Surprised Recognition

Scientology and the Visual Arts

Massimo Introvigne (CESNUR - UPS)
AAR Annual Meeting
Atlanta, GA - November 21-24, 2015

Esotericism and Modern Art

From the pioneer research by Finnish art historian Sixten Ringbom (1935-1992, left) to the
academic projects and conferences Enchanted Modernities, the influence of esotericism
on modern art has now been largely acknowledged

Not a Coincidence
Esotericism was not just a hobby for
several leading modern artists.
Imagination, visualization, and other
tools learned through esoteric
groups and literature gave artists
interested in esotericism a different
way of perceiving the reality

Left: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Composition VII

(1913), a work, Ringbom argued, heavily influenced by
Theosophical ideas

Scientology and Western Esotericism

American historian J. Gordon Melton

(right) included Scientology within the
general category of Western
esotericism, arguing that its
cosmology and worldview are firmly
rooted in the gnostic tradition

Scientology and the Visual Arts

Did Scientology influence those modern artists who got interested in its
theory and practices? Would it be possible to study Scientologys influence
on the visual arts just as we study the respective influences of Theosophy,
Catholicism, or Christian Science?
In order to address this question, I will discuss
1. Scientologys theory of aesthetics
2. A survey of artists who are Scientologists (also based on personal interviews
in Europe and the U.S.)

1. Scientologys Theory of Aesthetics

Image: Scientologys new Flag Building (2013) in Clearwater, Florida, with its statues

A Gnostic Narrative
At the core of Scientologys worldview,
there is a gnostic narrative. At the
beginning there were the thetans,
pure spirits who created MEST (matter,
energy, space, and time), largely for
their own pleasure. Unfortunately,
incarnating and reincarnating in
human bodies, the thetans came to
forget that they had created the world,
and to believe that they were the
effect rather than the cause of physical
universe

Analytical and Reactive Mind

Mind for Scientology has two parts. The analytical mind
observes and remembers data, stores their pictures as
mental images, and uses them to take decisions and
promote survival. The reactive mind records mental
images at times of unconsciousness, incidents, or pain,
and stores these images as engrams. They are
awakened and reactivated when similar
circumstances occur, creating all sort of problems

The Tone Scale

The more the thetan believes to be
the effect, rather than the cause, of
the physical universe, the more the
reactive mind exerts its negative
effects. They affect the Tone Scale,
showing the emotional tones a
person can experience, and the
levels of ARC (Affinity Reality
Communication)

The ARC Triangle

Affinity is the positive emotional
relationship we establish with others.
Reality is the agreement we reach
with others about how things are.
Communication is the most important
part of the triangle: through
communication, we socially
construct reality and, once reality is
consensually shared, we are able to
generate affinity

L. Ron Hubbard and the Arts

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
(1911-1986) was familiar with the artistic
milieus as a successful writer of fiction. In
1951, Hubbard wrote that there is yet to
appear a good definition for aesthetics
and art. In the same year, he dealt with
the argument in Science of Survival. He
returned often to the arts, particularly in 17
articles included in technical bulletins from
1965 to 1984, which form the backbone of
the 1991 book Art

Ron Hubbard, portrait by Scientologist artist Peter Green

The Aesthetic Mind

In Science of Survival, Hubbard wrote that
above the analytical mind there are many
more mind levels. The first is the aesthetic
mind, which deals with the nebulous field
of art and creation. The strange thing is
that in gifted artists it can keep working
even when the analytical mind is disturbed
and the reactive mind is causing its usual
damage. It is, however, a false and
neurotic belief that when an artist
becomes less neurotic he becomes less
able

Rome and Christianity

Roman art, Hubbard wrote, was fairly

good. Revolting against Roman
disregard for human life, Christians
refused everything Roman. The Catholic
Church recovered early and began to
appreciate the artist. But Puritanism and
Calvinism regarded artists as moral
lepers. Paradoxically, many artists
believed they should conform to this
image in order to be regarded as real
artists

Left: Roman statue of Livia (58-29 B.C.), wife of Emperor

Augustus (63 B.C. - 14 A.D.)

Art and Society

In Science of Survival, Hubbard taught
that artists can create any reality and
deal with any level of communication.
A culture is only great as its dreams, and
its dreams are dreamed by artists. A
totalitarian society inhibits, suppresses,
or regiments its artists and is therefore
doomed

Right: Hubbard in 1950

Hubbards Aesthetics
Hubbard noted that art was the less codified of
human endeavors and therefore the most
misunderstood. And less a field is known, the more it is
plagued by authoritarian pseudo-experts
Hubbard defined art as communication. When the
thetan understands himself as the cause rather than
the effect of the physical reality, he perceives the
world in a new way. If he masters the appropriate
technique, he is also able to produce art with a very
high communication potential

