Editor's Statement: Mysticism and Occultism in Modern Art

Abstract

The articles in this issue of Art Journal were chosen from the more than thirty papers proposed for the session on “Mystical and Philosophical Themes in Modern Art” at the 1986 Annual Meeting of the College Art Association. The overwhelming response to that call for papers documents the growing activity in a field pioneered in the late 1960s by such figures as the Mondrian scholar Robert Welsh and the Kandinsky scholars Sixten Ringbom and Rose-Carol Washton Long. To choose from among that group of possible articles the small number for which there was space was extremely difficult; my choices in the end were made in order to present an overview of the period from 1885 to 1930 and, where possible, to use texts by young scholars who had recently completed dissertations on a relevant topic (e.g., Kosinski, Benson, Gibson, and Warlick). This group of articles also complements the catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum's Fall 1986 exhibition, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1980–1985, organized by ...