Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) claimed to be an eyewitness to the Apocalypse. Called to be “Servant of the Lord,” he wrote eighteen works in which he defined a new Christianity. While he never formed a church, he distributed his books widely throughout Europe. They stimulated some people to found new religious organizations, some to write in new poetic and literary forms, and others to revolutionize sculpture and painting. These artists found in Swedenborg’s works a vibrant source of a new aesthetic vision. The elements of Swedenborg’s theology that helped to shape that new aesthetic are presented here, as well as the application of different aspects of it in the works of three artists: the English sculptor John Flaxman (1755–1826); the French Symbolist painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903); and American sculptor Lee Bontecou (b. 1931). Each artist attempts to capture the spiritual reality that Swedenborg portrayed as existing behind and within the natural phenomenal world.

This article discusses the nexus between art and occultism in the Idéal et Réalité group, which was active in Paris in the third decade of the twentieth century and attracted many prominent writers, poets, actors, and artists. The Idéal et Réalité group emerged from the early twentieth-century esoteric Le Mouvement Cosmique, and it was much influenced by its Cosmic Philosophy. The Cosmic Movement was founded by Max Théon and his wife Théona (Mary Ware) in the first decade of the twentieth century. Art and literature were important in the philosophy and practice of both the Cosmic Movement and the Idéal et Réalité circle. Art dealer Eugène Blot and members of his extended family contributed to the participation of high-profile artists in the Idéal et Réalité circle.