The Elusive Hubert Mathieu

On what role technique exactly plays,

Hubbard mentioned in a bulletin of July 29,
1973 his discussions with the late Hubert
Mathieu. Although some who wrote
about Hubbard were unable to identify
him, Mathieu (1897-1954, right) was a
distinguished South Dakota illustrator and
artist, who worked for magazines Hubbard
was familiar with

Technique and Communication

Based inter alia on the ideas of Mathieu,
Hubbard came to the conclusion that in
the arts communication (the end) is more
important than technique (the means),
but technique is not unimportant. Artists
who are well-trained are able to
communicate in different styles, including
the non-figurative and the audience
understands intuitively that they are real
artists

Left: illustration by H. Mathieu for a short story by John

Erskine (1879-1951), Liberty Magazine, February 24, 1934

Interacting with the Audience

Perceiving the world and representing
it from the superior viewpoint of the
thetan is not enough. One should be
able to communicate this to the
audience, which however should be
invited to contribute part of the
meaning. This is precisely the
difference between fine art and mere
illustration, where little is left to the
audiences own contribution

Right: L. Ron Hubbard, 1987

Integration and Mood Lines

Communication is actually achieved
through integration, or combination into
an integral whole of elements such as
perspective, lines, colors, and rhythm.
Hubbard emphasized mood lines, i.e.
abstract line forms that influence the
audiences emotional response. Vertical
lines communicate drama and inspiration,
horizontal lines, happiness and calm, and
so on

Left: Mood lines, from Hubbards Art

John Ormsbee Simonds

There are several systems of mood lines described in manuals for artists. Scientology uses
the one developed by visionary landscape architect John Ormsbee Simonds (1913-2005,
above). Simonds theory of form was influenced by Zen Buddhism and by
Anthroposophical theories he was exposed to through is mentor at Harvard, Marcel
Breuer (1902-1981), formerly of the Bauhaus

Color Wheels
Another common tool Hubbard
recommended to artists, the color wheel,
was promoted in his times through
references to market surveys, but in fact
had been first used in a different context
by Robert Fludd (1574-1637) and Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Like
many Theosophists and market
researchers , Hubbard believed that
colors correspond to specific emotional
states

2. Artists and Scientology

Image: Gottfried Helnwein exhibition at the Modernism Gallery, San Francisco

An Organized Influence
Scientology would appear to be an
ideal subject for the study of how a
religious or esoteric worldview
influences artists. Not only did
Hubbard try to propose a systematic
theory of aesthetics, but this theory is
proposed in courses continuously
offered to artists around the world.
Scientologys influence on artists is
organized, in a way that finds few
parallels in other contemporary
movements

A Controversial Subject
However, Scientologys influence on artists
is understudied. One of the reasons lies in
the attacks and discriminations artists
have received because of their
association with Scientology, particularly
in Germany. There, Bia Wunderer (Horizon,
right) is one of the artists who had
exhibitions cancelled because she was
exposed as a Scientologist. This made
some artists understandably reluctant to
discuss their relationship with Scientology

Waki Zllner (1935-2015)

In Germany, of all places, artists were involved in Scientology since its

beginnings. When he died in 2015, painter and sculptor Waki Zllner (above),
who had joined Scientology in 1968, was the German with more years of
Scientology training

Scientology Studies 2.0?

In 2008, the Los Angeles magazine Ange
described the circle of young artists
including Mercedes Helnwein and
Vanessa Prager (In Thin Air, 2015, left) as
the first generation of casual
Scientologists, whose religious affiliation
caused less controversies. Scholars can
perhaps in turn start discussing the
worldview and multiple influences of
Scientology independently of the usual
legal and other controversies

Gottfried Helnwein
The most famous international artist who took
Scientology courses for several years, starting in
1972, was the Austrian-born Gottfried
Helnwein. He became increasingly involved in
Scientologys activities, with all his family, and
was attacked by anti-cult critics, who
promoted even a book against him (right). This
generated in turn court cases and Helnweins
increasing reluctance to discuss his religious
beliefs

A Consciousness Explosion

In 1975, Helnwein told Stuttgarts

Scientology magazine College that
Scientology has caused a consciousness
explosion in me. In 1989, in an interview in
Scientologys Celebrity, Helnwein
elaborated that Scientology offers to artists
invaluable tools to survive in a world often
hostile to them, but also gave him a new
viewpoint and an understanding how
people would react to my art

Burroughs and Surprised Recognition

American novelist William Burroughs (1914-1997: photograph by Helnwein, left) took several
Scientology courses between 1959 and 1968. Later, he strongly rejected Scientology as an
organization, while maintaining an appreciation for its highly valuable techniques. In 1990,
he wrote an essay (right) about Helnwein, calling him a master of surprised recognition: to
show the viewer what he knows but does not know that he knows. In this sense, surprised
recognition may also describe the moment when a thetan remembers his true nature

The World as the Thetan Sees It?

