Hilma af Klint: understanding abstract art

1. An introduction to Hilma af Klint: I know, abstract art can be hard to follow. The intentions are many times obscured, The strokes and forms can seem automatic, and in most cases, abstract artists in art history have preferred the viewer to produce a personal understanding of the artwork. Instead of yielding a complete interpretation. The artist that we're going to talk about today preceded every other publicly known artist, male or female, in creating forms from imagination, abstraction, and connection with a higher celestial plane. Please take into consideration that any analysis you make today during this lesson shouldn't be done with your cerebral being. We'll take a minute to get into a different state of mind where our spirit and even our soul is engaged in understanding. 2. The paintings for the temple and the birth of an artist: Hilma af Klint, was born in Stockholm, Sweden the 26th of October, 1862. As the fourth of five children. She studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and made her living through conventional paintings of landscapes and other naturalistic themes. Working in a symbolistic style or in a post-impressionist manner. But behind the scenes, she was creating a large body of her life's work. So different from what was accepted by the academy and public in general that she chose not to have it exhibited until 20 years after her death, leaving more than a thousand works and 125 notebooks to her nephew, Erik af Klint She instructed him not to even open the boxes of her abstract art until 20 years after her death in the late 1960s. We have to consider then that she created work for a future in which her own present would be long gone. In fact, in 1970, her entire collection was offered to the Moderna Museet as a gift and they refused it But going back in time to her first creations, it is known that Hilma af Klint was always interested in pursuing arts. But it was in 1880 when a terrible incident changes the course of her life. Hermina, her younger sister dies. Hermina was ten, Hilma was about to turn 18 some days later. And this probably made her interest in the higher world truly urgent and important. As she started trying to channel higher forces and receiving messages from beyond positively trying to connect with Hermina. After abandoning the figurative naturalistic language, Hilma af Klint assumes that there is a spiritual dimension to existence and Wants to make visible the context that exist beyond what the eye can see. Like other of her contemporaries, she is greatly influenced by the spiritual currents of her time, particularly spiritism theosophy, and anthroposophy But for her, it is not only a movement, it is part of her nature. Those who knew the artist described her as sober, reserved, even-tempered, and friendly. She was not prone to emotional outbursts. It is all thought of and calculated. Her paintings and drawings emit an aura of invisible dimensions that exist beyond the visible world. a connection from our reality to the spirit of the cosmos af Klint believed that all knowledge allows us access to the divine. and in that I agree, that it opens us not to phenomena, but to the spiritual and the sublime, af klint Sought to expand her consciousness in order to gain a wider perspective on what we perceive as reality, consciousness remains one of the deepest mysteries in our time, a subject still explored in neurology, psychology, and quantum physics. As part of her spiritual practice af Klint meditated, became a vegetarian. And studied Theosophy and Rosicrucianism esoteric schools which sought to bridge the gap towards a deeper spiritual reality through focused attention on intuition, meditation, and other means of trascending normal human consciousness. The evolution series, for example, is also known as "The seven pointed star" series, which in the Christian tradition exists as a symbol of protection. The seven points of the star refers to the perfection of God, and at the same time to the seven days of the creation. Love, spirit, strength, parody, parody, memory and peace. So yes, her work is all about the evolution of consciousness. You may think, how does this all come together? Science and religion, calculating, and at the same time, listening to inner voices and visions. The boundaries between these two domains are often more blurred that we like to think. And ylab cleaned had to fight against the misinformed beliefs of scientific conventions of her time. For example, she grew up in a time when men of science published essays on how higher-education made women's sick, claiming that it could cause nerve damage and it often lead to death out of exhaustion. These ladies and gentlemen happened less than a 150 years ago. It is not ancient history. Over a period of ten years, I've cleaned, met weekly with four other women known as the thumb. The five, they hold seances and train their capability to access or channel higher levels of consciousness through contact with the spiritual guides known as the masters. They did this through the practice of automatic drawing, a drilling with how sought, with the belief that the spirits could control the artist's hand to send