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Lissa Tyler Renaud writes:
It's no
wonder the marketing
arm of the art
industry fell over
itself to promote
Hilma af Klint, who
seemed early on to
be the perfect
candidate for its
attentions: a
not-unattractive,
"woman
artist" of the
appealing turn of
the 20th century;
with training,
interests in science
and communication
with spirits, an
annotated body of
large, colorful
works; and even a
titillating bevy of
questing young
ladies around her. A
promising angle: an
aggressive feminism.
Iris
Müller-Westermann,
curator of the 2013
af Klint show in
Stockholm, jumped at
this approach with a
vengeance:
"Kandinsky was a
super-smart lawyer
who knew how to sell
himself. It was all
about ego. Men say:
'Things come to me
– I'm a
genius.' Hilma was
more humble."
Perhaps best of all
for the press and
art world, the
female af Klint
could win a race
with the male
Kandinsky for the
title of First
Abstractionist! In
fact, she could
influence him!
Seemingly overnight, af Klint was a "visionary," a "pioneer," the new name to know. Up sprang the museum shows, catalogues, conferences, books, documentaries and, of course, merchandise. And an opera. Sadly, whatever was poignant, appealing or intriguing about Hilma af Klint was obscured by the bloated marketing. In fact, by overwhelming the paintings themselves, marketing pointed up that quite the reverse of "upending art history"—and in spite of the multitudes who are enchanted and moved by her work—many of af Klint's paintings were simply undemanding and easy to enjoy.
Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest,
Group IV No.2, Childhood, 1907.
Hilma af Klint's Childhood spotted on
a nylon tote bag in Wuzhen, China, 2024.
Photo by Kiril Bolotnikov.
All this happened so quickly that the research and scholarship
weren't even in yet. Now we know that af Klint's closest cohort,
Anna Cassel, painted quite a few of the paintings, and others were
done as a group by their companions. The subject of af Klint's
now-familiar self-portrait was, or was not, her friend. New
information that emerges is instantly old, so that writing about
her is like trying to tie your shoe while you're running. In light of
all this, the marketing of af Klint has increasingly unraveled,
leaving behind lawsuits, internal disputes, and various enterprises
on pause and abandoned. Even some of her most outstanding and
influential champions have recently reversed their very public
positions on af Klint. In 2023 in TheNew York Times:
Tracey Bashkoff, a curator who organized the record breaking
Guggenheim exhibition, said that as the research came to light
it very much changed perceptions of af Klint's role. "We knew
as soon as the exhibition catalog went to press that it was out
of date," she said. Speaking of "Primordial Chaos," the series
that commanded the museum's second ramp, Bashkoff said,
"I have to shift my mind-set on how these are collaborative
works and not Hilma works."
And scholar Kurt Almqvist, who helped publish the
comprehensive catalogue list of af Klint's works, thought
differently after studying thousands of pages of her notebooks.
"Should the paintings still be attributed to Hilma af Klint? No,"
Almqvist said in an interview.
*
Note from the editor:
Jelena has long known that the marketed version of af Klint was
flawed—only one of several reasons being that Jelena has had
access to materials not translated into English. For her Part 1 of
this entry in the Kandinsky Anew series, Jelena fills in missing
information that casts a different light on af Klint's story, which is
evolving as I write.
*
Jelena Hahl-Fontaine writes (ed. L.T. Renaud):
I have followed Hilma af Klint's meteoric celebrity since 1985
with rising astonishment and not without bewilderment. And now
, following a recent exhibition in Germany that paired her with
Kandinsky [see link below for video tour of the show -ed.], I am
happy to share my views with readers of this Kandinsky Anew
series. Let us first visit some rather unexpected biographical facts.
Hilma was born in 1862 at Karlberg castle near Stockholm, into a
wealthy family. Her grandfather was an officer in the Royal
Marines; her father, in the same profession, was also a professor
at the school of Military Marines. Hilma took part in spiritualistic
seances already from 1879 till 1882; then she attended the Art
Academy for five years and studied portraiture and landscape.
Yes, unlike in the rest of Europe, in Sweden women were
admitted to the art academies, but they were not taken very
seriously.
Hilma af Klint, "The End of the Summer," 1903
At the Academy, Hilma met her distant cousin, Anna Cassel, who
became her lifelong best friend. Hilma's main interest was
Theosophy. From 1896 on, Hilma and Anna met regularly with
three other women for seances, with Hilma serving as their
medium while being led by higher celestial male spirits Clemens,
Gregor, Amaliel, Georg and the Indian Ananda. In late 1905,
Amaliel offered to help Hilma with her difficult task of painting
"on the astral plain"; she was to obey him for a year and paint
nothing else—"and I immediately said: Yes!" she wrote.
