Paintings for the future: Hilma Af Klint
Jenna Arvelo
Witnessing Hilma Klint’s solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum was an honor and a privilege. I had no real inkling of whom she may have been prior to this first hand experience of her intricate body of work. This also having been my first time visiting this particular museum, the experience of this exhibition as a whole, engulfed me into the life of this hidden figure; using its architectural structure as a means to guide the viewer into the linear projectile of Klint’s life, as well as the evolution of her work. The spiral body of the museum seemed to only reinforce this sort of journey as both a reflection of life, artistic evolution, and more importantly the journey of Klint’s own spirituality, which I found highly impactful.
The first of Klint’s work came across had been the massive collection of paintings of the first floor of the museum. The paintings again, were massive in size and were collectively established as the The Ten Largest. As an introduction to the work to come, these cryptic, biomorphic, abstracted paintings, left me bewildered and curious of what these symbols could possibly mean.
When regarding the wall texts, I learn many things about Klint’s practice and background as an artist traditionally trained in drawing and painting from Sweden; yet also being surprised to find out she had actually been Europe’s first abstract painter, predating male artists whom gladly took the credit as the frontiers of abstraction. But I’m also discovering these facts within the wall text, I learn Klint’s motivation behind these abstracted paintings.
As an artist who similarly deals with the same subject in my own practice, the metaphysical is something I’m well aquatinted with. It is not an easy subject to depict or capture in the realm of representational images. For how can you visually describe the unseen? I grapple with this concept as a figurative artist who paints herself as a source to the spiritual. I relate to Kilints work for this very reason; using herself as a channel for which the unknown may communicate.
So seeing Klint’s abstracted paintings as a physical symbolic representation of the unseen was an empowering connection for me, while unable to translate this unknown language she was tapping into, the images themselves evoked a deep feeling response from me. What was also very interesting to me was the correlation/thin line between science and spirituality. A better way to describe what I believe her intent had been is from Frieze’s, ‘Secret Séances and High Masters: The Making is Mystic Painter Hilma af Klint’. The article quotes “Though formally trained, af Klint was less interested in aesthetic experience than the pursuit of knowledge itself, the articulation of a reality beneath the seen surface. A devotee of esoteric Christianity – particularly the anthroposophical movement led by Rudolph Steiner – af Klint viewed herself more as holy transcriptionist, a technician of the unknown.”. The Guggenheim article, ‘Who Was Hilma af Klint?: At the Guggenheim, Painting by an Artist Ahead of Her Time’ also adds: “It seems like she is making pictures of how things are interrelated. She is trying to make a picture that draws on disparate fields of knowledge in a synthetic manner. She is producing a picture that is both image and diagram. . . . In essence, she’s offering a Gaia-like theory of radical holistic interconnectivity.”
In reveling in this broad wold of the unknown Klint was tapping into, I feel the way this may relate with the idea of identity is underlining the importance of knowledge. To know thy self and understanding the relevance of interconnected-ness that creates a purpose and a value to the individual; to whom is a vital piece of a larger whole. It creates a belonging, it’s utopian in nature and is incredibly idealistic. Yet it’s something I find myself gravitating towards.
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