messages through art. The group compiler work into the making of a book for which she created over a 1200 paintings and a 100 texts. These meetings were meticulously recorded in writing, describing how the women took turns to wield the pen. But individual authorship was not important and rarely indicated on the drawings. They tell us all the knowledge that is not of the census. None of the intellect. None of the heart, but it's a property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspects of your being, the knowledge of your spirit. A true polymath. She was extremely knowledgeable about science and mathematics in the middle 1880s. Census. And women is Spirit is ****. Groups were safe havens for female experimentation within the male-dominated art and political world. Beyond the notion of individual genius, African decided to constantly work inside these women's collective enterprise, practicing alternative forms of knowledge that persisted and superseded the art world norms of our time. Other contemporaries of her engaged in cold speculations as well, but lacking the scientific method, rigor, and a specificity of athletes. In here, there is a higher self-awareness and intellectually station that we might want to keep in mind moving forward. Many of the works that we'll see in this lesson. In particular, dose made from 1906 to 1915 are part of her greatest body of work. A specific assignments she received during a seals during this period is some session. And would she gladly accepted the other artists in the group were not willing to accept this commission. Warrant at gleaned, the intensity of this kind of spiritual engagement could drive her into madness. Accepted anyway, and embarked upon her major cycle, the paintings for the temple, which eventually comprised a 193 works in many theories. Even after finishing the commission, she worked hard to understand deeper meaning embedded in these works. She even design the temple that would hold this exhibition. She imagined it as a white round, a spiral team-building moving upwards, leaving the pieces to speak for themselves. I think he'll know would've been very happy to attend the Guggenheim Sixth Division of her work. The artist described how she painted the series as a medium for shapes, colors, and compositions came to her. Although she perceive this works as flowing through her guided hand, she'd very much applied all her skills in the process. Schubert's methodically and sequentially in series. Dividing this series thematically and formally and focusing with each group of paintings in different aspects of cosmic and human evolution. In the series primordial chaos, for example, she devoted herself to the idea of the creation of the physical world. Answering the question, where does it all come from? These primary sequence appropriately investigates origin and the primordial essence of the universe. In all of its manifestations, we see elements of the feminine such as Deep Blue, the eye, the oval, and the spirals. And the masculine, like the yellow and the hook. When the two colors combined, they create a harmonious screen, implying that marriage of polarity is a spiritually important. These works are full of the energy of creation, symbols of fertility and rebirth. For the art critic, Mark Hudson, the artists use of symbolism makes the world feel closer in this period, too much later Surrealism than to abstract art per se. Cleans abstractions does not abandon reality, but instead emphasizes it transmitting on new frequencies that we as viewers may need to align with before judging too harshly. African describe this work and its relationship to the spirits in various ways. One of the series painted in 1907, she said, the pictures were painted directly through me without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict. Nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely without changing a single brushstroke. However, in another description from around the same time, this purists had less direct control. It was not the case that a wants to blindly obey the high lords of the mysteries. That, that I was to imagine that they were always standing by my side. These descriptions changed more drastically after af Klint pause the project in 1908 to take care of her blind mother. When she resumed project in 1912, she no longer described her processes, some external its period acting through her. Instead, she said she was receiving and then interpreting messages, thus giving herself more subjective control over the process. Although there is no singular meaning, we get a sense of bravery in Artistic Inquiry and ecstasy of mystic self-transcendence, and the joy of feeling connected to one's own creation. The whole sequence can perhaps be understood as f claims pursuit of an original oneness, a basic unity which she believed existed at the world's creation. Shift held this integrity has since been lost, giving way to a world of polarities, good and evil, women and men, matter and spirit. She saw this academies as having become the principal of all life. The different series within the paintings for the temple individually tried to reconcile these visions, each with their own scale, aesthetic, and