CURSO DE LICENCIATURA EM MATEMÁTICA / UAB – UEPA
INGLÊS INSTRUMENTAL
TERCEIRA AVALIAÇÃO
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I – COMPREENSÃO DE TEXTO
‘Hilma Who?’ No More
If you like to hallucinate but disdain the requisite stimulants, spend some time in the
Guggenheim Museum’s staggering exhibition, “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future.”
The museum’s High Gallery — the name has added resonance in this context — displays the
show’s rapturous overture, a series of 10 paintings by af Klint (1862-1944), a little-known
Swedish painter, modernist pioneer and erstwhile spiritualist. Collectively titled “The Ten
Largest,” they may induce disorientation, not the least for the way they blow open art
history.
These game-changing works envelop you in hues from dusty orange to pale pinks and
lavenders, tumbling compositions of circles, spirals and pinwheels, and unfurling ribbonlike
lines that sometimes form mysterious letters and words. In their wit, ebullience, multiple
references and palette, “The Ten Largest” seem utterly contemporary, made-yesterday fresh.
But prepare for label shock: they were created in 1907.
The year 1907 is imprinted on the minds of many people drawn to modern art as the
year it all began — when Picasso opened the path to Cubism with the splintered forms of “Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Equally startling, 1907 is several years before the triumvirate of
European geniuses viewed as the primary innovators of modernist abstraction — Wassily
Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian — had their breakthroughs, primarily
during World War I.
The idea that a woman got there first, and with such style, is beyond thrilling. Yes, I
know art is not a competition; every artist’s “there” is a different place. Abstraction is a pre-
existing condition, found in all cultures. But still: af Klint’s “there” seems so radical, so unlike
anything else going on at the time. Her paintings definitively explode the notion of modernist
abstraction as a male project. Despite several decades during which modernism’s history has
been expanded and diversified, there is something towering about the emergence of af Klint,
which really began in earnest in the 1980s. (She knew she was ahead of her time and
stipulated that her work would not be exhibited until 20 years after her death — but it took
even longer.)
She supported herself by painting landscapes and portraits and also illustrated a volume
on equine surgery. But the true center of af Klint’s art emerged elsewhere, furthered by her
scientific interests (Darwinism, subatomic particles) and by spiritual pursuits she shared with
many artists around the turn of the 20th century, including Kandinsky and Mondrian. She had
long studied occult and spiritualist writings, including Rosicrucianism and Buddhism, and in
1889 she joined the Swedish Lodge of the Theosophical Society. In 1896 she began meeting
regularly with four other female artists to pursue occult practices. They called themselves The
Five, prayed, made automatic drawings, kept notebooks and through séances attempted to
communicate with other worlds.
