Emma Kunz was a visionary of the old-fashioned kind. Not a ‘visionary’ in the way we now bandy around the term to mean an artist who’s particularly good at being an artist, but a visionary whose brain filtered, systematised and comprehended the world in a fundamentally different way to those around her.
The Swiss artist and naturopath (1892-1963) created geometrical images as part of a complex practice of healing. With the help of a small pendulum, Kunz would work feverishly on one ‘energy-field’ artwork at a time.
Visitors to the Serpentine can view Kunz’s drawings from the comfort of a number of benches made by contemporary artist Christodoulos Panayiotou out of Aion A, a healing rock discovered by Kunz that’s still sold in Swiss chemists.
Whether or not you think this is all hippy claptrap is up to you, but here’s an unavoidable reality: this exhibition is intoxicatingly calm. Coloured with crayons, there’s a slight fuzzy edge to Kunz’s art, despite the sharpness of the lines. Peach, spearmint and raspberry are muted down so that the paper looks like a favourite piece of fabric washed a hundred times.
But it’s the central room that really blows you away. Different-sized drawings are arranged in an almost-symmetrical pattern, making the end wall look like a massive, multi-panelled stained-glass window. Crescent moons, stars, crosses and even tiny figures appear in the patterning.
The immediate response is that it looks like part of a church or a shrine. In fact, the Serpentine Gallery has become a sanctuary of tranquillity, a place to sit and look at something beautiful. What could be more healing than that?