A New Way of Seeing: Theosophy and early twentieth century Australian artists: Clarice Beckett, Grace Cossington Smith and Roy de Maistre
In 1875 New York, Madame Helena Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society. Theosophists held that spiritual progress and an understanding of God may be attained via intuition, the occult, and working on personal and societal improvement. Blavatsky had spent some years in India and her writings on eastern religions introduced westerners to different ways of viewing life.
In 1901, two rising luminaries on the international theosophical scene, C.W.
Leadbeater and Annie Besant, wrote Thought Forms, which explored the influence of colour and music on the human psyche. Thought Forms greatly interested artists such as Kandinsky, Mondrian and Klee; others, however, dismissed it as far-fetched and fanciful.
Changes were also occurring around art, was published, chronicling his personal journey from figurative depiction towards abstraction by distilling an image to arrive at its ultimate core, or ‘truth’.
