Magnetic Modernism: Frantisek Kupka's Mesmeric Abstraction and the Revolution of Consciousness

Far from animal magnetism abating when František Kupka arrived in Paris, the opposite ensued, particularly through its practise at Salpêtrière, Bicêtre, Hotel Dieu, Charité, and by Hippolyte Baraduc, Auguste Liébault, Jules Bernard Luys and Albert de Rochas. Given the burgeoning of electromagnetism and radio activity alongside Camille Flammarion’s Cosmic Magnetism, this period has been aptly called Neo-Magnetism. As it flourished, Neo-Magnetism intersected with Neo-Lamarckian Transformism alongside Spiritism, Bergsonian Vitalism and Anarcho-Communism, as articulated by Elisée Reclus and imaged by Kupka in which the evolution of mutualist society was touted alongside the revolution of consciousness. By no means were these connections unrealized by artists sanctioned by the Radical Republic as demonstrated by Clémentine-Hélène Dufau’s murals commissioned for the New Sorbonne, particularly Le Magnetisme et La Radioactivité. Yet unlike Dufau, Kupka deployed magnetism as a medium and as an artist not only to combat capitalist corruption but also to ignite “superconsiousness” of an anarchist ecological and cosmological utopia, particularly through their manifestation in abstraction. By examining Kupka’s relationship to magnetism modernism, as both a medium and artist, this paper will consider how his mesmeric abstractions were produced to transmit and emit "magnetic waves like those of the hypnotizer” to generate a revolution in consciousness.