Traces of the invisible

“Go calmly on your way”. These were the very first words that Hilma af Klint received from a spirit that spoke to her. A simple advice, which most people would perhaps ignore with a shrug. Not af Klint, however, the Swedish artist who lived from 1862 to 1944, and on whom these words made an impression: she worked steadily on what would become her life’s project.

In the turbulent times in which she lived, permeated by spiritualism, war, groundbreaking inventions and a changing landscape, af Klint devoted her life entirely to receiving and studying messages from her spirit guides, who encouraged her to convert the messages not just into text, but into art as well. Hilma worked hard on her research oeuvre of more than 1,300 paintings and 26,000 pages of text during her life, but decided shortly before her death that the time in which she was living was not yet ready for her insights.⁽¹⁾ She instructed her heirs to store away her life’s work until twenty years after her death in 1944. Only in 1986, forty-two years after her death, Hilma af Klint’s life-sized, colourful paintings and drawings reached the public eye.

Nowadays, Hilma af Klint’s work is more popular than ever. Her solo exhibitions attract record numbers of visitors, her work is eagerly included in group exhibitions, and travels around the world on posters, notebooks and postcards. Could af Klint have predestined her work for this time? Is the time in which we are living ready for her cosmic worldview, the social revolution that she wanted to unleash and the hidden messages and symbolism that her life-sized works contain? She has now entered what is once more a turbulent time, full of crises, ecological destruction, geopolitical tensions and rapid technological developments, and Hilma af Klint is received with open arms. In the light of the current crises that are taking place globally, long-cherished assumptions about art, politics, gender, the natural world, religion and even the nature of time are being challenged. Precisely nowadays, when many people are looking for meaning and new perspectives, Hilma af Klint’s work offers an exciting invitation to reconsider what was long considered to be self-evident.

The exhibition Cycle, Portal, Path examines af Klint’s traces within contemporary art. In addition to the parallels between her time and the present, are there also similarities between artists who have been inspired by Hilma, who work in the same way or focus on similar themes? Who, just like Hilma, go calmly on their way amid a world that seems to be on fire?

The exhibition shows that countless artists, consciously or unconsciously, follow in af Klint’s footsteps and continue to work in the spirit of her oeuvre, method and vision. By means of Cycle, Portal, and Path, subthemes that embody three different aspects of af Klint’s artistic practice, her work is placed in a contemporary context. This intergenerational exhibition shows that Hilma af Klint has never been far away, and that the ecological, spiritual and technological urgency of her work is more relatable than ever before.

CYCLE

“Where war has torn up plants and killed animals there are empty spaces which could be filled with new figures, if there were sufficient faith in human imagination and the human capacity to develop higher forms.^{” (2)} Hilma af Klint

For Hilma, everything was constantly in motion. Af Klint started her artistic career as a landscape painter and enjoyed looking at nature and the metamorphoses that continuously take place within it. The cycle of life, the transformation of organisms, the phases from birth to death that everyone goes through and that connect us all: they have inspired artists from time immemorial, and fascinated Hilma as well. From 1907 onwards, af Klint worked exclusively in series that consisted of several works. A well-known series is The Ten Largest, in which she depicted the life cycle in egg tempera, from childhood until death.

The belief in a connection between all life forms takes on a new urgency in the current age of climate crises. The necessity of the theme has become firmly established in the art world, both on an institutional level and in the artistic practices of many artists. Hardly a biennale, art festival or new collection display takes place without a role for the climate, the Anthropocene or the relationship between humans and nature. The climate crisis is too present, too alarming, too oppressive to be ignored, even – or especially – in art. In addition to a climate crisis, we find ourselves in a crisis of the imagination: the topic feels too grand to be able to imagine it.⁽³⁾ Art is especially equipped for playing a role in rendering the current climate age relatable.

