Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Hilma af klint. Paintings For The Future. Guggenheim Museum





I’m still feeling the effects of this superb outrageously beautiful exhibition of paintings by the once unknown artist Hilma af Klint who is finally getting the attention that she was long overdue for. She’s been dead since 1944 when after 81 years on this earth she was run over by a tram and was killed. 81 is a good age, and her output of gorgeous paintings both huge and small is what makes up this glorious exhibition that every artist should see before it closes in April.
And if possible avoid going up to the GuMu on a weekend because it was hysterically packed. What makes viewing here bearable is of course the spiral ramps that gently lead people to the many bays that fill the museum, but still go during the week if possible. I went with my dear friend the painter Carol Heft and we both loved the show.
I like going to museums alone, but sometimes I enjoy going with friends and its terrific to go with another pair of eyes especially when they belong to another artist. The first thing you see are those 10 gigantic paintings that fill the foyer like gallery space off the lobby and you can easily spend a good amount of time here before going up the spiral ramps to see the rest of the show.
The best way to see these large works is without a crowd (good luck with that) and I was surprised how well they looked from the balcony like opening on the ramp directly above the paintings. These very large works are in their size alone way ahead of their time, hell these were done in 1907, and are as beautiful as anything I’ve seen in a very long time.
Her work is full of marvelous surprises an edge of a painting left unpainted reminding me of a Barney Newman work, her wonderful brush strokes and sense of color and her almost self taught looking compositions except they are so damn sophisticated. In fact so much of her work brings to mind artists who worked many years after Klint, the list is long.
Hilma was born in 1862 to a well off family in Sweden and always was interested in making art and being an artist. Her early work which is also shown is not impressive, typical traditional landscapes but the little painting of a dog is quite charming. Changes in her work and life started in 1907 when she got interested in the spiritual, the occult and theosophy and she took these interests along with séances and brought their symbols and signs into her paintings.
She was also interested in nature and the natural and indeed unnatural world and also incorporated these into her work. There are all sorts of strange things in her paintings, is that a tiny painting of a Byzantine icon? But it is her color and use of design and symbols that command our attention along with her superb draftsmanship. There are many spirals and circles along with tender flowers and birds, sea shells, and wiggly lines, pyramids made up of small samples of colors, exploding pin wheels, snakes and letters and numbers.
Also brilliant are the small sample of her meticulous notebooks and the loose quickly done sketches done on what looks like brown wrapping paper. For some reason she stipulated that her work not be seen until 20 years after her death and it took even longer than that for her paintings to be shown. Now art history is in a toss, and our hearts and eyes and minds have been poked and pinched and our senses tickled. An exhibition that made me want to scream. Afterwards Carol treated me to brunch I had the Hilma chicken and cheese quesadilla and Carol had the Af Klint bacon hamburger. The best exhibition of 2018 and maybe 2019.

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