Paintings for the Future/ Spirituality/ Identity

The first time entering the Guggenheim museum, you immediately see Hilma af Klint's, "Paintings for the Future" exhibition. The works reflect having a physical and spiritual reference to the world. She started her abstract paintings and thought process before the pioneers of Abstract art such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, etc.. Af Klint's art combines the elements of lines, color and form that developed beyond her time and her work is being recognized today.

At the Guggenheim Museum, it explains that she is involved through spirituality with religious and occult teaching. Most notably Theosophy studies various religions, both inner and mystical side of many philosophies. In her first series, "The Ten Largest", her first few artworks was not based on concept. For it focuses on the simplified lines, biomorphic shapes, and combination of pastel and saturated colors.

Rudolf Steiner's book on Theosophy talks an interesting note about the concept as "The soul does not yet see, but this feeling allows the power of truth to take hold of it, so that truth then gradually draws near the soul and opens its 'higher sense.'" (Steiner 15). This is very interesting due to her earlier sketches are all around the pages. The sketches allow you to see process that her mind is able to deliver through various lines and biomorphic shapes that translate into her large-scale paintings. Her paintings brings changes of her ideas. Some paintings being part of the ideas of gender and using very light fluid imagery with words added to theories of Darwin's concept of evolution and depicts the ideas of Theosophy where evolution would extend beyond biology and adding more complexity to her paintings. She adds elements of symbols that depict to something grand and more universal. She also shows a lot of geometric shapes, really think about the ideas of nature and science to which it combines together two subjects that work together. 

Hilma af Klint, The Eros Series No. 2, from Group III Series WU/Rose 1907

Hilma af Klint, Evolution No. 13, form Group VI Series WUS/ Seven-Pointed Star 1908 

In her final group of "The Altarpieces" from The paintings for the Temple is seen as a summary of the series. The painting "No. 17, 1915", shows a big circle with a circle and another circle and in each circle. There is a sense of duality, where the color and size differ from each other or at least the colors split in half. In the middle of her painting, there is a small triangle which is also divided. What is interesting to see that everything is so geometric and very precise yet the way she implies paint is very gestural and you can see the brush strokes and she doesn't try to hide it. She lets those brushstrokes stay, showing that the art making process is more valued than making it perfect.  

Hilma af Klint, The Swan No. 17, from Group IX Series SUW/UW 1914-15

Among the works of religious and spirituality it applies in some her works, mostly spirituality. She is also emphasizing how important the messages her art is expressing. Similar to the Abstract art, there are a lot of of the same techniques af Klint has used but it also expressed a certain feeling that transmit to the audience. Her long series has changed throughout time where the series becomes more of an investigation progression in her art style but also her beliefs or manifesting ideas that were far beyond her time.  

In theosophy, it applies to not just one religion, it interprets difference religions, meaning it incorporates different ideas and norms to shape their beliefs and lifestyle. In term of my identity, I think it spirituality takes certain elements of how. My culture has a lot of religious impact but I do not define myself with those practices. For myself, it feels very restricted to have one idea about how life is supposed to be perceived. The point of life is learning about different ideologies and you make the choice of what you want to make your life. 

www.guggenheim.org/blogs/checklist/who-was-hilma-af-klint-at-the-guggenheim-paintings-by-an-artist-ahead-of-her-time.

https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/sites/steiner/research/archive/theosophy/theosophy.pdf

Paitings for the Future

Paintings for the Future

     Hilma af Klint began producing her many art works long before abstract art came on the scene, in 1906, producing these radical art works until 1915. Although formally trained, the works she did were of Spiritual ,Theosophical, Rosicrucianism, and of the Anthroposopy realm,  and she was not part of any kind of art movement during these times. Believing only in those movements of the spiritual nature that were interwoven with Eastern, Western and occult beliefs ,“like many artists and intellectuals around the turn of the century.”(Dover, Caitlan) Unlike artists of her time and those later, she did them for the theosophical thoughts that came to her mind through what she believed were commissioned from above. Spiritual communications, that is, were commissioned from the spiritual realm. She received instructions by spirits through commissions through channeling or a psychograph a machine used for channeling spirits, at first. Later she communicated through her mind, and the art became more self-directed. She called the  paintings, “The Paintings for the Temple”, and these spirits commissioned her to paint them for the spiritual Temple to come, that would be round, with many layers, she was told. I couldn’t help thinking that the Guggenheim museum, although not a temple of spiritualism, was indeed round with many layers.

