Orphism

Proper noun

Orphism

1. (Ancient Greece) A religious movement in antiquity, supposed to have been founded by Orpheus.
   • Thoreau's acquaintance with Orphism dated from at least as early as the summer of 1840, when he read Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the Universe and took notes on some of Cudworth's references to the Orphic religion.1974, The Emerson Society Quarterly, Issues 74-81, Emerson Society, page 125
   • The oracular poems produced by Orphism and attributed to Orpheus himself, similarly reveal neither messiah nor messianic age.1995, Dan Urman, Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, Part 2, E. J. Brill, page 355
2. A minor Cubist art movement focusing on pure abstraction and bright colours.
   • “Orphism,” he writes wearily, italicizing the word for effect, “and now we speak of Orphism. Or rather, we do not speak of it. All that we've tried to say has only clouded the question.” The same day Goth's article appeared, two separate caricatures of Orphism also showed up in the popular...2014, Gordon Hughes, quoting Max Goth, Resisting Abstraction: Robert Delaunay and Vision in the Face of Modernism, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 28

   Synonyms:

   Orphic cubism