Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions

Massimo Introvigne, guest editor

This special issue of Nova Religio focuses on how new religious movements, and artists associated with them, have significantly contributed to the visual arts. In 1970 Finnish historian Sixten Ringbom (1935-1992) published his seminal book, The Sounding Cosmos, in which he argued that the artistic career of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and the birth of modern abstract art were crucially influenced by the teachings of the Theosophical Society. Although some of his conclusions remain controversial, Ringbom’s pioneering book opened the road to further studies. In 1983 American art historian Linda Dalrymple Henderson published the first edition of her landmark study, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidan Geometry in Modern Art, in which she noted how alternative religions contributed to explorations of the idea of a spatial (rather than temporal) fourth dimension, which was crucially influential on modern art. Two large exhibitions, The Spiritual in Art (Los Angeles, 1986) and Okkultismus und Avantgarde (Frankfurt, 1995), popularized the connection between alternative spirituality, esoteric movements, and modern art for a larger audience. In 2013 the conference, Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy and the Arts in the Modern World, at the University of Amsterdam included some 50 papers, with an audience of 140 scholars plus some 2,000 from all over the world connected via streaming video. Although art historians have mostly focused on Theosophy, significant twentieth-century artists have also been associated with Christian Science, Baha’i, Rosicrucianism, Ordo Templi Orientis, Neopaganism, the New Age movement, the Church of Scientology, a variety of new Buddhist movements, and other new religious movements. By mapping out how new religious movements have interacted with the visual arts, this special issue will explore how alternative religions influenced artistic trends of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Contributions may focus on the ongoing debate on the relationship between Theosophy and modern art, but we hope to include articles on artists and currents associated with other religious movements.

This special issue of Nova Religio will be guest-edited by Massimo Introvigne (Pontifical Salesian University, Torino, Italy). He may be contacted at maxintrovigne@gmail.com. Abstracts of about 150 words and a short CV (no more than two pages) should be submitted to Introvigne at the email address above by 20 September 2014 in order to elicit his feedback. Papers should be submitted to Introvigne no later than 15 January 2015. Abstracts and papers should be saved as Word .doc or .docx files. The preferred length of articles is around 7,000 words, including endnotes, with a maximum length of 10,000 words including endnotes. We encourage contributors to select and include photographs, including photographs of paintings, for which they (rather than Nova Religio) should secure the needed copyright authorizations, to be submitted in writing to the journal. For each photograph the contributor desires to include, his or her paper should be shortened by 200 words (for instance, with four photographs the preferred length becomes 6,200 words, with a maximum length of 9,200 words, including endnotes). Photographs will be published in black and white in the paper edition of the journal, and in color in the PDF article available through JSTOR. Contributors may also submit a PowerPoint slide show to be published in the Photo Gallery on Nova Religio’s website, providing copyright clearance has been obtained for all images. Accepted manuscripts must follow the Chicago Manual of Style for endnotes. All references should be in endnotes, numbered throughout the manuscript using the auto-numbering feature of Word. Please see the Nova Religio Style Sheet for the proper formatting of papers to be submitted to the journal. Each paper submitted will be subjected to peer review. If the paper is accepted for publication, the journal’s editors reserve the right to edit for length and clarity, with the agreement of the author. The editors also reserve the right to edit for usage and style. Authors of papers accepted for publication will receive a pdf file of their article and two free copies of the issue in which the article appears.