Hilma af Klint's exhibit Paintings for the Future: successful, popular and ... late!

Hilma af Klint's exhibition Paintings for the Future has been a sensation. It's the most successful exhibition at he Guggenheim ever: 600,000 visitors. I don't have much to add to the general conversation. I have just a few pondering thoughts:
Why is her work so popular?
Is it sad that fame came too late?
Would it have changed the course of Modern Art?
Where was the work since she died in 1944?
How much money is the work worth?

Thought: Why is her work so popular?

 I love her work. So does everybody else, it seems. The atmosphere at the Guggenheim was festive, the public diverse, colorful. Nothing rarefied about this crowd, and how pleasant that is. What is the secret to its success? The work might be inspired by spirits, it breathes life and energy and joy and curiosity. It's spectacular. It's harmonious often. We have also seen similar works, Delaunay, Klee, Kandisnsky, Miro, so that the works' form is not shocking to us as it would have been to Klint's contemporaries.

Thought: Is it sad that fame came too late?

I wondered whether it is sad that she was not celebrated during her lifetime, as is the case for Kahlo and O'Keefe who would have very much enjoyed the fame their work attracts now. It probably was not so important to Hilma af Klint who had a spiritual approach to creating. But she must have thought the spirits had something to communicate to the world through her paintings. Rudolf Steiner, the theosophy guru, ordered her not to show her work for 50 years. Which is probably how long it took until her first works were shown to the world.

Her work would not have been understood nor welcomed by her contemporaries. See van Gogh, see Gauguin, or Seurat. The critics would have laughed. But her peer might have been struck by her audacity.

Thought: Would it have changed the course of Modern Art?

She was the first Western artist to paint abstractions. Had they been seen at least by contemporary artists, her work might have changed the course of Modern Art. Put it on a faster track. The first abstractions were not painted until about 10 years later, and they tended to be more timid than hers. Her work also demonstrates an astounding variety. Below landscapes by Kandinsky (on the left) and by Malevich (on the right) both painted around 1906: they were looking for abstraction but had not found it yet!

Thought: I wish I had been the one to discover the trove!

I day dream: imagine opening the door to a barn and coming upon these superlative paintings! Breathtaking moment. Well, it's actually pretty much how it happened. When she died in 1944, she requested that her work not be shown for another 20 years. Hence the title of the show, Paintings for the Future is particularly apt. She left her 1000+ paintings, her texts, her notebooks to her nephew, Eric af Klint, an admiral in the navy. His reaction, according to his son Johan? "he was horrified". He probably felt this legacy of crazy paintings by his crazy old aunt was a curse more than anything else. It was stored in fact in a barn until the farmer asked them to move it out.

Thought: What is the future of the Paintings for the Future?

Her nephew Eric af Klint started a foundation in her name in 1972 which is worthy, considering he did not appreciate it, but just to preserved her work, without exhibiting it. According to her will, her work could have been shown from 1964, andit took another 20 years before it was first exhibited internationally at the 1986 Los Angeles show "The Spiritual in Art". MOMA did not include any of her work in its 2012 show "Inventing Abstraction". Apparently, they alleged as the reason that she did not define her work as art, - despite the fact that she went to art school and was trained as an artist. Occultism worries the establishment.
But in primary schools all over, children will be doing Hilma af Klint art projects. And young women scholars will write their thesis on her work for their art history degree!

Thought: how much money is the work worth?
The future of the work is uncertain. Not a single one has been sold yet, quite an incredible fact in regards to the monetization of the art world. Her work is in the position of a young, virginal girl, bare foot in her white night gown. Who will pay the most to wed her? Once a work or two has been sold, the fee paid for it will determine her place in the hierarchy of art economics. Will it be 10MYO, say like a Paul Signac or 100MYO, like a Modigliani? There is talk of the Foundation selling some of her work, and they are likely to go for a pretty penny, given the popularity of the show which will pay its money back for Museums. The fees would be used by the foundation to fund research into the artist and her work, assures Patrick O'Neill, the chairwoman of the Foundation. As there are more than 1000 paintings, that means that bundle of works left in a barn would be worth maybe half a billion dollars. An ironical lot of money for work by a woman who struggled financially through her life. But same story as van Gogh or Seurat, naturally. Now Robert Longo lives on the fat of the land with works that fetch 500K+, and where will they be in 100 years? 

