Professors Caçoilo and Cherow-O’Leary
Imagery, Identity, and Culture
Exploring the work of Hilma Af Klint
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has been home to a variety of exhibits in its 60-year tenure. In my experience of visiting museums, the Guggenheim was certainly unique in many ways, from its spiral structure that takes you further and further until you reach the top, to the artwork that patrons can behold. Currently, the exhibit that is open to the public is Hilma Af Klint’s Paintings for the Future. This exhibit spanned through all five floors of the museum with a few other smaller exhibits along the way, but Paintings for the Future will be the main focus. Her work was very unique as it explored and reflected on things like spiritualism, spiritual guidance, and radical holistic connectivity. In the previous museums that we visited as a class, these themes were not explored, so it was wonderful to get a change of pace.
As I began to peruse the exhibit, I wondered “What does all of this have to do with spirituality?” Taking a look at The Ten Largest, it took me a bit of time to gain a better understanding of how these artworks were linked to spirituality. As I took a closer look at the paintings and the explanation of the artwork, I learned how these pieces were linked to the human life cycle, but in an abstract form. Klint also talks about building a temple and using the paintings as coverings for the wall to make a beautiful temple. Anya Ventura writes, “...af Klint’s foremost allegiance was to the sacred. As Moderna Museet’s director Iris Müller-Westermann observes in the book’s introduction, painting and drawing was not ‘an end in itself’ for af Klint but ‘an ongoing method of investigation.’ Though formally trained, af Klint was less interested in the aesthetic experience than the pursuit of knowledge itself, the articulation of reality beneath the seen surface. A devotee of esoteric Christianity – particularly the anthroposophical movement led by Rudolph Steiner – af Klint viewed herself more as a holy transcriptionist, a technician of the unknown.” (Ventura) This was an interesting fact because af Klint was interested in pursuing knowledge of spirituality instead of painting for the aesthetic. I feel like this helps the viewer appreciate the art in a spiritual manner more because of this.
Another section of the exhibit that I thought was really thought-provoking was af Klint’s The Swan. This was an interesting piece as it utilizes dualities like light and dark, male and female, and life and death. Exploring the world of spirituality, one could see this as a contrast between heaven and hell, god and the devil, etc.
My self-portrait doesn’t necessarily explore spirituality, but I feel like it could be based on works like The Swan which could illustrate the good and bad in me. However, I think The Ten Largest is an interesting spiritual exploration that I might gain some inspiration from as it is essentially an abstract life cycle, and I would like to incorporate that abstract form into my self-portrait. According to Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos’ You Are the Universe, they write “The great mystery about the emergence of our universe is how something was created out of nothing, and no one can truly comprehend how this occurred. On the one hand, “the nothing” is unreachable by any form of observation. On the other hand, the initial chaos of the infant universe is a totally alien state.” (Chopra and Kafatos) What this means in regards to af Klint’s work is that Klint was trying to achieve a better understanding of this concept and other spiritual things through her art. In sum, Hilma Af Klint’s Paintings for the Future is a great combination of the spiritual world and the world of art.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has been home to a variety of exhibits in its 60-year tenure. In my experience of visiting museums, the Guggenheim was certainly unique in many ways, from its spiral structure that takes you further and further until you reach the top, to the artwork that patrons can behold. Currently, the exhibit that is open to the public is Hilma Af Klint’s Paintings for the Future. This exhibit spanned through all five floors of the museum with a few other smaller exhibits along the way, but Paintings for the Future will be the main focus. Her work was very unique as it explored and reflected on things like spiritualism, spiritual guidance, and radical holistic connectivity. In the previous museums that we visited as a class, these themes were not explored, so it was wonderful to get a change of pace.
As I began to peruse the exhibit, I wondered “What does all of this have to do with spirituality?” Taking a look at The Ten Largest, it took me a bit of time to gain a better understanding of how these artworks were linked to spirituality. As I took a closer look at the paintings and the explanation of the artwork, I learned how these pieces were linked to the human life cycle, but in an abstract form. Klint also talks about building a temple and using the paintings as coverings for the wall to make a beautiful temple. Anya Ventura writes, “...af Klint’s foremost allegiance was to the sacred. As Moderna Museet’s director Iris Müller-Westermann observes in the book’s introduction, painting and drawing was not ‘an end in itself’ for af Klint but ‘an ongoing method of investigation.’ Though formally trained, af Klint was less interested in the aesthetic experience than the pursuit of knowledge itself, the articulation of reality beneath the seen surface. A devotee of esoteric Christianity – particularly the anthroposophical movement led by Rudolph Steiner – af Klint viewed herself more as a holy transcriptionist, a technician of the unknown.” (Ventura) This was an interesting fact because af Klint was interested in pursuing knowledge of spirituality instead of painting for the aesthetic. I feel like this helps the viewer appreciate the art in a spiritual manner more because of this.
Another section of the exhibit that I thought was really thought-provoking was af Klint’s The Swan. This was an interesting piece as it utilizes dualities like light and dark, male and female, and life and death. Exploring the world of spirituality, one could see this as a contrast between heaven and hell, god and the devil, etc.
My self-portrait doesn’t necessarily explore spirituality, but I feel like it could be based on works like The Swan which could illustrate the good and bad in me. However, I think The Ten Largest is an interesting spiritual exploration that I might gain some inspiration from as it is essentially an abstract life cycle, and I would like to incorporate that abstract form into my self-portrait. According to Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos’ You Are the Universe, they write “The great mystery about the emergence of our universe is how something was created out of nothing, and no one can truly comprehend how this occurred. On the one hand, “the nothing” is unreachable by any form of observation. On the other hand, the initial chaos of the infant universe is a totally alien state.” (Chopra and Kafatos) What this means in regards to af Klint’s work is that Klint was trying to achieve a better understanding of this concept and other spiritual things through her art. In sum, Hilma Af Klint’s Paintings for the Future is a great combination of the spiritual world and the world of art.
Here are some pictures from my time at the Guggenheim
Hilma Af Klint’s The Swan
A selection of art from Hilma Af Klint’s The Ten Largest
Not related to Hilma Af Klint, but it was in the Guggenheim, so here is a self-portrait from Robert Mapplethorpe’s Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe.
I found this self-portrait interesting as it kind of explores the bad side of Mapplethorpe but not fully demonizing him. I'm also interested in using this as inspiration for my self-portrait (focusing more on the aspect of using myself as the subject)
Works Cited
Chopra, Deepak, and Menas C Kafatos. “Excerpt from You Are the Universe.” Penguin Random House Canada, 2018, www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/212685/you-are-the-universe-by-deepak-chopra-md-and-menas-c-kafatos-phd/9780307889157/excerpt.
Ventura, Anya. “Secret Séances and High Masters: The Making of Mystic Painter Hilma Af Klint.” Frieze, 11 Oct. 2018, frieze.com/article/secret-seances-and-high-masters-making-mystic-painter-hilma-af-klint.
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