Mystics and visionaries: A fine arts seminar
The Weitzman School’s Jackie Tileston’s seminar looks at the ways in which alternative forms of knowledge have fed artistic practices, both in the past and for contemporary artists in cultures around the globe.
(Pre-pandemic image) Exhibition view of Hilma af Klint’s “The Ten Largest” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, 2018. (Image: Courtesy of Ryan Dickey)
Hilma af Klint was an early 20th century Swedish painter and spiritualist who began creating radically abstract paintings in the early 1900s, long before the likes of Vasily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian embarked on their efforts. Her body of work has only recently begun to receive serious attention, culminating in a Guggenheim 2018-19 exhibition, “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future.” It was the first solo exhibition of af Klint in the United States and became the most-visited exhibition in the museum’s history, bringing in more than 600,000 visitors and leading the Guggenheim to extend it multiple times.