Beyond The Visible - Hilma af Klint

I had read a bit about Hilma af Klint, but like most people who saw the exhibit at the Guggenheim, I was stunned when I realized how powerful her works are in person. Still, I thought I basically knew her story, so when someone recommended this documentary to me, I put off watching it for a while. Well, I finally saw it, and was blown away a second time. The filmmaker did a marvelous job showing me all the things I didn't know about Hilma af Klint. I knew she was academically trained, but I didn't know how assiduously she worked in series and developed her subjects. I knew she was interested in theosophy, but I didn't know how significant its views on women were to her. I didn't know how connected she was to scientific thought about the makeup of the universe. I thought I had seen a lot of her works but there were more and more, many astonishing.

You might have to be seriously interested in art to get caught up in this story, and some people will find the pace too leisurely, but it was exactly what I thought suited the subject. The photography was gorgeous. The art-historical points were clearly made. The multilingual "talking heads" were all lively, interesting people with useful, entertaining contributions (stay tuned after the credits for an additional tidbit from one of them).

My only complaint was that I would have liked to see some discussion of other types of abstraction, and how they fit into af Klint's work: decorative household arts of Scandinavia, spiritual art of the middle east, etc. But I suppose one doc can't cover everything. This one did so much more than I expected that it earns high marks from me. I hope my review doesn't impact anyone else's enjoyment, by getting their hopes up too high, but I was so impressed that I had to come here and write something.

The movie is beautiful, suiting the beauty of Klint's work. It makes a convincing case that Klint was the first abstract painter of the modern era. The film is also usefully political, describing an art establishment that has never made room for women because only men possess "genius." The paintings here are integrated with the sublime natural environment that inspired them, to which Klint added her fascination with science (what we would now recognize as astrophysics, among other natural sciences), contrasts (men and women, black and white, heat and cold), and humanity, its past and future.

What we don't learn here, likely because of insufficient research to date, is the degree that contact with the spirit world, through Klint's seances, was in the mix of Klint's influences.

This movie is also blessedly free of "art talk." The marvelous commentators speak in plain language.

And the paintings themselves are too beautiful to miss.

"Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form, which is called life."

Deeply moving on a number levels, so good that I watched it twice. There is obviously Hilma af Klint's artwork itself, which is vibrant and expressive, spanning early realistic efforts, pieces suffused with natural, scientific, and spiritual content, and her groundbreaking abstract work which in recent years has been recognized as preceding those credited with having pioneered it, e.g. Wassily Kandinsky. The documentary does a great job at showcasing it too, often simply putting the images on the screen, moving through various series she created, showing us her notebooks, and focusing in on detail. Most of all I felt joy radiating through her work, and it felt like it had been created by someone enlightened, maybe like Walt Whitman in 1855 when he wrote Leaves of Grass.

In an astonishing sequence we see af Klint's artwork placed side by side with those produced much later, including Josef Albers' Homage to the Square (1971), Paul Klee's Castle and Sun (1928), Cy Twombly's untitled scrawls (1967), and Andy Warhol's quartet of Marilyns (1960). We see that she was representing fundamental portions of those works in 1916, 1920, 1896, and 1932, respectively.

The film also gives us a good understanding of how af Klint's work was informed both by theosophy, from which she believed in the oneness of all things, as well as her knowledge of modern physics, a fascinating fusion. We see works over 1889-1905 depicting Radio waves, X-rays, "the atom is dividable," the electron, radioactivity, quantum theory, and special relativity. We also see spiritual works she called Paintings for the Temple over 1906-1915 that include the tree of knowledge, primordial chaos, her extraordinary "Ten Largest" depicting the stages of life, and abstract forms of the world's major religions, identifying their underlying commonality. She's compared to both Edvard Munch in neighboring Norway for her importance to her country's pantheon of artists, but also to Leonardo da Vinci for her intellectual curiosity and for integrating a broad discipline of the sciences into her work.

And yet, af Klint was disregarded in her life and for decades afterwards, and the documentary vents its outrage over this fact through a number of art historians, all of whom seemed sharp and well informed. Their criticism of the art world as being misogynistic, constructed in a way so as to reject new discoveries, and unfortunately as having money as one its motives all rang true. In her day, spiritualist and would-be mentor Rudolf Steiner largely rejected her, and Wassily Kandinsky beat his own drum to claim being the first abstract artist (I adore his work, but as he also treated Gabriele Münter shabbily, that's two strikes for him). In the modern day, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the MoMA in New York don't come across well here, and I would have loved to have seen statements from them in the present.

The film also does a good job at reconstructing af Klint's life via photographs, interviews with descendants, taking us to the places she lived, and setting the context in Sweden at the time. It touches on her seeing beyond binary forms of gender, her lifelong partner (and possible lover) Anna Cassel, and her being a vegetarian. Just as importantly, it's beautiful in its own right, with often stunning footage of nature and a nice way of transitioning from af Klint's work to scenes in real life. This is one to seek out.

This documentary is proof that Hilma af Klint was a visionary. Her art demonstrates that she could innovate and create her path in the art world even with all the challenges presented. I'm glad her history is being told (as in this magnificent documentary), and hopefully, more women artists are recognized as fundamental characters of different art movements and thus art history.

'A thought crystallizes the universe into geometrical figures.'

A curious wanderer trying to unravel the secrets of this universe and share her findings with others through her art. Hilma af Klint has marveled nature and all of the surrounding, and has meticulously studied the wonders of it. Her curious and loving soul is present in all of her paintings. Not only was she, and remains to be, an amazing artist, but an extraordinary human being who I profoundly admire.