Meanwhile, museums and art institutions are increasingly the scene of protest and activism against (government) policies concerning the fossil fuel industry, pollution or climate change – the image of the besmirched Girl with a Pearl Earring will linger on in the collective memory. In addition to these kinds of activistic or informative responses within or to artistic practices, a renewed fascination for the natural world can be found among contemporary artists. No longer with humans at the top of the pyramid, but nature, humans and animals as one intertwined ecosystem; nature (insofar as it can be considered a separate category at all) increasingly plays a symbiotic role in art.

Af Klint’s fascination for the natural world can clearly be seen in her choice of symbols. For example, roses represented masculinity and lilies femininity. Despite this clear distinction between men and women, af Klint went beyond boundaries between genders in her work at the same time. Together with her partner and colleague Anna Cassel, she formed ‘Vestalasket’, a merging of feminine (Vestal) and masculine (Asket) energies, that also often swapped positions with each other. She often repeated this combining of genders in her paintings, sometimes literally written as a word, or depicted visually in symbolism. As Jennifer Higgie writes in her book The Other Side (2022): ‘Rigid definitions had no part in af Klint’s philosophy; in her pictures, she moves as fluidly between genders as she does between cosmic and physical realms; between botanical studies and geometry; from the body of a human to a bird to the roots of a tree’⁽⁴⁾Hilma af Klint incorporated ideas into her work such as a universal harmony that would be reached when men and women are equal and boundaries between nature and humans would fade away.

In the exhibition, the subtheme Cycle looks at the contemporary connection between microcosm and macrocosm: in which way do contemporary artists depict their relationship with nature? Thus, Emma Talbot fantasises about a future world in which a monolithic vision of nature is abolished and mutual connections between elements, plants and animals are the only way to survive ecological destruction. The work Verbena [EB1] from her contemporary floriography series 21st Century Herbal shows the forces and meanings of the eponymous plant. Jochem Mestriner, on the other hand, harks back to historical stories and Christian mythology and is inspired by texts by Romantic authors such as Charles Pierre Baudelaire or William Blake. He paints abstract life forms that transform and evolve on his canvas, as part of a greater whole and connected to each other. Johanna Unzueta works in a similar cyclical manner, in which time forms an inherent component of her practice. Unzueta paints large overlapping circles on large canvases and paper with her entire body, just like af Klint. The titles of her works refer to the number of months that she has spent making the work. Loie Hollowell connects the universal with the personal in her hypnotising, colourful paintings. Like Hilma af Klint, Hollowell is continually looking for new forms of abstract expression and meaning. Both try to translate the spiritual dimension or experience into a universal visual language, and in doing so go beyond binary boundaries such as man versus woman.

PORTAL

“The images are painted directly through me, without preliminary sketches, with great force” ⁽⁵⁾ - Hilma af Klint

Whether it’s advocacy for a National Witch Monument, the hashtag #spirituality on TikTok with more than 27 billion views, the popularity of yoga classes, ayahuasca ceremonies and silent retreats, or the remarks about the solar plexus made by Walter, a spiritually-minded participant in the Dutch reality TV series B&B Vol Liefde, spirituality seems to be widely represented and no longer exists only on the margins of society. During her life, Hilma af Klint developed a strong ability to communicate with the ‘other side’; partly out of a desire that had emerged due to the untimely death of her younger sister Hermina, and partly out of a strong personal urge and the conviction that she would be able to achieve something great through her work as a medium between the human and the more-than-human world. In close cooperation with her companions from the study group and spiritual circle Den Fem (The Five), Hilma devoted her life entirely to the receiving and studying of messages from her spirit guides, who also instructed her to make the series of paintings and drawings that are so popular nowadays. Hilma and The Five were not alone in this: spiritualism reached the height of its popularity around the end of the nineteenth century. Séances, communicating with the dead or visiting a medium were the order of the day.

