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Hilma af Klint: Swedish mystic hailed as pioneer of abstract art
- TigeriusKirk 4y agoHer work showed up recently in the background of Facebook's weird metaverse launch ad. https://youtu.be/G2W9YVkkn9U?t=10 https://youtu.be/G2W9YVkkn9U?t=10
- biztos 4y agoThanks, now I will never un-see that twerking flamingo... O___O
- zeruch 4y agoHilma was brilliant, but I feel like so much of the attention to her as of late has been around her "mysticism" and not the sheer breadth of her artistic work. Obviously one influences the other, but for me at least, I'm happily fixated on the visuals.
- biztos 4y agoI think she was a very good painter, but the clickbait title is overdoing it. Af Klint has been celebrated[0] for quite a while now, and if we are supposed to start caring about the Venn diagram of “mysticism” and the visual arts, well… first, it was in the air at that time and second, if you want your artists to not be into crazy shit I think you’re going to have boring artists. I think it would be much more interesting to talk about the intersection of wealth[1] and large-format painting. [0]: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/hilma-af-klint https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/hilma-af-klint [1]: https://hilmaafklint.se/about-hilma-af-klint/ https://hilmaafklint.se/about-hilma-af-klint/
- zeruch 4y agoI don't see the click-bait, but I do agree on "I think it would be much more interesting to talk about the intersection of wealth[1] and large-format painting."
- shellac 4y agoI don’t see the click bait there, and the article makes a reasonable case that she preempted the pioneers of abstract art (though I agree she’s also a less swirly mystical artist). From the article: > Interest in her work grew after a 2016 show at the Serpentine gallery in London, which transferred to the Guggenheim museum in New York, where it broke attendance records with some 600,000 visitors. This is about a forthcoming study, biography, and film.
- carterschonwald 4y agoI went to the Guggenheim exhibit. It really made me want to design a programming language for doing wacky generative geometric art. It was really fun thinking through what geometric construction tools were used for some of the shapes etc
- Maursault 4y ago> It really made me want to design a programming language for doing wacky generative geometric art. Reminded me of Logo.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
- tgv 4y agoBut nobody noticed. In that case, some early Islamic artist is probably "the true pioneer." And they were well known. Also: how can I take an article seriously, if it writes "As a clairvoyant and mystic, ..." Are they really claiming Af Klint had supernatural powers?
- inopinatus 4y ago
- Daub 4y agoActually, from reading the article, it seems yes. I have a vested interest in this era of European art. At the time, Colour science was torn between the empirical (Newton, Chevreul) and mad-ass angry mystics like Goethe and Itten. The later did nothing but obfuscate the truth, and threw mus at anyone of opposing views. In the end the latter won, and their muddled teachings have reigned supreme in art schools ever since.
- inopinatus 4y ago
- Daub 4y ago
- dang 4y agoCan you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? We're hoping for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- inopinatus 4y agoIt’s a wry and pithy comment. Sorry dang, you’re in the weeds on this one. The article simply doesn’t say that this artist had supernatural powers. The bizarre misreading otherwise is a mixture of magical and rigid thinking, or possibly poor English comprehension. However, there’s nothing substantive about speculating upon what goes on in someone’s head. Sometimes “no” is the correct and complete answer.
- Daub 4y ago
- efficax 4y agowe know that kandinsky saw af klints art before he made his own. her work wasn’t rediscovered, it was deliberately not shown for 100 years at her request. many artists saw it for a brief period while she was first active and it had a documented impact on them
- buovjaga 4y ago> it was deliberately not shown for 100 years at her request "She specified that her work should be kept secret for at least 20 years after her death. When the boxes were opened at the end of the 1960s, very few persons had knowledge of what would be revealed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilma_af_Klint#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilma_af_Klint#Legacy
- jnovek 4y agoPart of why af Klint is interesting is that some of her abstract work apparently preceded Kandinsky’s. They were at least working in parallel for a time.
- Daub 4y agoApparently is the key word here. At that time Europe was awash with art vaguely inspired by spiritual gurus. As the article mentions, Theosophy (the likes of Mdm. Blavatsky) and Anthroposophy (Rudolph Steiner). Kandinsky evolved to be the most well known. Before Steiner and Blavatsky, there was Goethe. Before Kandinsky there was Leadbeater. I teach art history (disclaimer… I am not an art historian). Too many times I have seen standard art history canon questioned on grounds that later prove to be questionable. The sad fact is that art history is most of all a question of ‘first past the post’, with little regard to inherent merit. Once written, it is very hard to unwrite.
- TSiege 4y agoIt's clear you didn't read the article and don't know anything of Klint's work. I've seen her and Kandinsky's work, if anything Kandinsky is derivative of Klint, who developed her abstract style a full 5 years before him. Both are wonderful artists, and she is "rediscovered" because she had been written out of art history books. She is now recognized as a contemporary of Kandinsky who influenced _him_. Here's an excerpt from the article, "She developed a vocabulary of triangles, squares, circles and spirals before Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction. While Kandinsky claimed to have created the first abstract painting in 1911, Af Klint had in fact beaten him to it in 1906"
- secondcoming 4y agoI don't think it counts as Outsider Art (Art Brut) if the artist has had formal training.
- mongol 4y agoI had never heard about her until a few months ago, and now I hear about her over and over. Strange.
- kranke155 4y agoShe’s become quite famous recently. It’s very possible that a collector has hired a PR company to blast this stuff through the media as well. PR companies are surprisingly effective.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Hilma Af Klint - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32327182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32327182 - Aug 2022 (1 comment) Hilma af Klint: Painting the Beyond - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428552 - March 2019 (1 comment) Hilma af Klint was the first abstract painter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18244875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18244875 - Oct 2018 (9 comments)