1, Group IX/SUW, The SUW/UW Series, 1915 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. The work must be revealed by a public that previously did not exist, and therefore it occasionally happens that it takes a very long time before some works are recognized/acknowledged. For a work to be recognized/acknowledged, there must be a gradual “sensitizing” of the public, which is thus established as its audience. If a work is immediately recognized or acknowledged as such, it is because it is not an event but only an “aesthetic dispositive effect”. This is, according to Jean-Louis Déotte, the paradox of artistic work: when it is shown for the first time, there is, strictly speaking, nothing for the audience to see. And, indeed, this acceding to legibility constitutes a specific critical point in the movement at their interior”. On the other hand, this is an exhibition that actualizes the question Walter Benjamin called “historical readability”, the fact that the past becomes legible, that is, possible to know, first when singularities appear and are articulated dynamically against each other in a constellation: “For the historical index of the images not only says that they belong to a particular time it says, above all, that they attain to legibility only at a particular time. On the one hand, this is an exhibition that exemplifies an almost performative historiography, which shows how an art museum like Moderna Museet can itself create history, “ faire l’histoire”, as Michel de Certeau once formulated it in a text about the “historiographical operation”. 2, Group IX/UW, The SUW/UW Series, 1915 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. She chose to paint on the ‘astral’ plane, creating with immense energy a visual cosmos that is only now revealed to us in its impressive splendor” (p. The years immediately after the turn of the century, not long before the Russian and Continental pioneers of abstract art, she felt urged to paint that which lies beyond the visible. Her paintings have been included in a few exhibitions in recent years, admittedly, but this joint touring presentation will be the first to give Hilma af Klint the international breakthrough her oeuvre deserves.
Hilma af Klint was a pioneer of abstraction. With great pleasure, and joint efforts, we are now clearing the way for her, from her home in the north, to the middle of Europe, and onwards south. The preface – signed by Daniel Birnbaum, Ann-Sofi Noring, Udo Kittelmann and José Lebrero Stals – to the catalogue of the Hilma af Klint exhibition at Moderna Museet, edited by the show’s curator Iris Müller-Westermann, radiates an unusual air of self-confidence: “Hilma af Klint is one of the truly great artists of the twentieth century and she has been kept waiting too long for recognition. Installation view from Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction, 2013 © Photo: Åsa Lundén/ Moderna Museet.
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