Art Lovers discussion

Made it to NYC for the last weekend of several shows I really wanted to see. Delacroix at the Met; Marc and Macke at the Neue Galerie; Chagall/Malevich.El Lissitzky at the Jewish Museum; and Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim.

Af Klint was probably the most visually gorgeous show I have seen at the Guggenheim since the Rothko retrospective o 1976. It was utterly fascinating as well, beautifully installed with thoughtful and helpful texts and labels. I took a quick look at the catalogue and that looks like money well spent for those of you who might be interested. (http://www.artbook.com/9780892075430....)

I discovered her work in 1987 at the The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I was fascinated but didn't think much more about her. Since then she has come up every so often. But this show wasn't just a couple of "visionary" paintings--it explored her entire evolution--and the symbolist milieu in which she was shaped. And thinking about that symbolist milieu, the fascination with theosophy, Eastern practices and so on, was a thread in three of the four shows. So great time.

Wow I wish I could leave for NY right now!

Here's a pretty good YouTube clip produced by Guggenheim about Hilma af Klint.

Only 6 minutes, but amazing!
Just enough to make you an instant admirer!

https://youtu.be/CHdud9km7bQ

Thanks a lot Ellen for pointing her out!

I discovered her at that very same show. I live within driving distance of LACMA.

Hilma af Klint

Dirk wrote: "
Hilma af Klint"

Lovely, wasn't she?

Ellen wrote: "Dirk wrote: "
Hilma af Klint"

Lovely, wasn't she?"

Wow, she was beautiful!

Yes, indeed!
And she looks so serene for a woman who made more than 1300 paintings (some very large: 2 by 3meters!) and more than 100 notebooks and kept them hidden from the public until 20 years after her death (stated in her will) ...

This is the first time I heard of a Hilma af Klint.

Ellen, thanks for sharing!

On a negative note, this really annoys me. Here she was, creating masterpieces and she was hiding the work. Too many artists have done the same. How selfish!!

Geoffrey wrote: "On a negative note, this really annoys me. Here she was, creating masterpieces and she was hiding the work. Too many artists have done the same. How selfish!!"

Well, I understand that is how you feel. On the other hand, she wasn't hiding everything. She continued to show some aspects of her work throughout her life.

I am not sure any artist has an obligation to share, though. Her work was for her first and foremost a spiritual practice intended to move her toward some understanding of the cosmos. And she left detailed notebooks about her art and how it was to be understood. It seems to me that she was concerned that her art be understood CORRECTLY. And she is not the first artist to attempt to control that, even beyond the grave.

I think an artist should be the person to decide who the work is for, don't you?
I mean... she maybe creating it for personal joy and not for sharing.... it maybe like her own diary or journal .... I am not sure about reading other peoples diary and letters, even published posthumously, and since she created the art..i think its entirely upto her what she does with it.
A bit of privacy ,please.

Guggenheim’s Hilma af Klint Survey Is Most Popular Show in Its History

http://www.artnews.com/2019/04/18/gug...

For me, the 2018-19 art season will always belong to the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). I say this simply as a measure of the psychic and historical shift caused by the Guggenheim Museum’s extraordinary full-dress retrospective of her nearly 40-year career.

Roberta Smith
NYTimes april 10, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/ar...

I think I remember having seen a show of her work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art quite a few years ago. I was very interested in seeing it, but a little disappointed in the show itself.