BREAKING MYTHS! Unveiling the storytelling processes in the reception of Hilma af Klint from the 1980s and 2010s Anni Reponen Department of Culture and Aesthetics Master’s thesis 45 HE credits Art History International Master’s Programme in Art History (120 credits) Spring term 2020 Supervisor: Andrea Kollnitz BREAKING MYTHS! Unveiling the storytelling processes in the reception of Hilma af Klint from the 1980s and 2010s Anni Reponen ABSTRACT This thesis studies the critical reception of Hilma af Klint trough three exhibitions: Spiritual in Art – Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (Los Angeles, 1986), Secret Pictures by Hilma af Klint, (Helsinki, 1988) and Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction (Stockholm, 2013), addressing the crucial prominent figures and voices in the discursive field around af Klint. The aim is carried out through the Critical Discourse Analysis by Norman Fairclough, coupled with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the cultural field and habitus. Judith Butler's theory of gender performance completes the theoretical framework by addressing issues of gender in both af Klint's practice as well as in the analysed critical reviews. The thesis examines how the discourses about af Klint changed during different periods of time in the 1980s and the 2010s. The central hypothesis is that this case study can be used as an example to see how the art field presents women artists as a marginal phenomenon instead of including them in the general art historical canon. But the reception of af Klint cannot be fully understood through the lens of gender; thus, e.g. the closeness to the occult is considered both as a leading mechanism in the artistic practice, creating interest towards af Klint, and as an identity which pushes her to the marginal. The results of this study lead to a better understanding of critical articles' role in the cultural phenomena's narrative creation. Keywords: Hilma af Klint, art criticism, spiritual art, early abstract art, art historiography, the 1980s, the 2010s, Moderna Museet, Swedish art LIST OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Aims and questions ............................................................................................................................ 4 1.2. Material and delimitations ................................................................................................................. 6 1.3. Methodology and theoretical framework........................................................................................... 8 1.4. Previous research ............................................................................................................................. 12 1.4.1. Studies about Hilma af Klint ................................................................................................... 14 1.4.2. Studies about spiritualism in art .............................................................................................. 18 1.4.3. Studies about art historical theories connected to art criticism ............................................... 22 1.5. Outline ............................................................................................................................................. 25 2. REVISITING THE MYTHS AROUND HILMA AF KLINT ................................................................ 28 2.1. “Not to make public sooner than twenty years after her death” – The narrative of the will ........... 37 3. “HIDDEN MEANINGS” – A CLASH BETWEEN FORMALIST AND SPIRITUAL ......................... 41 3.1. The way to Los Angeles .................................................................................................................. 46 3.2. “Why does she have her own room?” – A wanted sample of the break of the canon ..................... 49 4. THE FINNISH START ........................................................................................................................... 58 4.1. The twofold character of af Klint – Fant’s view .............................................................................. 64 4.2. “A footnote in Swedish art history” – The refusal of inclusion in the late 1980s ........................... 69 5. A NEW APPROACH – MODERNA MUSEET ..................................................................................... 78 5.1. A provocative pioneer – Aims and themes of Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction .............. 85 5.2. The critic on the canonised preoccupations – The reception of A Pioneer of Abstraction .............. 91 6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................... 99 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................................. 105 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 106 Printed sources........................................................................................................................................... 106 Internet sources .......................................................................................................................................... 110 Non printed sources ................................................................................................................................... 111 List of Illustrations .................................................................................................................................... 112 Appendix I: Used materials for the discourse analysis .................................................................................. 113 Appendix II: Selected list of the prominent figures mentioned in the thesis ................................................. 115 Appendix III: Maaretta Jaukkuri in Conversation with Anni Reponen on 22nd of October 2019 ................. 116 Appendix IV: Ulf Wagner in Conversation with Anni Reponen on 12th of May 2020 ................................. 121 Appendix V: Iris Müller-Westermann in Conversation with Anni Reponen on 17th of July 2020 ............... 126 Figure 1. HILMA AF KLINT - The Swan no. 17. Group IX, The SUW/UW Series, 1915 Oil on canvas, 155 x 152 cm By courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation / Photo: Moderna Museet 1. INTRODUCTION ---He took me to the old barn or a storage room nearby of the Anthroposophist Centre in Järna. It was a grey and gloomy autumn day in October. We went into the barn, he took a box, opened it, and started to take the rolls out. I was about to faint just there. I had never seen such a thing. ---1 This is the way the art historian and the former head of the exhibitions of the Nordic Arts Centre, Maaretta Jaukkuri (b. 1944), describes her encounter with the painting Swan no. 17 (1907) (Figure 1 Maaretta Jaukkuri in conversation with Anni Reponen on 22nd of October 2019. 1 1.) by the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). During a conversation with her in November 2019, Jaukkuri tells me a memory of autumn 1987, when she was led to the barn outside of Stockholm by Stockholm University Professor of art history Åke Fant (1943-1997), who then had researched af Klint from the beginning of the 1970s.2 The memory of Jaukkuri combines themes principal to my dissertation, which provides an analysis of Hilma af Klint’s reception in the 1980s and the 2010s. The joy of discovery, which filled Jaukkuri in the barn of Järna, has also teased many other researchers and art historians among the years. The paintings tickled the imagination of reviewers, public and specialists in the 1980s at the exhibition Spiritual in Art – Abstract Painting 1890-1985, held in Los Angeles in 1986; later the same happened in the solo tour Secret Pictures by Hilma af Klint in 1988-1989. Then again, in the 2010s the extensive retrospective exhibition Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction opened its doors at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2013 and brought the artist to a level of international acknowledgement still perceivable today. In autumn 2018, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York opened the most visited retrospective exhibition of the museum’s history, carrying the name Hilma af Klint – Paintings for the Future. Additionally, the story of Fant taking Jaukkuri to see the paintings in the barn in Järna – which later led to the first solo exhibition of the artist – is telling about the path of historiographical influences and the social connections of art historians involved in the field of af Klint. The story shows how the hidden artworks of a nearly unknown artist made their way from the barn of Järna to be part of the permanent collection of Moderna Museet.3 The collaboration, contact and enthusiasm of different figures such as Fant and Jaukkuri, pushed af Klint closer to the artistic institutionalisation and – as it has been expressed - to break the canon, i.e. the agreed narrative of art history. It seems relevant here to explore the ways in which af Klint broke the canon, exemplifying the article “Hilma who? No more!”, by art critic and journalist Roberta Smith on the New York Times in October 2018. Like many others, this article discusses how af Klint achieved the breakthrough of abstract art by painting her famous series Paintings for the Temple between the years 1906 and 1915, before the canonised pioneers of abstraction, such as Kazimir