On View:
Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group
by Regina Mamou, Artist & Director of Art Muse LA, 1 April 2023.
This month, we will feature a trio of events around the exhibition Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938–1945, at LACMA (18 December 2022–19 June 2023), and since the Transcendental Painting Group was a culmination of a new kind of style – it is a perfect feature for this issue. We will also visit the studio of Los Angeles-based artist Caris Reid whose work is inspired by the Transcendental Painting Group. You can learn more about her work in this article.
Image Credit: Florence Miller Pierce (American, b. 1918–d. 2007). Rising Red, 1942. Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in. (91.44 x 91.44 cm). Collection of the McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX). direct link.
If you’re new to reading non-objective or non-representational artwork, one of the best ways to approach the Transcendental Painting Group exhibition at LACMA is through global and American history. The Transcendental Painting Group (TPG) was short-lived and consisted of ten artists from the US and Canada who began their venture together in 1938. In the States, the 1930s was a period of economic downturn and market crash leading to the Great Depression. As people struggled to find jobs and imagine a future where they could exist without financial pressure, elsewhere in Europe, the rise of fascism and the Nazi Party was quickly gaining momentum and capturing the frustrations of many Germans in a society that turned a blind eye to World War I veterans and inflation.
In the US, artists were provided jobs through the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Arts Project program (1935–1943). For many artists, a regular paycheck was a welcomed sight during the Great Depression, and they completed projects such as murals, posters, and sculptures. While these artists enjoyed artistic freedom, the general style was of Social Realism, depicting American scenes highlighting the socioeconomic conditions of the time. Through this lens, we turn back to the Transcendental Painting Group.
TPG emerged in New Mexico in 1938 with a manifesto of sorts describing the aim of the group:
“The word Transcendental has been chosen as a name for the group because it best expresses its aim, which is to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light, and design, to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual. . . . Methods may vary. Some approach their plastic problems by a scientific balancing of the elements involved; others rely upon the initial emotion produced by the creative urge itself; still, others are impelled by a metaphysical motivation.”
Image Credit: Members of the Transcendental Painting Group and friends, photographed in Taos, New Mexico, in November 1938. From left to right: Bess Harris, R.S. Horton, Mayrion Bisttram’s mother, Lawren Harris, Mayrion Bisttram, Robert Gribbroek, Emil Bisttram, Isabel McLaughlin, Raymond Jonson. Courtesy Michael Duncan. direct link.
The group was well organized and consisted of the following artists.
Emil Bisttram (b. Hungary, 1895–d. New Mexico, 1976);
Ed Garman (b. Connecticut, 1914–d. California, 2004);
Robert Gribbroek (b. New York, 1906–d. New Mexico, 1971);
Lawren Harris (b. Ontario, Canada, 1885–d. British Columbia, Canada, 1970);
Raymond Jonson (b. Idaho, 1891–New Mexico, 1982);
William Lumpkins (b. New Mexico, 1909–d. New Mexico, 2000);
Agnes Pelton (b. Germany, 1881–d. California, 1961);
Florence Miller (Pierce) (b. Washington, DC, 1918–d. New Mexico, 2007);
Horace Towner Pierce (b. Colorado, 1916–d. New Mexico, 1958);
Stuart Walker (b. Indiana, 1904–d. New Mexico, 1940).
Many members of the group were originally from the East Coast, an artistic space that still favored European tastes at the time, such as the Bauhaus, Cubism, and Surrealism, and the Southwestern US offered a permanent respite from this scene. The Southwest also offered the expansiveness of the desert and flora and fauna often associated with mysticism, spiritual practices, and seekers of transcendental states. In this environment, TPG built its artistic practice, the connective tissue, for even those artists who spent most of their life elsewhere had, at one time or another, lived in New Mexico. TPG’s work, in turn, spoke to different aspects of transcendental importance that profoundly affected the artists – some, such as Emil Bisttram and Florence Miller Pierce, were interested in the occult and theosophy. In contrast, others, such as Bill Lumpkins and Stuart Walker, considered their practice studies of decoration, form, color, and shapes.
Image Credit: Emil Bisttram (Hungarian-born American, b. 1895–d. 1976). Upward, c. 1940. Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 in. (127 x 127 cm). Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC). direct link.
Image Credit: Stuart Walker (American, b. 1904–d. 1940). Composition no. 61, 1939. Oil on canvas, 36 x 26 in. (91.50 x 66 cm). Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC). direct link.
Despite these differences in the visual semantics of interpreting ‘transcendental,’ the Group maintained a cohesive style often characterized by floating shapes, gradation in color, and the incorporation of a kind of ‘haze’ that could be derived from airbrushing paint – a technique that Raymond Jonson employed in his work. In many non-airbrushed works, however, this sense of haziness serves as a veil or portal to access the work beyond the physical plane toward a higher consciousness.
It is here that I will pivot to the work of Los Angeles-based artist Caris Reid (b. Washington, DC, 1983). On a cold January day in LA, I quickly leaped from my car to Caris’s studio as it began to rain. Her studio was pristinely lit, and the light reflected off the white walls and emitted a glow against the gray sky, beckoning me inside. My eyes circled the room, taking in her work – paintings of various sizes, some more decorative than others, leaned against walls. It was through this studio visit and my conversation with Caris that she shared with me her interest in the Transcendental Painting Group. In her studio, Caris had an exhibition catalogue of works by Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller Pierce. As she talked about the artists, she flipped through the pages; she was deeply affected by viewing Pelton’s and Pierce’s paintings in person. Caris incorporates visual and conceptual signs in her own work that point to the Transcendental Painting Group’s influence. This influence is not seen but felt, a sixth sense that comes through intuition, not art history.
Image Credit: Caris Reid (b. 1983). Trance, 2022. Acrylic on linen, 48 x 32 in. (121.90 x 81.30 cm). Over the Influence (Los Angeles, CA). direct link.
Looking at Caris’s work is like looking through a spiritual portal, literally and figuratively. Her paintings’ backgrounds are often dark, like an infinitesimal sky, not quite black but deep indigo swirling around bright reds, greens, and white. Where Caris’s work differs from the Transcendental Painting Group is her use of figuration, which I believe is derived from her interest in astrology and tarot. (She started and runs a virtual tarot card reading service.) In tarot, while abstraction is part of understanding and interpreting your past, present, and future, the deck, composed of 78 cards, is linked to representational imagery, such as swords and cups, and character archetypes, such as The Magician and The Hermit. But you don’t need to research the ins and outs of tarot card reading to interpret Caris’s artwork. Rather her work is not about one set interpretation but a series of signs and symbols resonating on different levels and vibrations dependent on your internal processes.
Image Credit: An in-progress portal at Caris Reid’s studio in January 2023. Photo by Regina Mamou.
I was repeatedly drawn to her then-in-progress painting of a portal encircled by flowers and leaves. The outer edge of the painting reads like a still life, a comfortable space to hold because of its familiarity and recognizable forms. The portal, however, kept summoning me – it is an ink-black space that reads as impenetrable at first glance. The more I stared at the portal, the more I stared through the portal. I saw violets and blues emerge and swirl; I saw a vortex, a mirror, and a rabbit hole.
Caris’s work is read slowly and deliberately – not quickly, like skimming a book. It takes time and patience to peel back layers of personal meaning as if you are experiencing a lucid dream. In the Transcendental Painting Group, I admire this feat the most, the idea that an artist can hold space for a viewer to dip into their psyche, look for their reflection in a black mirror, and sense energy and stillness together.