Spiritual Searching in Modern Times: Agnes Pelton’s Desert Transcendentalism

Throughout her sixty-year career as a modern American artist, Agnes Pelton (1881-1961) explored multiple strains of mysticism to chart an independent course of spiritually attuned paintings. This talk traces Pelton’s appropriation of various spiritual sources, including New Thought, Theosophy, Agni Yoga, astrology, and numerology, and her primary belief in art as a form of personal and creative transcendence.
Erika Doss (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is a professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her wide-ranging interests in American art are reflected in the breadth of her publications, including Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (1991, which received the Charles C. Eldredge Prize), Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities (1995), Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image (1999), Looking at Life Magazine (editor, 2001), Twentieth-Century American Art (2002), The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials (2008), and Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (2010). Doss is also co-editor of the “Culture America” series at the University Press of Kansas, and is on the editorial boards of Memory Studies, Public Art Dialogue, and Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief. The recipient of several Fulbright awards, Doss has also held fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist
On view through September 8, 2019 at Phoenix Art Museum.
For more information: bit.ly/phxartapdt
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[@williamroberts1819]

Just amazing.

[@OmgTaylorD]

Love the lecture! I just discovered Agnes last night and I’m absolutely in love.

[@toshiojohnston3732]

Discovered agnes and Hillary af kline back in 2020 love both women's art.

[@velvetcrack]

Thank you so much for sharing this lecture to the wider public! Pelton deserves to be known and appreciated for her visionary work. I will be writing my thesis partly about her and I hope there will be more and more discussion about her work in the future, as with Hilma af Klint's work.

[@kyrabelan7473]

Agnes Pelton's art is awesome - glad that it is finally getting exhibited again!!!

[@todosmisvideosaqui]

Great Lecture, thank you.

[@isabellerizo3208]

Thank you for these lectures

[@AmyKingPoet]

Excellent project - thank you

[@wearlucinda]

Wonderful and inspiring lecture, thank you!

[@108bhavani]

An inspiring lecture Thank you so much .

[@gregcrowe8885]

Thank You

[@williamroberts8470]

Ok wow!

[@LOOOVEIT]

JP Sears isn’t making fun of spiritual people. He’s satirizing the pseudo spiritual that is so trendy, these days. I’m always fascinated by people who don’t understand humor.

[@user-pe2lw1ze8i]

I have to say it…J p sears is on point. I think you need to keep your uptight view away from him. On the contrary. He talks about the fake gurus and spiritual types who taint the message. I think the artist would feel the same. As do I.