Hilma af Klint’s Vast Cosmic Synthesis at the Guggenheim

Installation view. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future at the Guggenheim Museum, October 12, 2018 – April 23, 2019.

Between 1906 and 1915, a young artist in Stockholm worked tirelessly under the instruction of a set of spirit-guides to complete a set of 193 paintings. She dreamed that they would one day decorate a circular temple that spiraled upward. Over a hundred years later, that vision came partially true, with the exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future installed in the Guggenheim’s high round atrium. Hilma af Klint’s work, largely unknown until about 30 years ago, feels like a surprise and revelation for several reasons. She was a successful female artist in Stockholm at a time when women did not have professional careers, and she was a visionary who painted abstract paintings avant la lettre. For the former, Hilma produced careful botanical illustrations; the focus of the exhibition is her magnificent body of abstract paintings, particularly the 193 paintings for the temple.

Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 13. 1915. Oil on canvas.

The exuberantly colored paintings look as though they could have been made yesterday, so easily do they fit the visual mores of our time. Hilma intended these paintings “for the future”, when they would be more readily understood as diagrams that reveal the essential nature of the universe. Abstraction as we often understand it–simplifying the form of a real object like a tree or chair to get at its essential nature, for example–is not what is happening here. “Nonobjective” painting, which the Guggenheim was founded as a temple to, use geometries to attain a spiritual dimension instead of relating to the physical world. Hilma’s work, although spiritual and geometric, operates by yet another means.

Group VI, Evolution, No. 7. 1908. Oil on canvas.

The artist’s extensive notebooks and journals detail how she saw these works as diagrams of natural and scientific phenomena, such as atoms and evolution. It is as if she was attempting to make a periodic table of the cosmos in 193 paintings. A devout Christian, Hilma famously claimed that spirits guided her early work, telling her what to paint. Today that sounds like quackery. It was more common and accepted within society, and, indeed, the scientific community at the time. Her approach is painstaking: she strives for an accurate analysis of the systems of the cosmos using visual means. 

Installation shot, Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 5 – 8, Adulthood. 1907. Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas.
Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 1, Childhood. 1907. Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas.

The The Ten Largest series represents the different stages of life. Each line and color aligns with a complex symbology that Hilma created. For example, Hilma associated the blue of the above work with childhood. These ten paintings are presented in order of childhood, to youth, to adulthood, to old age on the Guggenheim’s walls, which is what the artist intended: they were meant to be seen as a series and only in that order can they represent that whole lifespan of a person. Hilma made these large, roughly 10×8-foot paintings on the floor (before Pollock). This series is the first you encounter at the Guggenheim, setting the stage for the exuberant and complex paintings the fill the circular ramp.

At the same time, watercolors like the gorgeous Tree of Life illustrations show how Hilma also worked on a very small scale. She was an inveterate planner and notetaker. Partially this is because she wanted to make sure future generations understood her work. Notebooks contain detailed instruction on different symbols or the meaning of certain colors. This care points to her confidence that future generations, if not her own, would appreciate the detailed, god-given visions that she presents.

Altarpieces (from left to right): Group X, No. 2, Group X, No. 3, Group X, No. 1. All oil and metal leaf on canvas. 1915.

After 1915, and a personal crisis, Hilma’s practice changed from one of explicit direction by spirit guides to a more self-directed selection of imagery, in series of paintings such as Evolution, Dove, Swan. For Hilma, the scientific and spiritual worlds were naturally conjoined, and so she moved easily between the subject matter of Evolution to the trio of Altarpieces (above). At the same time as Hilma explored a radically non-representational mode of painting, she was trained and successful as a botanical draftsperson, of which there are a few examples. Her life’s work, therefore, seems to have been one of vast synthesis. Hilma’s colorful iconography illustrates no less than the interconnected nature of all natural systems and world religions. Sweeping from the micro of a botanical illustration like the one below to the paintings above, Hilma could see a world in a grain of sand, and then create a visual analysis of its place in the cosmos.

Untitled. 1890s. Watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper.