theme, while simultaneously revealing her many influences from the time in which she painted. No Would a bit of the background we've gotten in earlier lessons. And to put things in context. This was the artistic work that was being produced as a pinnacle of Modern Art. In 1907, the avant-garde, Picasso, matisse, Chagall, Malevich, the ulna af Klint, in comparison to these masters, had absolutely no institutional support, no patrons fighting for her in the art market. These makes her predicament quite different from the one of her most celebrated colleagues. Let's think once again about the career of the Matisse or a Picasso. What would they have been without all the collectors, the galleries, the critics, the museum directors, all loving for them and cheering them on. Imagine af Klint painting her huge canvases on the floor of her studio on large sheets of paper later glued onto Canvas. So many years before Jackson ******* attempt the same connection to altered consciousness and creating this symbolic and sensational masterpieces. Then to have the vision to understand that the world was not ready for her art, would not understand it, or had no way of comprehending the enormity of her artistic inquiry to leave a radical body of work on precedent in its use of color, scale, and composition, which she hoped future audiences might be better able to sense and decode. All just in the hope. In 1911, heel math clans joins the Swedish female artists association. This Association was established to support female artists in order to get more commissions, more exhibitions, and more attention in general. I've cleaned, served as secretary for awhile, only exhibiting her academic work with them, but leaves the work soon after. She didn't travels to Switzerland and tries to convince Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher and then leader of the theists ethical society in Germany to show her work. This effort was also in vain, as he had already visited her studio in Stockholm and was utterly unimpressed. Africans had sodas trainers response to her work because she admired him as one of the most prominent spiritual leaders of the time. However, Steiner did not understand the message of our work and question her way of painting and her medium mystic role. This was a great disappointment to our artist who at the time was exhausted in the wake of creating the first portion of the paintings for the temple. Pieces that are at once modality for like ancient Mandela's and dynamic changing piece of music. As we've seen in the last few images, ten largest are truly unlimited, completely unaffected by any concept of place and time. Across ten campuses, we see swirling shapes in soft pastel colors, rhythmically interacting with cursive letters, pulsating around petals, ovaries. Flowers, spirals, all in all, an exploration of the human life cycle from childhood and youth to adulthood and old age. She painted as if moved indeed by a superior force extremely quickly. All ten of the ten largest, we're finished between October and December of 1907. Especially notable considering their scale. In any case, the object is to get the viewer to embellish themselves in their emotional mood of the painting. To pass, contemplate and metaphorically fall into the work and be absorbed in its atmosphere. The fact that many abstract paintings like cleans are so large is no accident. It's easier to achieve this effect when the work fields, your visual field. Throughout her life, I've cleaned, took copious notes. She came up to roll from a family of naval officers and nautical cartographers. So she approached her artistic practice with the same structure rigor. After completing the paintings for temple, the artists tried to methodically gain an overview of her work and its possible meaning. In this period of a scientific researcher, she edited and reorganized her early nodes, created a dictionary of the symbols that appeared in her paintings and catalog all the works in the paintings for the temple in a portable portfolio. Athlete understood all of it as a unified project. It testament to the fact that she believed her work to have higher purpose. In the series Evolution. Quite different from the largest. There is a bigger interplay of polarities, male or female, light and darkness, good and evil. Compositionally, this works is try to find a balance in horizontal and vertical mirroring helmet af Klint exploration, since aligned with the themes of his notion of evolution as a spiritual process, extending beyond the biological perspective on human development. That with the publishing of Darwin's evolution of the species 50 years earlier had gained widespread notoriety. In this way, the series echoes a scientific quest of the time for deeper understanding of evolution and place in the world. In this canvas of the evolution series, the creation story is referred further through the presence of Adam and Eve. The couple or taunted by two large black serpents making reference to this snake in the Garden of Eden. The 10th to humans to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. Many sperms and balancing acts show the viewer that the man and a woman are in the process of physical reproduction, as well as the spiritual union. Abstraction and figuration co-exist and are represented without hierarchy. This series ends the first part of the paintings for the temple. 