The art works are of  botanical drawings, painted landscapes, and each have their own form, and different size. Some of her very largest paintings she titled, The Ten Largest”, were painted during 1907 and these were supposed to be directed by the spirit communicators. These are complex floral, geometric, biomorphic forms with, “invented words, creating a vocabulary of complex and shifting meanings.”(Dover)  The colors and shapes where what I enjoyed most about her paintings. The forms were very innovative for her time. These paintings reminded me of  60’s  or 70s paintings, of the age of flower power, and make love not war expressions, I somehow envisioned this when I looked at these paintings. Certain paintings stir our senses, our feelings. As far as how I felt about these paintings I got no such feelings of emotions at first. I did feel however Ms. Klint truly believed these paintings were directed by the spirit realm of some kind. When reading about all her art works I sensed her earnest desire to communicate with the beyond and the spiritual. I am slightly Psychic and please don’t think I am nuts for saying this. I have a sixth sense about things, objects, people, and, spiritually, I didn’t feel anything when viewing these paintings until I viewed her watercolors. That’s not to say other people wouldn’t.

I have always been connected to nature and paint nature when I can in some way, but also, do love to draw people who are close to me. I always feel spiritually connected to anything of the  earth and nature and Klint's artistic endeavors to focus on the “divine in nature,” on her watercolors she did in the early thirties and early forties, reflect more of a landscape quality I could more relate to. Although the forms were not quite identifiable as any particular landscape, I could imagine hills and mountains in these, I, myself love to paint, and loved the colors she chose.  To me the colors she chose on these were a connection to her spirituality and this is what I do to interject some form of spirituality in my paintings. I will pick a color, for example, for a river scene or ocean, just because I like this color and will design a painting around these colors. So, in the way she used color, I found myself inside of her work. I also base my identity based on my use of coloring I wear. I’m not so sure if this is an, “Identity”, identifier for us in any of our readings but it would fit into an identity category. Doesn’t every culture use a certain amount of coloring they see in their own culture? If we are conservative or somewhat shy do we not wear flashy colors so as not to be noticed as much?  So in in this use of color do we not gain some thought of spirituality? Do some colors and even shapes, such as the color and shapes Klint used in all of her paintings and in mine, connect us to spirituality . I think so.    

    

   

The Myths

Viewing the work of Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi at the Newark Museum was impressive. They both shared many themes associated with identity, home, personal narrative, and mythology. I gathered that the meaning of their works had a strong focus on identity since each piece had a personal narrative and expressed their artistic ideas.

Mythology helps us understand what is going on in the world, for example, what is the moon, the stars, the sun, etc. it helps us ask questions as to why things exist, or even the bigger question, why we exist. Every culture indeed has myths, but we understand that Native Americans have traditionally had a narrative associated with mythology as a core belief system. According to the National Humanities Center, “at the time of European contact, all but the simplest indigenous cultures in North America had developed coherent religious systems that included cosmologies—creation myths, transmitted orally from one generation to the next, which purported to explain how those societies had come into being.” Based on the tribe, different Native American tribes believed in different things. But they believed in spirit and heroes. Similarly, Greek mythology teaches us that their beliefs or the origin and nature of the world are based on gods, heroes, and rituals of ancient Greeks.

  

With this, we can associate Wendy Red Star’s art to being motivated by her being Native American and focusing on the traditional Native American lifestyle. Because of this, I found her pieces to be unique and from her exhibition, I gather that she’s a person who’s strongly involved within her community. She helps us understand what it’s like to live on an Indian reservation in America, how it shapes their lives, and how traditions are passed down from one generation to the next. All of her pieces have bold colors that are very appealing and thought-provoking. I believe through her art she is able to connect with audiences who have experienced like circumstances through racism, class, and gender.

   

Kambui Olujimi’s exhibit was interesting as well. For me, it was a little challenging to grasp a true understanding of the film, but it surely was creative, mythical, and required me to use my imagination more. His work was different in the sense that most of his colors lacked color but consisted of black and white tones. As he once mentioned, “At times, myth is cannibalistic, consuming past mythologies. At others, it is a translator establishing common ground, spanning cultural and generational divisions…. The mythological has the ability to connect the present, future, and past together in a single chord.”

 

I believe as we look as Kambui Olujimi’s art, we are to connect the past, present, and future together in our own ways. I don’t think we are to necessarily “like” Kambui’s piece but instead find our own narrative in it. What I found was that his pieces almost look like a map to follow; it is geographical in a sense. He mentioned that his art was inspired from being in love with a woman who would often travel all around the world and the stars would be their guide to help them stay connected when they couldn’t communicate via technology. It was a medium that he used to talk over distances. His pieces are translucent and require viewers to interject themselves and bridge the missing pieces together. I love that he leaves it to the observer to make sense of it all which is what fantasy is all about, tapping into our own creative potentials.

