Carol Bove, ‘Vague Pure Affection’ (2012)

In Vague Pure Affection (2012), books, photographs, found objects, and small sculptures allude to drug culture and the expanded consciousness that many hoped to achieve through the use of psychedelics. However, Bove has drawn the work’s title from a volume that does not appear on the shelves: the 1901 Theosophist treatise Thought-Forms by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. This text, which outlines the shapes and colors of auras associated with various mental states, greatly influenced the invention of abstract painting by Vasily Kandinsky and others.