3. Hilma as medium: Before her work came to light, the silicon DNS key was believed to be the first to create purely abstract paintings. But half cleans predates both heat and other famous contemporaries, such as Piet Mondrian and calcium and Malevich by several years. In fact, it was in 1935 that the Russian painter wrote a letter to his New York gallery owner claiming authorship of the first abstract painting. It worked painted in 1911. He said, without a doubt, this is a first abstract painting in the world. It is, in other words, a historical painting. So sure of himself. There is no evidence that app gland and condensed ever met. But they did show their work in the same exhibition in Malmo, Sweden in 1914. I've claimed was included in the Swedish section. And even though she was already making abstract art, by this time, she exhibited a more traditional landscape painting. Condensed abstract work was presented in the Russian section. If we take a deep dive into the concept and intentions of all these male artists at the turn of the century. As we will surely in future lessons. We'll see that in af Klint was not the only one moved by esoteric or spiritual energies and human nature contains key Mondrian Malibu beach. We're all influenced by contemporary spiritual movements such as the acetophenone anthroposophy to say so to Tristan, the physical world and the constraints of representational art. Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition, for colors. And that UP a true poet. This last is essential. Do you think Clint covered these requirements? Apart from the importance of his painting, Wassily Kandinsky is an artistic institution also for history TO work, composed of numerous essays of undoubted value. One of Kandinsky is great publications was of their spiritual in art, born in 1912. As a critique to the art of his time. He had as well unquestionable importance for the Bauhaus School, where he not only taught basic design and advanced theory, but also abstract painting classes in which he developed widely and extensively his theories about color and the psychology of color and shape. When human af Klint resumed her work on the paintings for the temple in 1912, abstraction became more geometric nature and Christian cmos became increasingly pronounced. Working the artist was telling contact with higher planes of consciousness, but it was encouraged to interpret a spiritual messages more freely. The swan number one, portraits to fly in swans in black and white, Ying Yang mirror image. The birds are united by the touch of a wing and by the meeting of their beaks, divided by a horizontal line. Break's a canvas this into two sections were opposite forces meet lightened dark, life and death. In the spirit of ancient Chinese symbolism, the image reveals how seemingly contrary forces are, in fact complimentary, with the swan representing also an alchemical symbol of change. Nevertheless, there is a sense of antagonism in the work that expresses how this union can also be a struggle, especially between humans. Eventually figurative Gibbs way to abstraction in a fuller spectrum of color. In the final work in series, the swamp pair returns, unified at the center, intertwined, yet distinct imbalances as male and female Pope. In a visual composition, pattern and rhythm are generally expressed by showing consistency with colors in lines. For instance, placing a spiral will cause the eye to move from a oneness parallel to the other, and then to the space in-between. The repetition of elements creates movements of the viewer size and can therefore make the artwork feel active. He'll may have cleansed to Swan exemplifies the visual representation of rhythm using color and symmetry. There is a meaning to the regular recurrence of the cyclical nature in this series. It talks about it, frequency and periodicity of the world. There is a timing in human scale, in musical sounds and silences. In a spoken language and poetry. In the end, a common language of patterns and geometry. In every case, we see af Klint replacing perceived reality with science, natural color with symbolic color and representation with abstraction. A new expressive form emerging. But most of her work as regulatory as it may seem, leaves us with more questions than answers about how the universe is built. I can only imagine all the criticism she had to endure. Although opinionated public in the art world will express totally rejection towards her creations. Helene, a digital German filmmaker, argues, it's easier to make a woman into a crazy which the change our history to accommodate her. We still see a woman who is a spiritual as a wage while we celebrate a spiritual male artists as geniuses. But we were given an exceptional opportunity. Here. We are the future. We are those viewers she was waiting for. How prepared an open our wheat to receive your message. After taking a four-year break from the paintings for the temple project, I've cleaned clean, more control over what she painted. This final pieces all date from