Hilma: En roman om gåtan Hilma af Klint by Anna Laestadius Larsson

Abstract

essential to maintaining balance in a community acutely vulnerable to outer pressures and inner conflicts. Christine Eber has written a striking novel that reflects these challenges as well as underscoring the wisdom of Maya culture, which has allowed its people to survive thousands of years under difficult conditions. Her compelling narrative not only shows why these people deserve our respect but moves the reader greatly. Brenda Rosenbaum Mayan Hands Foundation Aline Kominsky-Crumb Love That Bunch Montreal. Drawn & Quarterly. 2018. 211 pages. The reservoir of material for comedy, either stand-up or on the page, is often autobiographical , and this is certainly the case for Aline Kominsky-Crumb (yes, she is married to the R. Crumb, who has his own autobiographical comic reservoir). KominskyCrumb first hit the comics scene in San Books in Review Anna Laestadius Larsson Hilma: En roman om gåtan Hilma af Klint Stockholm. Piratförlaget. 2017. 323 pages. SEEING TO BELIEVING: it could be the motto for this book. Hilma, “A novel about the enigma that was Hilma af Klint,” is a captivating, intelligently fictionalized “life” of a painter who has only recently become internationally famous, but it seems hard to engage with the character Hilma af Klint. Her fervent—and, yes, enigmatic—psychic beliefs dominate her story, increasingly taking over from what we instinctively warm to as “normal” preoccupations. But, seeing her paintings, manifestations of another world perceived by her alone, is not only an overwhelming experience but also imparts meaning to her as a character and as a person. Hilma af Klint was born in 1862 into a comfortable upper-middle-class family. She was well educated for a girl of that time and class; her father had enchanted her with mathematical games and stories of scientific advances ever since she was a clever, fey child. She read On the Origin of Species while still a schoolgirl, partly because she found Darwin’s theories a good way to stop the spirit of her dead older sister, Anna, from spooking her. For the rest of Hilma’s life, her art was inspired by the tensions between our biological existence and the spiritual messages flowing into her mind, mostly in a quasireligious flow of hightoned moral instruction. A young woman at a time when the barriers against women doing anything other than getting and being married were breaking down, Hilma was eventually allowed to study art seriously. During a period as a struggling painter of landscapes and portraits , she became part of The Five, a group of women with similar interests and backgrounds . The group served as an emotional hothouse that encouraged Hilma’s few love affairs—all with other women—as well as her growing fascination with esoteric knowledge. The most extraordinary part of her life as an artist followed from a gradual , instinctive rejection of the demands of bodily pleasures, from food to love, until she had eschewed just about everything but contemplation of nature (late in life, she studied mosses and flowers with a botanist’s focus on detail) and painting. af Klint would have understood what her contemporary and potential soulmate Kandinsky meant by seeking “to symbolize the innerer Klang or inner need of the artist.” Spiritual guidance drove her to express transcendent truths in abstract shapes and glowing colors on very large canvases—the extraordinary Temple series alone contains almost two hundred of these. Text, including spirit “words,” as well as elements of mathematics and biology are included in the images. Anna Laestadius Larsson deals ingeniously with the challenge of portraying the woman as well as her work by creating a frame story: eighty-two-year-old Hilma tells her grown-up nephew Erik about her life. We gain insights into her steadiness of purpose and personal magnetism; Erik is deeply impressed both by his aunt and her art, but—like so many of us—confused by the talk of spirits. Hilma’s storytelling explains a great deal about her, including her fundamental lack of interest in other people. ANNA LAESTADIUS LARSSON 104 WLT WINTER 2019 Francisco in 1972 with Goldie, published by the Wimmen’s Comix Collective. Goldie, a clear precursor to Bunch, is neurotic, selfdeprecating , and striving. Bunch followed...