Tyra Kleen and the Paradoxes of Esoteric Art
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PER FAXNELD ‘Mirages and visions in the air’ Tyra Kleen and the paradoxes of esoteric art DOI: https://doi.org/10.30664/ar.98199 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) round the year 1900, European discourse with some of the central notions of this on art was becoming increasingly ‘eso discourse. Atericized’. The 1890s saw esoteric art salons create a sensation in Paris, and art critics and theorists painted a picture of the true artist Esoteric art and esotericized art criticism and the esotericist as overlapping figures. There During the second half of the nine- was also at the time a conflict regarding medium teenth century, the reciprocal relationship istic art, a phenomenon initially made popular between esotericism and visual art intensi- through Spiritualist mediums. This debate, as we shall see, had interesting gendered dimensions. fied. While major artists had certainly been In what follows, I will discuss how the Swedish inspired by esoteric currents and motifs female esotericist and artist Tyra Kleen (1874– connected with them earlier (e.g. depic- 1951) attempted to situate herself in connection tions of alchemists by Bruegel the Elder to the concept of the artist as a magus, and the tensions between the positive view of medium and Younger, Rembrandt’s 1652 Faust ism in Spiritualism and the more negative or cau engraving, William Blake’s many visionary tious approach to it in Theosophy, as well as in works), this seemed to become increasingly relation to the attendant gender issues. prominent during the aforementioned period, especially among Symbolists.1 A The material used is primarily Kleen’s more or less fresh theme was the idea of book Form (1908), a sort of artistic mani- (true) art itself as inherently esoteric, and festo that she produced, partially, it would (true) artists thus possessing conscious or seem, in response to ideas about esoteric unconscious esoteric insights.2 Notions of art and women artists prominent at the time. Moreover, I provide an outline of the 1 On Symbolism and esotericism in a Scandi- occultist circles in which Kleen moved, and navian context, see e.g. Lahelma 2014. of who some of her primary occult con- 2 ‘True’ art in these types of discourses typi- cally designated either a type of avant-garde versation partners were, better to under- art perceived as transcending stale, con- stand what shaped her own ideas concern- ventional art ideals, or a form of ‘eternal’, ing related matters. We start, however, with spiritual art present in different eras that a broader overview of how the period’s art stood above decorative, commercial work criticism became ‘esotericized’ in a manner and temporal subject matter (often instead grounded in the individual artist as a unique which made it unavoidable for a person figure) (cf. Lahelma 2014: 51–2, 76, 99–100, with Kleen’s interests to actively engage 135–6). Approaching Religion • Vol. 11, No. 1 • March 2021 63 the artist as a visionary or seer had roots According to Pater, when Leonardo stretching back to the Romantic period, but chose his disciples, he required of them the explicit connection between this theme ‘enough genius to be capable of initiation and esotericism was not so well established into his secret’ (Pater 1998: 75). The women prior to the mid-nineteenth century. I in Leonardo’s paintings are, in Pater’s would suggest that such ideas might have understanding, ‘clairvoyants, through come not so much from artists themselves, whom … one becomes aware of the sub- as from art critics and art theoreticians (on tler forces of nature’, and who ‘feel powers which more presently). at work in the common air unfelt by others’, Henrik Johnsson has highlighted how passing ‘them on to us in a chain of secret the Swedish author and playwright August influences’ (ibid. p. 74). Leonardo himself Strindberg employed esotericism stra- was held up by Pater as a person who tegically, to demonstrate that he was at the forefront of literature and modernity … brooded over the hidden virtues (Johnsson 2015). This speaks to two inter- of plants and crystals, the lines traced esting, if perhaps obvious, points: 1) that by the stars as they moved in the esotericism was considered a fashionable, sky, over the correspondences which up to date worldview in influential cultural exist between the different orders of circles, and 2) that it could therefore be living things, through which, to eyes used to signal that you were a relevant cul- opened, they interpret each other; and tural figure. While the interest artists took for years he seemed to those about in various esoteric ideas has been studied him as one listening to a voice, silent in relation to many individual persons, the for other men. (Pater 1998: 66) discourse