that period. The imagery became more geometric and more connected to the Christian iconography. Perhaps inspired by Harris study of Christian religious art in Italy. Looking back to an earlier golden age and forwards to another one, the painting brings to mind an Egyptian temple, which juicing highly develop intuitive intelligence, was built in line with the rising and setting sun. The pyramid is an equilateral triangle divided into rainbow building block sections with Iran of all disks adding more stability as pi1 down the center, the sun rises above. And all of the saturated highly colored shapes are set against the black backwards. Each one of these widest spectrum of colors has symbolic meaning within thier, esophageal and anthroposophy spiritual theory. Furthermore, the triangle is an ancient symbol which points towards enlightenment, connecting the material and the spiritual worlds. Human af Klint understood the three powerful altarpieces as the essence of the paintings for the temple. This works captured the two directions of a spiritual evolution. The ascension from the material world back to unity. The triangle representing humanity reaching up towards heaven, which is the underlying journey of all spiritual life. And the dissension from the divine unity into the diversity of the material world, the inverted triangle. In the third and final painting, a small six-pointed star within the larger golden circle is an esoteric symbol for the universe. The truth is, no one painted like this at the time. Remarkable color combinations, monumental formats, and shapes that are at once both organic and other worldly. Heal moves freely without limitations of a scale or technique. Jumping from the grant canvases we just saw to a series of very small experimental pieces. The participle series from 1916 is a numbered sequence of a 144 works on paper that are divided into groups, then divide it once again into multiple parts. The series title may refer to the Arthurian legend in which parts of all one of the Knights of the Round Table takes part in the quest for the Holy Grail legend itself. These paintings represent a search for spiritual knowledge through various levels of consciousness. The image is explode with chromatic gradations of color as the artist's work through different formal permutations to develop a visual rhythm in the overall series. Tiny cryptic symbols are inscribed throughout, as are the Swedish Schwartz marking direction. Now that downward, from that forward, backward, you tap outward and inward. Parcels journey also mirrors the artist's own process. In inward journey she has undertaken by accepting, completing, and trying to understand the paintings for temple. It has been suggested that I've claimed to spiritually sum, is one of the reasons her works fail to be taken seriously. But the truth is, this was caused mostly by her female condition. She was working at a time when women were not allowed to be creative, when they weren't supposed to make things that were new and radical. Take for instance, this comparison to the left, a piece of the particle series created in 1916 versus the whole mesh to the square created by Joseph Albert's in the 1960s, 46 years later, but causing a much greater impact. In the series. The tree of knowledge here may have cleaned maps the different spiritual planes of existence in order to picture this complexity of being, the connection between the Earth and the divine, I've cleaned use vectors to map the movement of forces through space in a style reminiscent of scientific diagrams. It was part of her effort to translate the three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane. In tree of knowledge, the artists returned to the theme of the beginning of the world, but approach it from a much more explicit Christian perspective with their detail and ordinate rendering, curved lines, color palette, and motifs drawn from nature. The campuses recall art nouveau patterns, which were very popular at the time. Literally was the scientific community interested in how Wong captures and records through instrumentation, the scientific realities. But people that were interested in the UK called spiritualists realms. We're also interested in health through minimalistic and clairvoyant interaction and empathy. One could record some of this phenomenon as well. Many of these works are characterized by a geometric idiom. And in both analysis and both the macro cosmic and macro cosmic level of nature going through a process of development and always moving towards oneness. Emf cleans his spiritual cosmos, is expanding more and more. It already covers high vibrations, higher beans, chakras. So forces, elemental spirits, guardians of nature, angels, and so many other beans. It revolves always around the idea of a union of opposites. And although we see symbols for different world religions and tree of knowledge number five, it goes principally back to a Buddhist source. As we can't forget that one of her deepest voices is one of Ananda, Buddhist favorite disciple. Of all that is beyond our most immediate understanding. I've cleaned, explored another aspect of life that cannot be perceived by the human eye. The world of atoms