One of my goals for my art, would be to find visual language to express metaphysical, spiritual experiences. When I found Hilma af Klint's work, I was shook because I could remember years and years of telling my professors and teachers of the kind of work I was looking for. But miss af Klint has been slept on until recently. Now we can finally put some respeck on her name!
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| Photo Source: Washington Post |
Hilma af Klint's (1862 - 1944) show at the Guggenheim changed my perception of abstraction, and representation of non-physical concepts. Her work employs visual rhetoric for spiritual experiences. Her work is largely influenced by Theosophy, which is the theory of the absolute power of the universe. Introduced to the United States by Helena Blavatsky, Theosophy actually borrows from Buddhism and Hinduism, with a particular focus on the notion that there is a brotherhood of "Masters" in Tibet.
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| Hilma af Klint Exhibition at the Guggenheim, 2019 Photo Source: Guggenheim |
This is where it gets a little tricky, and where Hilma departs from what could have easily slipped into some Nazi bullshit. This same foundation of knowledge is what the Nazi's would eventually use to justify "sanitation." Led by zoologist Ernst Schäfer, a select group of German scientists travelled to Tibet for a study of human origins commissioned by Heinrich Himmler. Himmler specialized in agronomy - the study of agriculture and farming specifically for human consumption and evolution. You know who that is? Simply put, he was Adolf Hitler's right-hand mans. Hitler trusted to institute the standards for which the Gestapo (Nazi Secret Service) would use to categorize and persecute people during the Holocaust, and at large throughout the party of the Third Reich.
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| Shafer's student, Bruno Beger, taking craniology measurements of a Tibetan woman. Image Source: Rare Historical Photos |
Following the scarily well-documented history of Europeans "discovering" people, places and things previously unknown to them, plenty of iconography was borrowed and adapted for the needs of the Nazi party. The European swastika symbol as it would come to be known was borrowed from the Hindu sauvastika (where the arms move counter-clockwise instead of clockwise). Much of this science that postured some humans were more "fit" than others originates in Darwinian evolution (which Darwin did not actually create himself - he was primarily with the evolution of birds).
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| Official Emblem of the Theosophical Society. Photo Source: Theosophical Society Australia |
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| Caption at the Guggenheim. Photo taken by Me (Cheyenne Tobias). |
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| Caption at the Guggenheim. Photo taken by Me (Cheyenne Tobias). |
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| Excerpt of the timeline of af Klint's life at the Guggenheim. Photo taken by me (Cheyenne Tobias). |
What inspires me about miss Hilma is that she was working in a time much like this one. On the heels of the Industrial Revolution (which history likes to claim ended around 1840, but people were still, discovering and improving technology) Working mostly out of Sweden in the early 1900s, she had been following the latest scientific discoveries that expanded our understandings of light and how it can be used. Electromagnetic waves and x-ray waves were only the beginning. Some of her sources may be questionable - I don't know if I like this Helena Blavatsky lady because she was talking about white men and their divine power sooo likee....no. However, af Klint is now donned the title of the first abstract artist, which I think is fire to say the least.
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| Hilma af Klint in her studio. Photo Source: Guggenheim |
You can check out more of her larger work here. I also have some pictures of her smaller and less photographed works, so comment if you'd like to see those as well!
