The Spiritual Curation of American Modernism

Abstract

Where do the spiritual go? In this study of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century seekers, they join seances in Vermont farmhouses, attend Theosophical lectures on Karma, get lost in copies of Jnana-Y oga, journey to Buddhist temples in China, and consume spiritual manuals on Mentalphysics. But where do they go after those encounters? And, more importantly, what do they do? In this dissertation, they build modern art institutions. A cadre of artist-writers, museum curators, and public intellectuals found their power in early 20th century America by building institutions to introduce a new, spiritually grounded modern art to a mercantile nation. In the US, beyond European sources for "the spiritual" were flirtations with vaguely "Eastern" ones by way of Theosophy. Those who sought to institutionally manifest Wassily Kandinsky's "spiritual" in art believed themselves to provide the assistance necessary to cultivate and preserve these spiritual impulses in modern art. Alfred Stieglitz's Intimate Gallery (1925-1929), Katherine Sophie Dreier's Societe Anonyme (1920-1950), and Hilla Rebay's Museum of Non-Objective Painting (1939-1952)-all in New York City-served as intermediaries in translating predominantly Eastern spiritual ideas into productive ways of being. It would be needed, each curator believed, to cultivate these spiritual protocols just to survive in a material world they held to be detrimentally bankrupt of spirit. In other words, the American institutionalization of modernism built its canon around spiritual systems of national aesthetic welfare. Crucial to these spiritual curators' respective operations would be the promotion of not just any abstraction but a radically non-objective art thought to use the inner expressions of the artist to elevate the spectator. This dissertation takes the turn-of-the-century claims of spirituality by the founders of key art institutions seriously. In doing so, I argue that esoteric forms of Eastern spirituality infused formerly Protestant centers of culture to propel a twentieth-century embrace of radically abstract modern art.