Various religious movements influenced af Klint in shaping her own cosmic worldview, including the Christian Rosicrucians, Helena Blavatsky’s theosophy, and Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy that later emerged from it. The ideas of the emerging movements of theosophy and anthroposophy were not new: in their search for a better understanding of the world, people like Blavatsky and Steiner drew on various religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and ideas about karma, reincarnation and evolution. Thus, the emerging ideas formed a complex web of centuries-old theories and new insights that attempted to reflect on all aspects of society: from medicine to education, and from agriculture to art. However, these new anthroposophical ideas were also criticised, and critical comments have been made on some ideas within theosophy and anthroposophy up to this day, including Steiner’s ideas about race and ethnicity.⁽⁶⁾

Steiner’s name first appears in Hilma’s notebooks when she is around forty-five years of age. Steiner became an important source of inspiration and guide for af Klint.⁽⁷⁾ Steiner’s anthroposophical ideas struck af Klint like lightning; Steiner’s philosophy was deeply rooted in his beliefs about spiritual evolution, human development, and the interaction between the visible and invisible world. Af Klint saw herself as a transmitter, a link between earthly life and the other side. Af Klint and the rest of The Five carefully recorded the interactions they had with their spirits – named Amaliel, Ananda, Clemens, Esther, Georg and Gregor – in notebooks, with automatic drawings, fragments of text and later also paintings. Af Klint translated the spiritual messages into symbols, geometric shapes and vivid colours, which all referred to the insights she received. It led to a wholly new abstract formal language that had not been used by Western artists before. Therefore, af Klint is often mentioned as one of the founders of modern abstract art, and with her abstract visual language she was earlier than, for example, artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondriaan.

Portal examines the contemporary interest in the spiritual and the supernatural. Kyara van Meel, who graduated in 2022, was inspired by anthroposophical form studies, which she converts into colourful drawings and paintings. She also often uses the technique of automatic drawing, just like af Klint and The Five, which she uses to make a new mural in charcoal for the exhibition. Remco Osório Lobato, who was trained as an architect, searches for a harmonious composition in the shapes, sightlines and physical experience of the space. The spirit guides encouraged Hilma to make a design for a temple that would be able to house all the research and all her works. Especially for the exhibition, Osório Lobato created a scenography based on Hilma’s drawings for the temple, which connects the artworks in the exhibition with each other, as components of one greater whole. In her work, Molly Palmer connects existing shapes and stories from mythology, esoterism, religious systems and neurosciences. Her practice is characterised by its cyclical approach, in which she constantly refers to older works and combines them into new expressions. She examines the mysterious and the spiritual, and in doing so asks questions about mental health and credibility in relation to spirituality. Buhlebezwe Siwani presents the film installation AmaHubo, in which the healing traditions and spirituality of South-African communities are celebrated and at the same time are shown alongside the traces of colonial rule and oppression. Siwani’s work shows and celebrates spirituality outside the European-American context, independent from Western revivals like in af Klint’s time. In AmaHubo, the importance of providing the right context and frameworks for history is emphasised, showing the indebtedness to the roots of traditions and belief systems such as spiritualism.

PATH

“I am an atom in the universe that has access to infinite possibilities of development, and it is these possibilities I want, gradually, to reveal.” ⁽⁸⁾ - Hilma af Klint

Reflecting on a period often works best in hindsight; looking, from an appropriate distance, at what has changed, what has helped us, and where perhaps seeds for destructive consequences were planted. What remains and what disappears? Around 1900, groundbreaking inventions and technological innovations succeeded each other at such a breakneck speed that there was undoubtedly a collective state of excitement. Curiosity about new, utopian possibilities alternated with worries about a fast-changing world. Amid all this turbulence, artists tried to reshape the relationship of art with the world. New developments in the field of biology, psychiatry and technology revealed dimensions that had previously been invisible to the human eye, but which now became visible through other media, such as the microscope, radiography and photography. This provided af Klint with inspiration, but also worries.