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future is on view through April 23 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Tableau of Human Existence: Marguerite Humeau at New Museum

Installation view of “Marguerite Humeau: Birth Canal” at New Museum, September 4, 2018 – January 6, 2019

Now on view at New Museum are ten amorphous sculptures that recall both the Venus of Willendorf and Brancusi, highlighted on ledges and shelves built into the irregularly shaped exhibition space. Raking light and the contorted space direct the viewer into the immersive environment of Birth Canal, the first museum presentation in the U.S. of work by French artist Marguerite Humeau. What is not seen but which carefully envelops the viewing experience is a custom scent called Birth Canal (Venus body odour), The scent of the birth of humankind (2018) and a ten-channel sound installation titled The Venuses envision the extinction of their offspring, humankind (2018). The titles themselves frame an epic story about birth and death rooted in both anthropology and fiction.

Installation view of “Marguerite Humeau: Birth Canal” at New Museum, September 4, 2018 – January 6, 2019

If the individual female body is the physical site of generation, here Humeau posits the female writ large as the primogeniture of mankind. There is no male presence. To be human, here, is to be female. The exhibition spins a tale about how humankind developed, an imaginative invocation of a scientific theory that early humans ate animal brains for their psychoactive effects. Humeau based her work on anthropological research from around the time that early humans were making venus figurines, like the famous Venus of Willendorf statue, whose function is debated. One possible function of ancient Venus figurines—or these more cerebellum-shaped, glossy sculptures by Humeau—is to guide the experience a person has in an altered state.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The titles of the sculptures likewise guide the imagination of the viewer. Venus of Hohle Fels, A 70-year-old female human has ingested a sloth’s brain in brown alabaster, Two-Headed Venus, A 25-year-old pregnant female human and herself as a 90-year-old have ingested as tortoise’s brain in bronze, Venus of Kotenski, A 35-year-old female human has ingested a marmoset’s brain in pink alabaster (all 2018) specify individual narratives behind each form, although nothing as literal as a sloth or marmoset is represented. While we are told the statues are different female forms, they look only vaguely anthropomorphic: metaphors for the human rather than representations of the human. The descriptive titles of the venuses recall the displays of an ethnographic museum, as if these sculptures were actually ritual objects that had survived thousands of years. Yet the digitally rendered quality of the sculptures, with their gorgeous high-polish, machine-made curves, are strikingly of out sync with what was technically possible for early humans. The theatrical environment with its black walls and spotlights, and the sound and scent that work affectively on the viewer, also dispel the impression of a scientific history.

Installation view of “Marguerite Humeau: Birth Canal” at New Museum, September 4, 2018 – January 6, 2019

Like a synthetic Greek chorus, the voices of the sound installation wail about the extinction of their offspring. While the voices speak of death, a scent like a new-born baby diffused throughout the space invokes birth. They help to elevate the tableau to a metaphor or parable: the voices foretell a possible extinction of humankind itself, even while the scent drives home viscerally the lived experience in all its first sweetness. And, I would argue, the way time works in Birth Canal forces us to see Humeau’s work as a metaphorical tableau that speaks beyond specific histories, real or imagined. The dark environment where the Venuses float as if in a void enables the metaphorical tale to creep over your sight, smell, and hearing as your body melts into the darkness. It creates space for a kind of disembodied consciousness, perhaps exactly what is needed  for the viewer to feel akin to early humans, who might have been in an altered state in a cave with similar figurines. Stepping outside time is essential. Humeau cites an ancient ancestor and the scope of humankind’s existence, conjuring up a huge sweep of geologic time in the mind of the viewer. Yet the vision itself is distinctly futuristic. The sculptures are too glossy. The haunting, almost screeching artificial wails approximate the human but do not bear the trace of actual human voices. Outside of the teleological existence of humankind (that, as a member of the species we exist within), the viewer smells the beginning and hears the end all at once, past and future combined.

The undifferentiated sweep of time and the disembodied environment creates a porous and evocative space for a set of ideas about the human and the animal, time and existence, magic and science. In that sense, Birth Canal invokes the kind of the totemic guidance that venus figurines may once have held.

