let's not talk about angels - critics on Af Klint

Moving to Santa Fe I went to parties, started conversations that touched on the spiritual, and got ready to withdraw as people got touchy - like they always did in Britain. There in New Mexico though, all was different. Sooner than think me a lunatic people started sharing experiences of their own, asking me to say more of mine.
The Guardian has a good piece by Adrian Searle today on the artist Hilma af Klint. Searle loves the work, but look how he starts: "In some respects, the world will never be ready for the occult symbolism and spiritualist gibberish that her work was derived from, and from which she gained her inspiration. Although the same peculiar beliefs attend the work of pioneering artists such as Mondrian, Kandinsky and malevich, they never suggested, as did Af Klint, that their work was guided by an imaginary "leader in the spiritual world". For Af Klint, this was a certain Ananda, who in 1904 told her "she was to execute paintings on the astral plane."
I doubt Af Klint saw Ananada as 'imaginary'. He was clearly real to her, as was a sober life dedicated to his guidance. The article tells how she prefigured great art movements, how the second world war was prophesied in her art. It's a fine piece, but gives no credence at all to the artists' stated source of her work. Great art, how odd the madness.
And how tight-arsed the UK, and critics, still are about anything overtly 'spiritual'. Is tight-arsed too harsh a term for someone's considered beliefs? Not when he terms someone else's beliefs 'gibberish'.