Heyrman, Christine. “Native American Religion in Early America.” Native American Religion in Early America, Divining America, TeacherServe®, National Humanities Center, Jan. 2008, nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/natrel.htm

Rewriting the narrative of myths as artists

Observing the works of Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi both create a conflict in how I have experienced the world and its myths. Wendy Red Star’s work breaks the notion that Native Americans are in fact a deceased culture that can only be accessed via history books. Her images of Native American photographs with corrections with red pen symbolize the idea that the people behind the images have a narrative that deserves to be known about.

Red Star is redefining the myths we have around Native american culture and heritage as we have been taught to believe the myth of the Indian in the cowboy film or the extinct Indian who lives within relics in natural history museum.

We see a similar narrative in Kambui Olujimi's “Skywriters” series. The visual installation redefines the concept of where and who mythology comes from/ can be about. Mythology has largely been defined as myths from the Greco Roman tradition. This is true to the extent that the system for time, constellations, our calendar- are all named based on greco Roman mythology. The names and myths from Kambui's own background have largely become casualties to the same colonization process and people that created the void in Res Star's culture.

Olujimi's work is important because it rewrites the narrative of myths intertwined with eurocentrism the beauty of the myth is that it serves to create a lineage of a people to with heritage nd here, olujimi sets a point in time to redefine the very constellations and creation myths that were taken away through colonialism.

Myths, Home & Self - Portraiture

The works of Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi are about the everyday life that one lives. Both used their homes, clothing, location, their life narratives and mythology to express identity.

Wendy Red Star uses her Native American culture as the core premises of her inspiration. Above is an example of the Sweet Lodge, were made of willow sapplings and covered with hide. They call attention to contemporary life through these structures. When you go inside the dome, you get a sense of what the culture views on a typical day, ranging from the closed off area of boulders, to a winters day in the field.

Kambui Olujimi takes a different approach, and allows you to find yourself within the work. By using the night sky Olujimi wants you to take a journey through the cosmos, and find yourself. This can be hard to understand, because the trail can seem far fetched, but it shows how complex the human lifestyle can be. With its ups and downs, these factors contribute to what the individual would become.

Both artist demonstrate a sense of well being, and how well they represent their culture. Red Star works are in part a response to a problem of authenticity that she faces as a Native American, while outsiders seem to pressure her authenticity. She exclaims how the most authentic Indians were those of her father's generation, who had complex traits of both Native and popular cultures, without any pressures to conform. Olujimi wanted you to find yourself. More of a difficult trail, but well worth it.

Identity within my culture stems from the family, and what one allows to influence an encourage. With my family, we all have similar and different personalities, beliefs, ideologies, religions. But we all have great respect and value one another's opinions and choices in life. We tell life stories, give each other advice if one is doing right or wrong, but we all come together as one, especially during thanksgiving.

For my identity piece I will create a musical composition. Something of a musical compilation of sounds and melodies ive created, so that you can understand what moves and mesmerizes me, and hopefully you can understand. 

Wendy Red Star & Kambui Olujimi at the Newark Museum

Wendy Red Star’s “A Scratch on the Earth” exhibition at the Newark Museum shows the heritage and culture of Crow Tribe through portraiture, hand sewn textiles, and a photographic timeline that spans around the main room of the exhibition, with over 100 years of recorded history from the Crow Tribe.

In Wendy Red Star’s Family Portraits, she incorporates her own family photos and places them on a colorful quilt inspired by Crow and Plains Indian communities. This goes to show how one’s identity doesn’t only consist of one’s family, but also their culture.

Wendy Red Star’s series of black and white portraits called “Diplomats of the Crow Nation” are portraits of Crow Tribe chiefs in the late 1800s with red annotations detailing each individual’s heritage, role within the Crow Tribe, and even the significance of what they’re wearing/ holding. For Example, her “Portrait of Chief Che-Ve-Te-Pu-Ma-Ta (Iron Bull) with His Wife” (1873) shows Mr. and Mrs. Iron Bull surrounded by Wendy Red Star’s annotations such as the significance of elk teeth showing Mrs. Iron Bull’s “wealth and her husbands hunting skills”. Mr. Iron Bull is shown wearing hairbows, which according to Wendy Red Star’s annotations represent “physically overcoming an enemy and cutting their throat”.

Within Wendy Red Star’s Exhibition One can see traces of cultural diffusion between the Crow Tribe and America’s mainstream culture. Examples of this can be shown through the Fancy Shawl Project: Basketball Hoops” (2009) with the shawl representing the Native American cultural tradition, and the basketball hoops represents one of the mainstream sports played all over America. 

