I am a huge Hilma af Klint fan. I first learned of her work in 2018 after reading about the Guggenheim’s astounding exhibit, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future and felt instantly pulled across the country to be there. I went to the museum three separate times in as many days to be in the presence of her work. It was a life-changing pilgrimage.
After receiving the complete Hilma af Klint Catalogue Raisonné as a gift this year, I committed to studying each of the seven volumes, a few pages every morning.
The Parsifal Series (1916) as animation
As I was working my way through Volume 4: Parsifal and The Atom Series (1916 - 17), I got stuck on the sequence of paintings in Group 4 of the Parsifal series. Each painting was nearly identical to the one before. Why did HaK take the time to create each painting with such minor changes?
#125
#126
#127
After staring at these paintings for a few days, it clicked. They appeared to be frames for an animation. My theory was further reinforced after noticing HaK had numbered each painting in sequential order.
To test it out, I took photos of each image from the book with my phone and edited them into FinalCutPro in order as specified by HaK.
The results are stunning.
I went back through the rest of the series and found other indicators HaK may have visualized these paintings as animated.
Numbered & Detail Paintings provide Different Viewpoints
In Paintings No. 31 - 37, there is a small triangle in the top half which seems to serve as an anchor point. There are also additional paintings in this group entitled “Detail” with a different viewpoint. I experimented with separating these two groups of paintings into their own animations:
We see this same pattern in the paintings No. 42 - 48, which also has a set of “Detail” paintings.
Here’s a deeper dive into these images, including the full Parsifal series as an animation:
Did HaK visualize these paintings as frames in an animation? Is the Parsifal Group 4 series a kind of visual Rosetta Stone for HaK’s work?
The atom Series (1917) as animation
We see these same animated characteristics again in The Atom Series (1917).
The swan (1914-15) and the dove (1915) as animation
If this animation was intentional, it raises many questions. If HaK visualized Parsifal and The Atom series as animations, what about the rest of her work?
Was The Swan series also visualized as an animated narrative? The Dove series? Is it possible the The Swan series and The Dove series are part of a single narrative? How about the entire Paintings for the Temple series?
The last painting in The Swan series is #172 and the first painting in The Dove series is #173.
Here’s a keyframe animation combining The Swan and The Dove series:
The blue books as reference materials for animation
If these paintings serve as keyframes, could the small illustrations in the borders of the Blue Books serve as instructions for intended perspective shifts and movement for the frames in-between?
more questions & projects
The questions, possibilities and discoveries keep unfolding the more I look.
What do we learn from seeing her symbolic lexicon in movement? What gets revealed? And how does this movement deepen our understanding of HaK’s intention, meaning and impact?
Animation was an emerging art form in the early 1900s. I’m also wondering if HaK knew about it as a preexisting creative medium and talked about it in her instructions, or if she simultaneously invented it through her own work?
Is it possible Hak’s numbering system implies the full cycle of the 193 paintings in Paintings for the Temple were all visualized as part of the same animated narrative?
I have three projects emerging from this exploration:
The first is to walk through the same exercise of photographing and editing the images in Volume 5: Geometric Series and Other Works (1917 - 1920) for evidence of animation intention. My guess is that the clarity and fidelity of her animations will increase, and may provide additional information around her vision. I’m also curious if these animation qualities persist in Volume 1: Spiritualistic Drawings (1896 -1905) and Volume 6: Late Watercolors (1922 - 1941).
The second is to photograph and edit the images together from Volume 5: Paintings for the Temple (1906 - 1917) series in sequential order, beginning with #1 from Primordial Chaos, and ending with #187 from Altarpieces. My guess is there is a coherent narrative arc connecting all of these series.
The third is to take a pass at animating the in-between frames of the paintings referencing the illustrations from the Blue Books as a translation exercise.
I’m excited to share this exploration with you, and to learn what it opens up in your own relationship with HaK’s work.
And a huge thank you to the Hilma af Klint Foundation, the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit, Bokförlaget Stolpe, and co-editors Daniel Birnbaum and Kurt Almqvist for these extraordinary resources. As Birnbaum says, “A catalogue raisonné is necessary in order to see the different cycles, motifs and symbols that recur in such an exciting way. If someone really wants to understand how Hilma af Klint's works function, they need these books."
After this experience, I completely agree!
