Hilma af Klint. The Art of Seeing the Invisible

by Kurt Almqvist (Editor), Louise Belfrage (Editor)

This volume of essays contains many of the lectures given in conjunction with the exhibition Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction that took place during 2013 and 2014 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Engelsberg Manor in Sweden, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin and Museum of Modern Art in Louisiana, Denmark. Scholars and experts of abstract art, art history, history of ideas and cultural and religious studies have made important contributions. The topics range from early abstract art, the impact of Darwinism, Goethe’s Colour Theory, as well as the importance of occult religious movements such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy that influenced the early modernists, to Hilma af Klint’s own personal diary notes and research. Axel and Margaret Johnson Foundation arranged these international seminars to facilitate a scholarly interdisciplinary discussion regarding the emergence of modern art with particular emphasis on the artistic works of Hilma af Klint, and to disseminate the results, thus providing a larger audience with access to this topic.

Genres: Nonfiction

347 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[User3105 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disappointing for what looked from the outside like a promising monograph. Like 70% of it is talking about random adjacent movements to Hilma’s and sort of cultural philosophies/contextualising. Well written as some of it is, I don’t care really care about all the random theorising about other artists and movements - I’m interested in Hilma and how her brain worked.

What I would LOVE from a Hilma monograph is a documentation of all her works, alongside with the bit of science/philosophy/theosophy she was likely chewing through, photos of her sketchbook scribbling away ideas.

In order for you to appreciate an artists handling of a subject, it’s helpful to know what that subject actually is. Yet she seems to not get the dignity of most artists who are allowed this framework, shes often characterised as this crackpot spiritualist who may or may not have been onto something.

What to me is was so radical about her and so different to her contemporaries was that her concerns were not merely aesthetic, she was as much a scientific thinker as well as an artist, using her visual medium to telegraph the science/spirituality of her day. So let that have its place in the book.