Whereas Hilma’s age was turned upside down by the invention of photography, radio and the telegram, we now again find ourselves in an age in which technological and digital innovations are developing at an unprecedented speed. Optimism has given way to scepticism, in which the internet or artificial intelligence are no longer just seen as neutral tools, but also as potentially dangerous machines or political weapons. This ambivalence – on the one hand the democratisation and optimalisation that those new technologies can offer, on the other hand the fear of a point of no return in which technology gains the upper hand – is reflected in the art world. Artists who eagerly use new technologies such as 3D printing, artificially generated images and texts or virtual reality, versus artworks that focus on the consequences of these developments, for example when it comes to biased algorithms or the abuse of biometric technologies.

How can we imagine the future, and what role do technology and science play in this? Can they help us, or do they compromise artistic freedom, democracy or notions of truth? As the artist and author James Bridle writes, the attitudes of humans towards their place in the world and the relationships between humans and machines will in the end decide where technology will take humanity.⁽⁹⁾ We cannot abolish technology; we can only work through it and learn to think with technology. Bridle argues in favour of working together with technology, and of taking other forms of (non-human) intelligence seriously at the same time. ‘Computers are not here to give us all the answers, but to allow us to put new questions, in new ways, to the universe’.⁽¹⁰⁾ Art is especially equipped to ask and visualise these new questions. In af Klint’s view, too, artists had a special role to play in this, as her biographer Julia Voss writes: ‘Artists, she knew, had capacities, elevated senses, that would allow them to apprehend phenomena that eluded other people–rays, waves, and vibrations.’.⁽¹¹⁾ Just like af Klint tried to create a textual and visual representation of the new world that was emerging around her, artists nowadays also take up the challenge of visualising the zeitgeist or even the future in art.

In Path, two works by the Swedish artist Ulla Wiggen are shown. In the sixties, she made the work Sändare, in which she painted electricity pylons, as part of a larger series of electronic components and the structure of computers. Wiggen explored this world at a time when almost nobody could predict how digital technology would radically change our daily life. The other works shows a system of connections that is at least as complex: the brain. Wiggen’s fascination gradually shifted from the inside of computers to the inside and outside of humans, driven by an eagerness to understand the world around her. In her multimedia work, Jennifer Tee is inspired by the spiritual dimensions in the work of artists like af Klint and traditions from outside Europe, such as Taoist philosophy. She brings together her research in sculptures, ceramic objects, drawings and performances. In the exhibition, the sculpture Primordial Chaos – Selfhood Meltdown is shown, referring to af Klint’s series Primordial Chaos about the creation of the physical world. In addition, Tee presents two series of ceramic objects, Inner Parallel and Tao Magic, which also refer to drawings by af Klint and examine the tension between reality and perception. Katja Novitskova made three new works as part of the series Earthware (PDB approximation) for this exhibition. As a starting point, Novitskova began making a Venn diagram, a diagram that indicates a relationship, which she combined with artificially generated images. In this series, Novitskova examines the biotechnological opportunities of the future in a cosmological tribute to Hilma af Klint.

The form is the waves, behind the form is life itself. ⁽¹²⁾ - Hilma af Klint

Dedication to the spiritual, an emphasis on nature, and excitement and worries about the future: looking at the time in which Hilma af Klint lived and the present, many parallels can be drawn. Would af Klint’s spirit guides have given her the same directions in 2023? Perhaps it is precisely the linear conception of time that hampers an analysis of her work within a contemporary context; the reappraisal of her work fits perfectly within her own cyclical approach to time. Perhaps it is even unnecessary to talk about reappraisal or revival: Hilma af Klint has always been present. Amid turbulent times, it is possible to develop a new visual language, to look at the world around you with both introspection and great commitment, to listen, communicate and create. The artists in this exhibition embody what Hilma af Klint herself conveyed: the courage to make the invisible visible, to give shape to a world in motion, and not to shrink back from making art for other worlds and times.