On the boardwalk, Coney Island
November, 2018
In Brooklyn, I am standing on the boardwalk looking out to sea on a cold clear fall day having just left the nursing home where my aunt has been living for the past few years. She failed to recognize me and threatened to call the police! Quickly, we left with a lasting impression made for this Thanksgiving Day!
Inside The Guggenheim
We were going into the city to see the museums and I was looking forward to going up to The Guggenheim to view the art in a new show called: "Paintings for the Future" by Hilma af Klint.
So, you say you have never heard of this artist- Hilma af Klint ( 1862-1944 ) - so why is she being given a retrospective now - almost 75 years since her death? Well, the art history books will have to be re-written - especially when it comes to notions of abstract art for which Hilma af Klint will be forever known.
Paul Singer steps in to get a closer look
at
"Paintings for the Future"
by
Hilma af Klint ( 1862-1944 )
From the moment we stepped out of the elevator, and worked our way down the spiral of The Guggenheim, we knew we were seeing something entirely engaging and nearly overwhelming in its simple approach to our heart and mind. This is a moving experience, as the critic Ann McCoy has written in the Brooklyn Rail. Credit also has to go to painter R.H.Quaytman - who is given her own exhibition at the top of the museum - she has championed Hilma af Klint by arranging early shows in the U.S. of her work. However, R.H. Quaytman is overshadowed by the present situation - quite a challenge for an artist, when her predecessor is so strong.
R.H. Quaytman on view at The Guggenheim
Hilma af Klint was really out ahead of the curve as they say. Born near Stockholm in 1862, she never marries, but she did go through art school training and she produced traditional paintings ( see below ) that were sold to the public. She also created another body of work which she held in private - hoping that one day it would be housed in a temple of her own spiral design ( which was never realized ). Tracey Bashkoff, the curator for this show at The Guggenheim does get to realize this dream, and we can all participate until mid-February when the show must come down.
"Summer Landscape", 1888
by Hilma af Klint
Hilma af Klint: The Ten Largest ( 1907 )
Tempera on paper
Run, don't walk to The Guggenheim Museum of Art to see this art in the perfect setting! We enjoyed reading the stories that accompany this exhibition which represent only a portion of her accomplishments. She kept copious notebooks that outline her progress as an artist who was profoundly moved by visions she had during her meditations on art and life. She was a mystic, but not beyond contemplation among the roots of life, involving the sciences, religious teachings, and an artful approach to mathematics and physics.
Hilma af Klint
"Evolution", 1908
oil on canvas
If one reads a traditional chronology of abstraction in art, there is the inevitable descriptions of the pioneers such as Kandinsky, Malevich, and Piet Mondrian - perceived to be the ones worthy of reverence when it comes to the "invention" of abstraction. That honor should now go to Hilma af Klint, and this show is the proof that makes the necessary argument for her elevation into that sphere of real mastery for a new language in visual culture.
"The Swan", No. 9, 1915
oil on canvas
Hilma af Klint
Working our way through the exhibition her later works become more acute towards the 1920's.
She looks for graphic ways to transform volume into light and back again. Her major series of ten foot tall paintings ( Tempera on paper ) give the soul an uplift, just what we need in this climate!
Hilma af Klint has the uncanny ability to invent an abstract language for us to consider. Spirals may represent movement of opposing forces - day and night- or yin and yang. Colors can represent the male and female sex, or the gravity of push and pull - to use a modern term for painterly movement.
Hilma af Klint, 1907
Detail: Tempera on paper
Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 1, 1915
oil on canvas
"Paintings for the Future"
at
The Guggenheim Museum of Art
This is your opportunity to visit with an artist's work that changes the course of a dialog about modern art, and the "Paintings for the Future" really gives you something to dream about and enjoy in the here and now.
