1814-1984)

Olga Froebe-Kapteyn (1881-1962)

Om Mani Padme Hum n.d. (1930s)

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988)

Desert-Growth I, 1949

Luigi Pericle (1916-2001)

Matri Dei d.d.d., 1974

Santiago Borja

Santiago Borja, “Blavatsky Observatory”, Sonneveld House, 2016

Santiago Borja, “Blavatsky Observatory”, Sonneveld House, 2016

Blavatsky was a strong advocate of a modern universalist brotherhood and the Theosophical Society was an inclusive group, where everybody was accepted regardless of gender, political and religious affiliation… For me this is quite a revolutionary thing, and it planted the seed, not only for social utopias but also for modern universalist approaches in art and design… I have the feeling that this kind of ideas allowed certain architects such as those involved in the Bauhaus or even Le Corbusier, to try to find a way for architecture that could solve, for example, the housing problem all over the planet without considering climate or socio-political or even economic differences.

Lea Porsager

Lea Porsager, “The Anatta Experiment”, 2013

From the book Anatta Experiment, 2013

Lea Porsager, “How to program and use T-F”, exhibition view Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen, 2013

Lea Porsager, “How to program and use T-F”, 2013, detail of TF3

Christine Ödlund

Christine Ödlund, “Greetings from Uranus Madame Blavatsky (Musical Score)”, 2013

Christine Ödlund, Thought-Form, 2009

Christine Ödlund, Astralklockor / Astral Bells, 2012

Goshka Macuga

Goshka Macuga, Madame Blavatsky, 2007

Jennifer Tee

Jennifer Tee, Thought Forms, 2013

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Conclusions

• New media

• Not just historical interest, but also exploration of the self

• New perception of the cultural role of Theosophy

• The principle of hope and the principle of resistance