POWER LINES
A compelling mysticism flows through Emma Kunz’s entrancing geometric works
The mathematical beauty of Emma Kunz’s mystic art
‘The world is a prelude in our spiritual life. Try to weave the brightest note into the musical image.’ This fragment of a verse penned in 1930 is one of the few pieces of writing that survive from the extraordinary life of the healer, researcher and artist Emma Kunz. Despite not subscribing to any single religious school, Kunz was a fervent believer in the power of human intuition and the laws of nature – a holistic doctrine that underpinned all of her scientific and artistic endeavours.
Born into a family of Swiss handloom weavers in 1892, Kunz became interested in paranormal phenomena while still a young pupil at her local village school in Brittnau. At the age of 18, just a year after losing her father to suicide, she began to explore what she believed was her natural gift for telepathy and prophecy. In particular, she was fascinated by radiesthesia – a mystic technique of detecting illness with the aid of a pendulum – and developed a so-called ‘new method of drawing’, whereby the creation of particular patterns enabled her to divine solutions to medical or philosophical conundrums. ‘Everything happens in accordance with a specific system of law, which I feel within me, and which never allows me to rest,’ she said of her dazzlingly complex drawings, more than 400 of which she produced during her lifetime. Executed in coloured pencil on millimetre graph paper, they all conform to the same rigorously mathematical structure, but each one is unique in its combination of shades and strokes.
Using these geometric designs as diagnostic tools, Kunz was tireless in her quest to treat patients suffering from an array of mysterious illnesses. Stories circulated about the prenatural recoveries she effected, from curing a young woman’s nervous ailment to restoring a Catholic priest’s eyesight. Yet Kunz herself disavowed the term ‘miracle’, arguing that the power to heal is latent within all of us.
While Kunz was not taken seriously by scientific communities during her lifetime, she always believed that her work was destined for the 21st century. (‘A time will come when my pictures will be understood,’ she said with conviction.) Her solo show at the Serpentine this month represents the long-overdue fulfilment of that prophecy, paying tribute to a woman who saw art as a means of achieving the perfect synthesis between science, creativity and spirituality. ‘Emma Kunz’ is at the Serpentine Galleries (www.serpentinegalleries.org) until 19 May.