Animism and Shamanism in Twentieth-Century Art: Kandinsky, Ernst, Pollock, Beuys

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Product Overview

Wassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, and Joseph Beuys were the
leading artists of their generations to recognize the rich possibilities that
animism and shamanism offered. While each of these artists' connection with
shamanism has been written about separately, Evan Firestone brings the four
together in order to compare their individual approaches to anthropological
materials and to define similarities and differences between them. The
author's close readings of their works and examination of the relevant texts
available to them reveal fresh insights and new perspectives.The importance of
indigenous beliefs in animism for Kandinsky's philosophy of art and practice,
especially the animism of inanimate objects, is analyzed for the first time in
conjunction with his well-known enthusiasms for Symbolism and Theosophy.
Ernst's collage novel, La femme 100 tetes (1929), previously found to have
significant alchemical content, also is shown to extensively utilize
shamanism, thereby merging different branches of the occult that prove to have
remarkable similarities. The in-depth examination of Pollock's works, both
known and overlooked for shamanic content, identifies textual sources that
heretofore have escaped notice. Firestone also demonstrates how shamanism was
employed by this artist to express his desire for healing and transformation.
The author further argues that the German edition of Mircea Eliade's
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1957) helped to revitalize Beuys's
life and art, and that his ecological campaigns reflected a new consciousness
later termed ecoanimism.