Occultism, Spiritualism and Hermeticism
Sometimes called ‘hidden knowledge’, Occultism refers to beliefs and practices concerning the intersection of the material and spiritual worlds, purportedly representing the most ancient religious…
Sometimes called ‘hidden knowledge’, Occultism refers to beliefs and practices concerning the intersection of the material and spiritual worlds, purportedly representing the most ancient religious…
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
In 1919 a young architect named Walter Gropius initiated one of the most modern art schools of the twentieth century in the city of Weimar…
(Previously published as 'The Experience of Aboriginality in the Creation of the Radically New' in Ross, S. (ed.) (2014) Modernist World, Abingdon: Routledge.)1
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Symbolism is a late-nineteenth-century literary movement centred mostly around the work of poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam,…
Modernist architecture and design represented a utopian vision of how the built environment could be adapted to the needs to modern industrial society. Industrialization had…
Abstract Expressionism was a movement initiated by a group of loosely affiliated artists that came together during the early 1940s, primarily in New York City.…
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Futurism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a movement that explicitly conceptualized the process of literary and artistic experimentation as part of…
Born in Ain Beida, Algeria to a Sufi family, Rachid Koraïchi’s art is often framed within a tradition of Sufi spirituality in which aesthetics and…
Aleister Crowley was an occultist, writer, and mystic who founded the spiritual philosophy of Thelema. Crowley’s work combines European, South Asian, and Chinese esoteric teachings.…
Born Annie Wood, Annie Besant was an English political activist and spiritualist with Irish heritage. She married British clergyman Frank Besant in 1867; they separated…
Best known for his involvement in the design of the National School of Art (1961–1965), Ricardo Porro’s work in Cuba marks a brief-lived yet spiritually…
Krzysztof Kieślowski was a highly influential Polish filmmaker in the tradition of auteur cinema. Kieślowski tackled the tension between the political, spiritual, and ethical, and…
Though practitioners perceive Andalusia as the form’s spiritual and artistic home, flamenco is taught and performed in cities around the world. Modern flamenco evolved from…
Sophus Claussen is considered one of the foremost Danish poets of the period spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. As a regular contributor to the…
References to dances of the East have appeared in Western sources at least since the beginning of the Christian era, yet what has become known…
George Daoud Corm was a painter and francophone poet dedicated to Christian ethics and the classical tradition of European Humanism. He attended the Ecole Nationale…
Jacques Maritain was a leader among those who attempted to update and transform Catholic teaching for the modern world. Born to a Protestant republican, he…
In the modern dance world, Sybil Shearer was by most accounts an idiosyncratic, singular, and somewhat esoteric figure whose career spanned the second half of…
Ismael Nery (b. 1900, Belém do Pará, Brazil; d. 1934, Rio de Janeiro) was the mystical artist of Brazilian modernism. For him, art was a…
Novelist, painter, and public intellectual, Bertram Brooker (1888–1955) was a leading force in the modernizing of Canadian culture in the early twentieth century. Brooker believed…
Jean Toomer (26 December 1894—30 March 1967) was an American writer associated with literary modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. He was born as Nathan Pinchback…
Franz Marc was born in Munich, Germany in 1880 and died in the battle of Verdun in 1916, one of many of the Great War’s…