Every month I write a review of an art exhibition I’ve viewed or an art book I’ve read. With these reviews, I intend to bring something different to your screen other than what you can already see or read in a quick Google search. So much has been written about Hilma Af Klint’s life (I’ll post resources below) that I feel it unnecessary to regurgitate that history - art historians make a better job of it than me - but I do want to tell you how much her work moved me and how it helped bring clarity to my own practice of art. Hilma’s work is currently being exhibited alongside Piet Mondrian's at Tate Modern, London until 3 September 2023.
The Ten Notes
{notes made while walking around the gallery}
i
Gosh, both Mondrian and Hilma af Klint made some boring work in their early art days: traditional, classic landscapes; pretty yet mundane floral sketches. Genius can strike later in life - that’s good to know.
ii
Mondrian’s work is lifeless compared to Hilma’s. The energy is lost in the geometry. (At this point I stop viewing Mondrian’s work).
iii
This is a perfect wall of paintings. Look at the symmetry! I always try to avoid perfect symmetry in my work - it’s something I lean towards because of my surface pattern training - but maybe I should just fully embrace it. The rhythm of Hilma’s work is operatic.
iv
Hilma af Klint’s colour palette is divine: Soft, gentle, airy but grounded by an earthy black. Are these natural pigments? Her love of nature shines through her colour choices.
v
“The locals used to wonder what she did with all the eggs that were delivered to her studio.” - Halina Dyrschka, filmmaker who created Beyond the Visible, a film about Hilma af Klint’s life.
How did she make so much tempera? I’ve made egg tempera paint and it dries so fast I was only able to make tiny amounts at one time; I used to mix it in a shell. I can’t fathom how she painted at such a scale with tempera.
vi
Hilma did it all first. She created abstract works before Kandinsky. Her experiments with automatic writing and drawing predate the Surrealists by decades. How much of the art history we’ve learned at school is incorrect? How many other women artists were pioneers but their work remains unseen?
vii
It is a miracle the paintings survived. Hilma af Klint died penniless, leaving her vast portfolio of work to her nephew, Erik Klint. The farmer who owned Hilma’s property threatened to burn down her home and studio, forcing Erik to quickly rescue her work and store it in his attic. There were some 1300 paintings and 124 notebooks! Who will rescue my work I wonder? How much art has not been rescued?
viii
When I’m in my purest flow of drawing I feel like my arm is a conduit to a greater power and my hand is being guided by something other than my tiny brain. Hilma believed that during one of her regular seances, she received a “commission” from an entity named Amaliel who told her to paint an astral plane. I believe her. This became her lifelong work. No, not work: her lifelong calling and duty. Hilma never showed this work beyond her small spiritual group and in fact, commanded that this work not be shown until 20 years after her death, declaring that the world was not ready for what she had created. What incredible dedication to her practice. How must she have felt every day, creating work, knowing that it would never be shown to the public? She must have had such a deep, visceral “knowing” that what she was doing was the right path for her. Phenomenal.
ix
There is one large viewing room dedicated to “The Ten Largest”. They are monumental paintings, over three metres high; I don’t have a wall in my house big enough to home one of these enthralling pieces. Created on paper (how?) these elegant paintings take my breath away. It is in this room that everything becomes clear to me. I want to work with the same conviction and purpose as Hilma af Klint. I want to be so sure of what I’m creating that I don’t care whether it’s shown publically or not. I think about how Hilma might feel if she were creating in today’s world: Would she show this work on Instagram or keep it for the Private View of her closest friends? Would she consider the world is ready for her work now? What would she say to visitors standing in front of her life’s work in this gallery?
x
I leave Tate Modern profoundly moved and touched by the art I’ve viewed. Walking through Hilma af Klint’s life - because that’s what her art is - has been emotional, uplifting, exhilarating. Some critics have called her “possessed” and pointed to her occult activities with derision and dismissal, but then women have always been denigrated for their witchy ways, there’s nothing new in that. I would call her devoted. And a genius. Hilma af Klint found a way to tap directly into her creative soul (I believe that’s who Amaliel was) and suck that pure energy out with no filters or distractions (note she never married nor had children) and transform it into beauty on the canvas. Nowadays we might call that energy “flow” and if we’re lucky as artists we feel that from time to time. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter whether it was an otherworldly entity or Hilma’s own creative hand that produced these works. What matters is that they were created in the first place and can now be viewed. Hilma did her job. She made art that changes the way I view my world. I suspect Hilma knew this all along and if she were standing right by me now and I told her how she has deeply changed me, she would simply say, “I know. Of course, I did. That’s the purpose of the work.”
I am incredibly fortunate to regularly view original art. Sometimes the art is meh, sometimes it’s downright awful, sometimes it’s so beautiful it moves me to tears. Rarely does it change the way I view my own art world in the way that this Hilma af Klint exhibition did. In fact, I can’t think of another exhibition that touched my spirit in the same way as this one. I now understand, having the benefit of some time distance between the viewing and me writing this review, that I saw the work at the right time for me: at a time when I was wondering why the heck I was making art at all and what the greater purpose of it was. I think Hilma gave me an answer to a question I was having trouble formulating: What do I need to move forward with my art practice? And the answer? Conviction. Knowing. Unwavering, unfiltered belief in my work.
May you also work with that deep knowing of the value of your art.
Until next time.
JC
…these RESOURCES
I enjoyed this short video summary of Hilma’s life and work:
This is a Guardian review of Hilma’s work from back in 2016 but it’s a good write up of her story. Click HERE
A useful timeline of Hilma’s life can be found on the website of the Hilma af Klint Foundation website HERE
“They called her a crazy witch” Another Guardian review, this one from 2020 is HERE
Link to Tate Modern’s Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian Form of Life exhibition is HERE
Oooooh, that second to last painting, the pink one... feminine divine. <3 It's gorgeous!