In a way, Wendy Red Star’s exhibition relates to my identity project. In her “Four Seasons” Red Star uses herself as the subject with symbols that identify her such as her clothing and the landscape that surrounds her. These are the main principles that I will use to determine my identities across my self-portraits for my final project.   

On the other hand, Kambui Olujimi’s planetarium show “Skywriters” wasn’t as straight forward as Wendy Red Star’s exhibition was. What made Olujimi’s “Skywriters” challenging for me was the monotoned narration and the overall abstract visuals. However, once leaving the planetarium, we got to see an exhibition with further explanation on “Skywriters”. Kambui Olujimi creates his own constellations to tell a mythical story based on a certain month’s sky. 

Myths, Home and Self-Portraiture

Dahlia Shoukry

Colloquium

31 March 2019

The ways that an individual chooses to identify themselves is important because it specifically targets the key attributes in one's life. For both Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi, they used their home, personal narrative, and mythology to compose their work which projects how they choose to identify themselves. 

    For Red Star, she decided to show her idea of home through her collection My Home Is Where My Tipi Sits. The Crow reservation hold their Tipi’s very close to them and their culture. Through the bright colors, broken down “rez” cars, sweat lodge, signs, and churches, one is able to capture the essence of her community. In Olujimi work, he beautifully creates a sense of finding yourself and being lost. Olujimi emphasis this idea by using the night sky. Space creates a sense of mystery and questions that fill a humans mind. This symbolizes the life of the main character Iku who goes on a journey trying to find out new things about himself. However, his storyline is convoluted and hard to understand. This correlates with the confusing and difficulty with understanding space. Therefore, a persons life and way they grow up has many twists and turns that are not linear. There are many factors that play in a persons life which makes people complex individuals.  For both Red Star and Olujimi, they show how people lives are complex. On the outside, a persons life seems simple and can have a prejudice towards it. For Native Americans, it is their home being viewed as maybe belonging to someone who is homeless.n Olujimi shows it by showing the complexity in a persons life and how there are many layers to a person’s life.

    Both of these works represents how one can express their personal narrative. For Red Star, it was how she can break the pressure from outsiders on how authentic a Native person is. She wanted to show her family to represent the different types of Natives that are living in society. She points out how the most “authentic Indians” are her father's generation because they are able to embrace both pop culture and Native traits without needed to conform to just one. The personal narrative in Olujimi work was expressing how outside forces like the universe can control a person's destiny. Throughout Iku life, he encountered situations that were already set up and that he almost had no free will and that it was all fate. Nallah has a past, present, and future, triplet. Therefore, when something happens in the past its repercussion affects the present and the future is set up because of things the present does. All of the events are set up and have a purpose that relates to what happens in life. Although the two artists take different routes in expressing their personal narratives in their story, they both represent how personal narratives are influenced by those around them. Humans grow a lot form their surroundings and as much as the person is important in a personal narrative, so are the people standing by their side during their journey through life. 

    A person's identity also revolves around the culture the person grew up in. A huge part of one's culture involves the stories that are passed down through mythology. For Red Star, the legend of the Little People was passed down in their culture. SDhe explains the evolution of the legend and the customs that go with it. At first, they were afraid because they believed it was where people who were sick went to die. However, over time they shot arrows through the gap as an example of respect. They then began bringing beads and gifts with them as they prayed. The legend continued that the tribes could not pass the area because the Little People would attack them and rip the hearts out of their horses. Olujimi used mythology to explain the stories through persons, animals, and object chart constellations. These showed the relationship between fact and fiction or reality and belief. The preexisting stories of the constellations were made into new Mythological characters. Olujimi then looks at how limited mythology can be and how mythology may be very intertwined and confusing but it also can explain how the world was before and how it will be in the future. Both works help explain the world and how the sorries that are passed down are focused on explaining the mysteries of the world. Both take an unrealistic approach and include fictional characters within them. 

    For my self-portrait, I will be creating a video and story of my life that will focus on specific events that have occurred so far. It is like myths because it is a way to express a story by representing it in another way than just talking. Myths are used to help understand situations and so will my project. My project will aid my life story and be a second element to help viewers learn about me. I do not think I will add mythic elements because I want it to be as real as possible. I will maybe add symbols in a sense of something that is not the real ting represents the real thing but not more than that. My heritage is very Americanized. So even though my father is formed in Egypt, my family as a whole is Americanized with American traditions. I am close to my Egyptian roots but not to the extent that we have myths. My project will be like the museum because it will be a way to tell a story through an artistic lens. I will not simply be telling my story verbally or just writing it. I will be combining audio, visual, and written work together to capture my life through my project.