Helnweins unique style and

approach to reality a
photorealism where paintings often
look as photographs (but arent)
derive from multiple sources.
Ultimately, however, we can perhaps
see in Helnweins works an attempt
to depict the world as a thetan sees
it, finally realizing he is its creator

Helnweins Children
Seen as it really is, the world is not always
pleasant, and includes suppression and
totalitarianism. Some of Helnweins most famous
paintings include suffering children. Helnwein
exposes there the societys unacknowledged
cruelty. But there is also hope. The artist is aware
of Hubbards ideas about children as spiritual
beings occupying young bodies. Armed with the
technology, children can survive and defeat
suppression

Against Psychiatry
Criticizing psychiatrys abuses is a
cause dear to Scientologists. In 1979,
leading Austrian psychiatrist Heinrich
Gross (1915-2005), who participated in
the Nazi program for the euthanasia of
mentally handicapped children,
defended himself by stating that
children were killed in a humane way
with poison. Helnwein reacted with a
famous watercolor, Lives unworthy of
being lived (right), depicting a child
humanely poisoned by Gross

Helnwein, the Nazis, and the Holocaust

Helnwein also looked provocatively at Nazism and the Holocaust as an evil the German and
Austrian society still refused to confront. In Epiphany I (1996), the child may or may not be a
young Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). Helnwein wants the audience, as Hubbard suggested, to
contribute part of the meaning and to understand by itself

Helnwein and Carl Barks

Born in 1948, Helnwein reports how he
escaped from Viennas suffocating
conformism through comics, something
the Austrian educational establishment did
not approve of at that time. He maintains
a fascination for Disneys Donald Duck and
the creator of several Donald stories, Carl
Barks (1901-2000), who became his friend
(left). Both Mickey Mouse and Donald are
featured in Helnweins work

Donald Duck as Metaphor

Barks, Helnwein wrote, created a decent
world where one could get flattened by
steam-rollers and perforated by bullets without
serious harm. A world in which the people still
looked proper (..). And it was here that I met
the man who would forever change my life a
man who () is the only person today that has
something worthwhile saying Donald Duck.
Perhaps, again, Barks Duckburg became a
metaphor for Helnwein of the clear world
created by a technology capable of restoring
the thetans to their proper role

Helnwein and the Others

In 2013, Helnwein was honored by a
great retrospective at Viennas
Albertina, which attracted 250,000
visitors, a far cry from when the artist
was discriminated as a Scientologist.
While Helnwein became reserved on his
relationship with Scientology, other
artists declared it openly. Scientology
through its Celebrity Centers also
created a community of artists, knowing
and meeting each other across
different countries, continents, and
styles

Different Styles
Scientologist artists do not
share a single style as is true
for artists who are
Theosophists or Catholics.
German-born Carl-W. Rhrig
(1953-), currently residing in
Switzerland, calls his art
fantastic realism and is also
influenced by fantasy
literature, surrealism, and
popular esotericism (see his
successful deck of tarot
cards). In my interviews with
several of them, however,
some common themes
emerged

1. Scientology Themes
Rhrig is among the few Scientologist artists
who included explicit references to
Scientology doctrines in some of his paintings,
including the Bridge (above), i.e. the journey
to become free from the effects of the
reactive mind. Rhrig (mural in Malmoe,
below) and other artists, including Pomm
Hepner and Randy South (aka Carl
Randolph), also contributed murals to
churches of Scientology around the world

The ARC Triangle

California Scientologist artist Barry Shereshevsky devoted several paintings

to the ARC triangle (above)

Scientology in Stone

California sculptor D. Yoshikawa Wright moved from Western to more Eastern thought,
rediscovering his roots (Vedic Hymn, left), and finally found in Scientology something, he
says, that merges East and West (Space and Beingness, center). About his Sculptural
Waterfalls (right), he comments that the stone represents the thetan, the water the physical
universe as motion, and their relationship the rhythm, the dance of life

Flag Building Sculptures

62 sculptures in the Grand Atrium of the new

Flag Building in Clearwater, Florida, inaugurated
in 2013, illustrates the fundamental concepts of
Scientology. The fact that these concepts had
to be explained to the artists, none of them a
Scientologist, is significant. Artists who are
Scientologists normally are inspired by
Scientology in their work, but prefer not to
preach or illustrate it explicitly

2. Art as Communication

Artists who went through Scientologys Art course all insisted on art as communication.
Winnipeg-born New York abstract artist Beatrice Findlay (Figure in Four Squares, 2007, left)
told me that art is communication, why the heck would you do it otherwise?. She also
insisted that Hubbard never said abstract art communicated less and had a deep
appreciation of music, a form of abstract communication par excellence