Thought: Influences

I could not find information, and the exhibition shares none, about what art and artists she was exposed to. It's clear from her early work that she was familiar with contemporary painters,whether local ones or French: Monet, Manet. She was certainly influenced by science aesthetics as in the elegant scientific plate which she drew (see below) to sustain herself.
She is known to have traveled to Italy and to Switzerland. Did she see exhibitions there? Did she travel elsewhere?

I am glad she has found us and that we have found her.

written and published by  - -  Arabella von Arx

Escaped Alone, Caryl Churchill's play at BAM

Escaped Alone - play by Caryl Churchill, directed by James McDonald, at the Brooklyn Opera House

The Visitor, Mrs Jarrett spies 3 retired women sitting in a backyard in England, London probably. They invite her in, after all she's one of them probably, retired, with a detestable taste in clothes and hair style. They offer her a cup of tea. Hyperrealist set. 

The women don't finish their sentences. Caryl Churchill can't be bothered, and we are grateful, because we can finish them ourselves. They talk about birds, what bird would you like to be, eagles or blackbird. They talk about cooking: I don't like to cook since I killed my husband in the kitchen.

It's a safe, dull environment. The one who killed her husband and went to jail for 6 years at least has something to discuss. Her son won't see her. The 2nd woman is depressed, she'd like to travel to Japan but going to Tesco is a challenge. The 3rd one, terrified of cats, wishes she had someone in her life she could trust to reassure that there are no cats inside her drawers or pillowcase. Loneliness. They're retired. We don't learn anything about the Visitor, but she seems to fit right in.

It's not about psychological insight. Much closer to Beckett: it's a situation, things happen to them.The actors don't worry about what their motivations are, this is no method acting time. In the loneliness of the characters, their emotions are stunted. Little puffs pop up here and there.

Suddenly, and I mean, really suddenly, the set's lights switch off and the Visitor magically appears in the foreground, as a barker at a fair. A different reality. She describes an apocalyptic world. The rivers flow backwards. Beds and dingy and swimmers float on the stock market. There is no food, and most of it go to TV shows, so the obese sell slice of themselves until they get hungry and eat rafters of their own fat.  After children and politicians set houses on fire, a whole country burns down.

Back to the women. They are surrounded by a wooden fence. From time to time a car is heard. They talk about the neighborhood: didn't a newsagent replace the fish and chips on the corner?  We have to take their word for it, because, what is behind that fence? Is it the apocalyptic world the visitor describes? If it isn't, that apocalypse could happen anytime, burst their little bubble.

It might be our future too. Who knows? In 1938, Jews in Poland sat in their gardens sipping tea. While they were aware that Hitler was a threat, and we know global warming is a threat, it must have been impossible to imagine the apocalypse at hand. Japanese sat in their gardens too on August 5, 1945, in Hiroshima.

 It could be argued this manmade apocalypse is interior to the old ladies, its potential certainly. Play goes back and forth between tame backyard and apocalyptic fairground.

One moment of sweetness: they sing  in unison an old doobop song from their youth. For a short while, they're not alone. They're playful. Nothing else matters. 

Great ensemble performances, with the Visitor, Mrs Jarrett, played by Linda Bassett with tone perfect delivery.

Funny too.

Wouldn't have minded a second act, and a third for that matter. But I suppose Ms Churchill didn't see the point, same as finishing sentences...

At the end, the Visitor leaves and closes the door on the microcosm of that backyard: "I thanked them for the cup of tea and went home." 

Well received by audience. By me too.