and their energy. Science popular at the time. Although works in the series feature to renderings of an atom. A large one in the lower right, which represents the energy of a physical atom. And a smaller one in the upper left, which represents the atom on an authentic or metaphysical plane. The discovery of atoms. So the particle weighs electromagnetism, x-rays, etc, were seen as proof of an invisible reality beyond the perceptible world. For athletes, atoms and thus humans were spiritual entities connected to the center of the universe. And she was excited to explore as many of the thinkers of her time and observe a dimension outside of our most basic existence. Seen from a perspective of constant wonder. Of course, nothing is basic network systems. Throughout her life, human life, Glenn's had a deep interest in nature and botany. Her early botanical studies, up to the late watercolors convey the shoe is not only a keen observer, but also possessed an analytical mind, which she could apply in here endeavor to perceive aspects of existence beyond the visible. Her studies reveal how she's shapes continuously between a naturalistic focus, two diagrams of the spiritual essence of the botanical subject. In her systematic investigation, chandeliers, properties, the plants reflect on her joy, humility, devotion, and attempt to connect. Not only to contemplate. Her imagery is full of symbols, letters, words, where symbols are like doors into another dimension. For human life gleaned, her entire work was about conveying the message is shoots it. To shed light on the greater existential issues. It would be pointless to translate symbols and letters into definite, unambiguous terms. They must always be seen in relation to the entire context. In your note books, she attempts to clarify the complex meanings of the various signs. Here are a few general explanations. The snail or a spiral represents development or evolution. The islets and the hook blowing yellow, and the lily and the rows represent femininity and masculinity, respectively. W stands for matter, while you stands for spirit. The almond-shaped arising when two circles overlap is called a vesicle pieces. And he's an ancient symbol for the development towards unity and completion. This one represents the TBL in many mythologies and a stands for completion in an alchemical tradition. Human life claims international debut was the 1860s. This pivotal in art exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition marked the beginning of He'll nafcillin is international recognition. Her work has since been displaying numerous exhibitions in the Nordic countries, europe, and the United States. Since her retrospective at modernism is set in Stockholm in 2013, interest in the Swedish artist has increased all over the world. Her works can be understood as artifacts to grasp the very meanings of abstraction, the relations among branches of different kinds of knowledge, and the nature of invention. The question is, how do we use them and reflect on them today in our current artistic landscape? Because they feel so fresh, we could be tempted to judge them through the lens of contemporary abstraction and other meditation. We could also judge them through the lens of the restrain and equanimity she showed when keeping her art mostly private. This humble pieces, for example, suggests how af Klint was framed during her lifetime. And artists training the classical tradition and trying to live up to our expectations. From 1935, cheers cited in Lund nine years later, having celebrated her 80th birthday, He'll nafcillin to return to Stockholm where she said that her calcium's head pick up Glenn's in Jewish home following a traffic accident, human life clean, died in the autumn of 1944, H, almost 82. She's certainly understood the implications of making an artwork that didn't visually represent anything with differentiated hair from other insider modernists. Decision to keep her most forward-looking work out of the market. Herpes is offered themselves to us in multiple dimensions to be seen through so many different interpretative filters. They will definitely means something different for those of us interested in science, math, linguistics, modernism, feminism, color, politics, and the history of aesthetics in general. She specified at her exploratory work should be understood as one buddy. And I would like to invite you to decipher with your core dominion of these highly spiritual and subjective form of art. Thank you again for joining me in this art history lesson. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting this channel. Please leave your questions or comments below. I would love to engage and discuss all about this wonderful artists. See you next time. 4. Class Project, thank you!: Math cleans, capitalists are full of why she's hot or automatic strokes, forms that were channel directly through her from a superior consciousness. After watching the lessons carefully, download the document here below and indicate the meaning of the imagery presented. Remember, if needed, go back and re-watch the lessons. I hope this class is payer your curiosity about abstract art. Thank you for watching and see you next time.