From Reproduction to Creation

Pomm Hepner is both a professional artist and a senior technical supervisor at Scientologys
church in Pasadena, as well as a leader in Artists for Human Rights, an advocacy organization
started by Scientologists. As Scientology taught her on the spiritual world, she evolved, she
says, from pretty things (Lavender Cottage, left) to vibrations (Emotions, right), from a
moment that exists to a moment I create I can bring beauty to the world and no longer
need to depend on the world bringing beauty to me. By adopting the point of view of the
thetan, she reversed the relationship between the artist and the physical universe

3. Suppression
There is a difference between how
Scientologist artists were discriminated
in Europe and some mild hostility their
beliefs received occasionally in the
U.S. However, they all stated in the
interviews that modern society is often
disturbed by artists and tries to
suppress them, singling out psychiatry
as a main culprit. The Trick Cyclist by
Randy South (right) depicts well-known
psychiatrists and was created to draw
attention to the evil practice of
psychiatry

Violated Children
All artists I interviewed share an
appreciation of Helnwein, although
they may be very far away from both
his art and his persona. Some address
the theme of suffering children with
obvious Helnweinian undertones. The
youngest child of L. Ron Hubbard,
Arthur Conway Hubbard (1958-: Sean,
2002, left: the blood is the artists),
became himself a painter and
studied under Helnwein, although he
also produced works in a different
style

Pollution
Pollution as a form of global
suppression and Scientologys
mission to put an end to it were
also mentioned in the interviews.
Ecological disasters are a main
theme for Rhrig (Rainforest
Destruction, left)

Endangered Edens
Landscapes and cultures in developing countries
are also in danger of being suppressed. This is a
main theme in the work of Swiss Scientologist artist
Claude Sandoz (Tropical Eden, below), who
spends part of his time in the Caribbeans.
Exhibitions of Sandozs works took place in different
Swiss museums

4. Commercial Art Re-Evaluated

Some of those who took Scientologys Art

course were commercial artists. The
course told them that this is not a shame
and hailed success as healthy. I do not
believe in starving artists, says Barry
Shereshevsky (right). They believe that the
boundary between commercial and fine
art is not clear-cut. Some of them were
encouraged to also engage in fine arts

Commercial Art as Communication

Veteran Scientologist artist Peter Green

understood through Scientology that
commercial artists are not coinoperated artists but have their own way
of communicating and presenting a
message. Green manifested this
approach in his iconic posters, such as
the one of Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)

Comics and Cards

Green also contributed to Warren horror comics magazines (left), and keeps producing his
successful Politicards, i.e. trading and playing cards with politicians. He insists that you can
paint to live and remain sane. And in the end you may live to paint too

Advertising
Randy South (left) insists that,
even when working for
advertising, artists may perceive
the physical universe as not
overwhelming spirituality but
vice versa. He adds that
Hubbard said that life is a game.
I want to play the game, and its
fun

5. Popular Esotericism
Some (but not all) Scientologist artists took an
interest in popular esoteric discourse. Pomm
Hepner, was exposed to Anthroposophy by
studying at a Steiner school. Rhrig uses the
Tarots as well as the Zodiac (Virgo, left). He
explains he doesnt believe in the content of
astrology or Tarot they are effects and as a
Scientologist you try to be cause , but they
provide a widely shared language and are a
very good tool to communicate

6. A New Perception
We were one hundred students doing
the same [Scientology] course.
Suddenly, the room took the most
beautiful characteristics. Everything
became magical. I became more me.
The room did not change but how I
perceived it changed (Susana DiazRivera, Mexican Scientologist painter)

Image: Diaz-Riveras contribution to the exhibition

Dialogue on Death at the Diocesan Museum of
Gubbio, Italy, 2015. All the words in the painting are
by L. Ron Hubbard

The Static Experience

Several artists reported how the static

experience, which in Scientology
language means realizing your nature
as thetan, completely changed how
they perceive the world. Then, art is
about duplicating what you perceive.
Perception is communication (D.
Yoshikawa Wright, left)

Spirituality and the Mirrors

Diaz-Rivera struggled to recapture

and express this perception of
herself as a thetan. She tried
photographing in different
locations, including Rome and Los
Angeles (right), and using mirrors.
The spiritual part, she says,
emerges through the mirrors

In conclusion
Scientology offers to artists a number of suggestions,
aimed at putting them back in the drivers seat (Peter
Green) of their lives, exposing the myth of the
dysfunctional, starving artist
Scientology also creates and cultivates a community of
artists, and does more than offering practical advise. By
interiorizing the gnostic narrative of the thetan, artists
learn to perceive the physical universe in a different
way. Then, they try to share this perception through
communication, with a variety of different techniques
and styles, inviting the audience to enhance their works
with further meanings

Image: Yoshikawa Wright, Infinity Column

Thank you for your attention

Massimo Introvigne and Carl Rhrig in the artists studio in Dottikon, Switzerland, October 2015