Programme
A SYMPOSIUM AT MODERNA MUSEET
ARRANGED BY AX:SON JOHNSON FOUNDATION
Friday May 24th
Introduction to the World View at the Turn of the 20th Century
A Historical View of the Ideas
15:30 REGISTRATION
16.00 Welcome Daniel Birnbaum, Moderna Museet
16.05 Welcome Louise Belfrage, Ax:son Johnson Foundation
16.10 Introduction Mark Isitt, moderator
16.15 Wouter J. Hanegraaff – From Late Antiquity until Today: The History of Occult Ideas in the West and Their Reception
16.35 Raphael Rosenberg – How to Depict Invisible Things? Amimetic Images before Abstract Art
16.55 Gary Lachman – Modernity and the Occult
17.15 Helmut Zander –Rudolf Steiner and Some Aspects of the Zeitgeist
17.35 Discussion Wouter Hanegraaff, Raphael Rosenberg, Gary Lachman and Helmut Zander led by moderator
18.05 Closing remarks
Saturday May 25th
Electricity, Avant-Garde and Abstraction
New Influences in Science and Art
10.15 Introduction Mark Isitt, moderator
10.20 Stephen Kern – Fin-de-Siècle Europe and Hilma af Klint: Technology, Nihilism and Abstraction
10.40 Marco Pasi – Western Esotericism and the Problem with Modern Artistic Creativity
11.00 COFFEE BREAK
11.30 Tessel Bauduin – The Automatic Message – Automatism and the Avant-Garde
11.50 Victoria Ferentinou –Theosophy, Women Artists and Modernism: The Case of Ithell Colquhoun
12.10 Discussion Stephen Kern, Marco Pasi, Tessel Bauduin and Victoria Ferentinou led by moderator
12.40 LUNCH BREAK
Hilma af Klint and Her Contemporaries
14.15 Introduction Mark Isitt, moderator
14.20 Christoph Wagner – Occultism and Abstract Art: Kandinsky, Itten, Malevich
14.40 Andrei Nakov – The Spiritual Foundations of Suprematism
15.00 Marty Bax – Mondrian and the Legacy of Western Esotericism
15.20 COFFEE BREAK
15.50 David Lomas – The Meaning of “Life”: Biology and Abstraction
16.10 Iris Müller-Westermann – Hilma af Klint and the Spirit of Her Time
16.30 Briony Fer – Abstraction and Hilma af Klint
16.50 Respondent: Thierry de Duve
17.05 Discussion Christoph Wagner, Andrei Nakov, Marty Bax, David Lomas, Iris Müller-Westerman, Briony Fer and Thierry de Duve led by moderator
17.35 Concluding remarks