on this intertwining in art criti- cism is somewhat less well explored. Pater’s text was one of the most import- A pioneering example of the esoteri- ant pieces of art criticism of its time and cization of art criticism was the English had long-lasting effects not only for how art critic and author Walter Pater’s (1839– Leonardo was viewed, but also probably 94) discussion of Leonardo da Vinci in an played a key role in establishing notions of 1869 article for the Fortnightly Review, later great art as being connected to deep, eso- republished in the highly influential book teric insights – and the figure of the emi- The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry nent artist in general as a sort of magus. (1873). Pater stated that Leonardo ‘seemed When it came to Leonardo more specifi- to his contemporaries to be the possessor cally, by the turn of century it had become a of some unsanctified and secret wisdom’ common trope among esotericists to claim (Pater 1998: 63). Such phrasings recur Leonardo as literally one of their own. The throughout the text, with Leonardo also Theosophical leader Annie Besant 1847( – being described as ‘rather the sorcerer or 1933), for example, considered him a vessel the magician, possessed of curious secrets of esoteric gnosis (Besant 1901/14: 123), and a hidden knowledge’, and claims that while Édouard Schuré (1841–1929), a suc- what his philosophy ‘seems to have been cessful, Theosophically inclined playwright, most like is that of Paracelsus … and much wrote a whole drama based on the con- of the spirit of the older alchemy still hangs cept of Leonardo as a magus (Léonard da about it’ (ibid. p. 68). Vinci: Drame en prose en cinq actes, 1905). In Paris, initiates of Joséphin Péladan’s Approaching Religion • Vol. 11, No. 1 • March 2021 64 (1858–1918) esoteric group L’Ordre du who had come to Paris ‘in order to be Temple de la Rose+Croix swore the oath understood by the initiated’, that is, those of the first degree in the name of Leonardo with the proper esoteric understanding of (Dantinne 1948: 34–45). art (Strindberg 2011: 126).4 Péladan – both an esotericist and an art theorist – was a leading representative of Tyra Kleen: the life of an artist the weaving together of art and esotericism Let us now turn to our case study, Tyra and exerted a significant influence on the Kleen. This gifted and successful artist was Symbolist movement (in which Kleen was heavily involved with esoteric systems of arguably a participant). A spectacular and thought throughout most of her life, and, somewhat exhibitionistic character, from like so many of the women drawn to these 1892 he organized yearly esoteric-Rosicru- currents in turn-of-the-century Sweden, cian art exhibitions, as a sort of idealist- came from a noble background.5 Her father esoteric alternative to the regular Paris art worked as a diplomat, and due to his profes- salon. For the 1893 Rosicrucian salon, he sion the family travelled extensively during was granted the privilege of using parts of her childhood. She got to learn several for- the same building where the official, con- eign languages and undertook a formal ventional salon was also held, the Palais du education at art academies in Germany Champ de Mars, and he attracted a long and France, thus coming to perceive herself list of important cultural personages to his more as broadly European than Swedish. events. They were also so popular with the While studying in Paris, she had her first general public that they caused traffic jams solo exhibition in 1896. Numerous exhib- (Pincus-Witten 1976: 148, 190). Probably itions were to follow, in for example the most famous statement Péladan made London, Berlin, Vienna, St Petersburg, and was his declaration ‘Artist you are magus’ Stockholm (Hermelin 2016: 21–2; Ström (ibid. p. 105), conflating the figure of the Lehander 2016: 39–40). artist and the esotericist. We will return to Though she mastered several tech- Péladan below, in relation to Tyra Kleen. niques, Kleen’s foremost forms of expres- The 1890s also saw the Polish high- sion were drawing and printmaking (etch- profile critic and author Stanislaw ings and lithographs). In terms of style, the Przybyszew ski (1868–1927) develop an German Jugendstil and its French counter- esoteric theory of art in Berlin. He wrote part art nouveau influenced her strongly, of Edvard Munch’s work as connected to ‘visions, clairvoyance, dream’, viewing it as the product of a ‘somnambule, transcend- 4 Regarding Munch’s own esoteric interests, ent consciousness’ (Przybyszewski 1992: see Eggum 1989 and Faxneld 2011. 158, 151), and elsewhere placed ‘true art- 5 There are preserved diaries from 60 years of ists’ in a lineage of esoteric visionaries like Kleen’s life (held in the Tyra Kleen archive at Valinge gård, Sweden), an enormous 3 John Dee and Paracelsus (ibid.