Marguerite Humeau: Birth Canal” is on view at the New Museum through January 6, 2019.

Daniel Small and Hiwa K: “74 million million million tons” at SculptureCenter

Detail from video in Animus Mneme (2018) by Daniel R. Small

74 million million million tons asks what kind of evidence, or bodies of knowledge, art can produce. This abstract premise touches on pressing issues, such as the illegal movement of bodies across borders, environmental destruction, the line between the human and the android, and much else. The hope, perhaps, for curators Ruba Katrib and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, is that an oblique perspective can effectively counter the dominance of narratives produced by larger societal forces. Ten artists (Shadi Habib Allah, George Awde, Carolina Fusilier, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Hiwa K, Nicholas Mangan, Sean Raspet and Nonfood, Susan Schuppli, Daniel R. Small, and Hong-Kai Wang) present distinct bodies of recent work. Because each of their works is a deep dive into a new terrain, it requires an investment of time and attention on the part of the viewer to take in this moderately sized show.

Installation view featuring Animus Mneme (2018) by Daniel R. Small, 74 million million million tons, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, April 30 – July 30, 2018

Daniel Small’s new work Animus Mneme (2018) examines the transhuman and the eternal with a mixture of video and seeming artifacts. In a riveting video, Small interviews Bina48, an android replica of a woman named Bina Aspen that was commissioned on behalf of her partner. The digital avatar speaks convincingly about the gap between machine and human experience. Bina48 asserts that she is evolving toward a human-like consciousness. Unlike the human she was based on, Bina48 can “live” forever. The people behind this techonology, the Terasem Movement Foundation, believe that a person’s consciousness can be transferred to another biological or technological form. Watch the video in full to hear Bina48 colloquially discusses what might seem impossible: her experience of pregnancy and the philosophical roots of evil.

Installation view featuring Animus Mneme (2018) by Daniel R. Small, 74 million million million tons, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, April 30 – July 30, 2018

Recreations of ancient computing specimens shift the timescale of the dialogue from the cutting edge to the ancient. Small also presents videos with footage of an ancient spiritual site in Mexico that add a melancholy and backward-looking tone. The ruins implicitly question what can remain of a human presence. The mix of imagined pasts and possible futures suggests slippage, floating free from our moment in time.

Detail, A View from Above (2017) by Hiwa K, 74 million million million tons, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, April 30 – July 30, 2018

Installation view featuring A View from Above (2017) by Hiwa K, 74 million million million tons, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, April 30 – July 30, 2018

In contrast, Hiwa K’s video A View from Above (2017) is squarely rooted in the present, albeit narrated through the veil of fiction. The video presents a first-person account of a refugee attempted to flee his country for asylum in Europe. Co-written with Abu Hamdan, a voiceover by Hiwa K narrates the impossible difficulties of navigating bureaucracy while the camera looms over a scale model of a desolate city. Crumbling and devoid of people in hues of sand, it evokes the destroyed towns of the Middle East, such as the one that the artist himself fled. In the video, the migrant is only able to achieve the legal standing worthy of migration by pretending to be from a town in the unsafe zone. Although this immigration story is not the artist’s own, migration here is personal, immanent, and rife with horror and stupidity. It speaks to the desperation that compels people to leave their homes. The current solo exhibition of Hiwa K at the New Museum touches on similar themes, particularly in Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue), a 2017 work included in the last documenta.

Installation view, 74 million million million tons, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, April 30 – July 30, 2018

For me, other works of note include a project by Susan Schuppli that represents the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with such glistening beauty that in creates a troubling relation in the viewer to disaster. A striking Oculus Rift experience EVA v3.0: No right way 2 cum by Sidsel Meineche Hansen puts the viewer in the position of a female avatar masturbating, a position which graphically switches when the avatar faces and seems to ejaculate onto the viewer’s googles. The project intends to  challenging how women’s bodies are policed, specifically how representation of female orgasm is regulated by British pornography laws.

74 million million million tons is on view at SculptureCenter in Long Island City through July 30, 2018.