Now her automatic drawing (pencil on paper) as well as her
writing intensified. She insisted that she had no idea what she was
drawing. She kept abundant handwritten notes that accompanied
her drawings and included medical systems, charts of the
evolution of humanity, theories of gender problems, and more. It
is notable that she did not consider her drawings or paintings to
be art; rather, they were illustrations or visualizations of
ambitious projects to enlighten humankind. All the paintings
were parts of series with names such as "Primordial Chaos,"
"Eros," "Works for the Temple" (finalized in 1915 with three large
Altarpieces), "Parsifal," "The Swan," and more.
Hilma af Klint, "Paintings for the Future,"
in Guggenheim Museum Publications
Hilma was not mentally ill. But by that time, the vast majority in
the Western world did not believe in spirits anymore. Further, the
British mental health specialist of the day, Henry Maudsley (1835
-1918), had declared that the rare mediumistic capability was a
malfunction of the brain. In 1888, a well-known Swedish artist,
Ernst Josephson, had gone insane; Josephson, who had studied at
the same Academy as Hilma and become famous, started to sign
his pictures with "Raffael [Raphael]," "Velasquez," and so on,
insisting that his hand was being directed by those artists from
the other world. He was interned in a psychiatric hospital, where
he remained for most of the rest of his life.
Now Anna Cassel and other friends warned Hilma to be careful,
but in vain. She continued to give priority to her esoteric
mediumistic activity, being certain that she would deliver sacred
messages to humanity. But when she did occasionally exhibit her
work, she showed only her naturalistic paintings—in 1906 in
Norköpping and Lund, and in 1911 at the Academy in Stockholm,
where two years later she nevertheless lectured on her own
spiritual development. And again, when she participated in the
large Baltic Exhibition in 1914 in Stockholm, Hilma selected only
from among her naturalistic pictures.
Botanical illustrations for "Hilma af Klint Botanical Sketchbook,
Flowers, Mosses and Lichens 1919-1920."
Presented at the Lightforms Art Center in Hudson, NY in 2019.
In 1908, Hilma finally showed her "important" works to her idol,
Rudolf Steiner, Theosophist and later founder of his own
variation on it, Anthroposophy. Steiner did not approve of what
he saw: "Outsized [surdimensional] handicraft, not art!" This
shocked Hilma to such an extent that she stopped working for
four years. However, she became a member of the
Anthroposophical Society, and from 1920 on, started visiting its
center in Dornach, Switzerland. Either before or after this, after
one year's pause, she took up Steiner's own art system for
developing a picture from colors. But still Steiner would not
recognize her. And when she offered to donate some of her work
to the center, she was refused. In 1927 she insisted on donating
her Flower series, which was put into storage.
In 1928, Hilma was determined to take part with her
metaphysical works in a London exhibition, organized by an
Esoteric Society, but was refused. After heavy lobbying by her
friends, she was finally admitted, but she was completely ignored
by the numerous reviews. How frustrating! But nothing could
discourage Hilma, who persevered and trusted in the importance
of her mission; she continued working hard till the end of her life,
leaving 125 notebooks and more than 1000 pictures with her
family. The final sentence in her notebook in 1944 reads: "Ahead
of you lies mystery-service, and soon you will understand what is
expected of you."
Hilma af Klint booklet with drawings.
Unknown date 20 Hilma af Klint - Booklet 01
*
To be continued:
Jelena's brief commentary on af Klint's major exhibitions, and a
short satirical piece, too.
*
LINKS
Early assessment
Hilma af Klint: a painter possessed
(2016)
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/21/hilma
-af-klint-occult-spiritualism-abstract-serpentine-gallery
'Hilma Who?' No More
(2018)
https://www.artsy.net/article/cfhill-hilma-who
More current assessment
After the Sudden Heralding of Hilma af Klint, Questions
and Court Fights
(2023)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/arts/design/hilma-af
-klint-legacy.html
Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dream of the
Future (2024)
(Video tour of the exhibition; in German with English subtitles.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRn7Ygfr_-w
The Artist Who Painted af Klint's Works
(2025)
https://kunstkritikk.com/the-artist-who-painted-af-klints-works/
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