Frye director and curator Jo-Anne Bernie Danzker has collaborated with curator Gian Casper Bott to bring together a collection of Keller's paintings from the Kunsthause Zurich Museum for the first ever solo exhibit of Keller's work, in America. The exhibit focuses on themes of trance, altered states of conscience and the occult.
Keller's paintings are technically as well as thematically complex.
"What you have with Keller is this dual identity. You have one part of the painting that is quite realistic and then you have this paint that is just flowing everywhere," said Bernie Danzker.
Keller's paintings will often have vivid, expressive figures next to blurred, faceless wraiths. He tried to capture the experience of trance and catalepsy (a form of corporeal rigidity that occurs in trance) in his work.
"Trance energy, or that sort of electric energy is translated into the painting and this is the exciting thing. It is the art itself, the painting, that is becoming the soul of the trance," said Bott.
Keller's realism or lack thereof, allowed him to bring to life the moment of trance."What you'll notice is that there's a certain instability of technique and of subject matter which then links more closely to his themes," Bernie Danzker said.
Keller's subjects are almost all female. To the modern eye it might seem as if he is looking at his subjects through a lens of morbid eroticism, even sadomasochism.
A voluptuous female figure, draped over a crucifix, nipples erect; a pubescent girl lying prone on an alter; a naked corpse—it is easy to get lost in the nudity and the morbidity. Keller was not and is not alone in his fascination with the female form, but it is not just female flesh that grips him.
"You could say that his themes are women but his secret theme is the soul," said Bott.
The soul that Keller tried to capture seems nonetheless to have been profoundly feminine. Powerful, restrained, hysterical, and erotic, the women of Keller's world were not canvases on which he painted the soul, but rather they are the soul and body of this work.
The moments he painted were moments of violent movement, struggle, bond breaking, submission and ecstasy—moments of trance.
"It was considered that nature break out in this moment, without all this culture, it was nature, the nature of the human body or human being breaking out of any restraints," Bott said.
For Keller the occult was personal.
"He was actually participating in these séances, they were taking place in his own studio," Bott said.
Keller's wife was involved in the same spiritual and esoteric explorations as her husband. She claimed to have premonitions, reportedly predicting her own death as well as the death of her only son. Keller's painting "Cassandra" may have been a meditation on his wife's predictions.
"The question is did Keller ignore her warnings?" Bernie Danzker asked.
Witness to the dawn of the 20th century, Keller's grappled with the new inventions—the gramophone, the telegraph, and the x-ray were all invented during his lifetime—and new ideas of his time. His use of photography especially set him apart as a technologically progressive and modern painter.
Frye communications director Rebecca Garrity Putnam thinks this juxtaposition of the scientific and the spiritual is relevant today.
In a press release Putman said, "Séance highlight[s] the connection between Keller's time and the present, noting the resurgence of interest in the supernatural and forms of knowledge outside conventional scientific endeavor."
Indeed, modern viewers may be able to identify with Keller's search for authenticity in the complex spiritual milieu in which he finds himself.
"People [were] exploring how to describe this new world and trying to separate what was forgery about people who were promising that they could introduce you to dead relatives and what were really new forms of matter and new states of being," Bott said.
Having waded through three waves of feminism and several major psychological movements, the modern viewer may have a hard time grappling with Keller's pre-20th century perspective.
"What we have tried to do with the show is to look at Keller through the major critics, curators and collectors at the turn of the century. It's a way to rediscover him," Bernie Danzker said.
Keller's may feel a bit medieval, with its crucifixes and pyres and stigmatas, but Bott said, "Keller was always regarded as an extremely modern contemporary artist and a painter of the soul."
Emma may be reached at mcaleavy@seattleu.edu
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