Hilma af Klint

Rated PG-13.

artist Hilma af Klint.

There's also the reality that abstract forms have been part of many cultural traditions around the world, for as far back as we can trace.

And many European artists were drawing inspiration from other cultures, incorporating elements of South Asian philosophies, as well as indigenous peoples from Australia and the Pacific Islands.

Kind of, because again, I'm, like, not a huge historical fiction person.

So the first person that came to mind when I saw this in the outline is Hilma af Klint.

Like, she's fascinating.

She was a female artist in the 1800s, and she was also kinda witchy.

We did it

We launched the first season of The Hidden History of Magic, 13 brilliant flagship episodes about your favorite forgotten mystics, like Queen Victoria, Hilma af Klint, and Harriet Tubman

And 13 gorgeous Witch TVs with spiritual tips on how to do glamour magic, talk to dragons, and even how to come out of the broom closet

But don't worry, we're gonna be back in your feeds next month with a brand-new season.

It was called decorative and still is to some extent.

Artists like Hilma af Klint are in the same vein.

But I find Pelton's work even stronger, and I think it will prove the test of time to be seen as the masterpieces that they really are.

So Agnes Pelton and the radical idea that you don't have to live an enviable life is what today's podcast is about.

The Whitney Museum does and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas does too.

The Palm Springs Art Museum is also a really important place for Pelton if you ever want to live around there or you want to visit there.

And if you like Pelton's work, I would, and you haven't heard of Hilma af Klint, I would definitely look at her because she's another really deeply spiritual artist whose radical abstract paintings were unseen for decades too.

And yeah.

Critics would dismiss the entire section as second-rate without having to spend very long looking at any one painting, which the installation itself had made nearly impossible.

One of those paintings was by a fifty-two-year-old Swedish artist named Hilma af Klint, and it belonged to the respectable, largely representational career she had built after training at the Royal Academy in Stockholm.

She could paint landscapes, portraits, and botanical subjects.

She exhibited and sold her work.

The dates appear to settle the issue before we have asked whether either artist understood herself or himself to be competing for that title.

I'm Emma Laramy, and this is Verso.

[classical music] The version of Hilma af Klint that became famous after her death can sound almost entirely removed from ordinary professional life.

A solitary mystic receiving images from spirits, painting them in secret, then sealing them away for a future she somehow knew would understand.

But it was a coming out of a theosophical lodge in Sweden and... possibly the I forget how they they met if it was through the art conservancy that she was studying at but they were a group engaging in art making processes but also seances and heavily inspired by theosophy and studying theosophical practices and literature, also engaging in automatic writing.

But it's kind of a really interesting history because there was a massive exhibition that I'm sure a lot of people are aware of, of Hilma af Klint's paintings at the Guggenheim in...

The Gug.

What, 20...

Yeah.

It's all amazing stuff.

I think the story kind of is, though, that Hilma af Klint hid a lot of her own work in her lifetime.

Right.

And then also the influence of spiritism, which...

Spiritualism, if you're familiar with Hilma af Klint or Rudolf Steiner, so they did spiritualism in the 1800s in the UK.

Sweden.

Yeah, Sweden.

How does that influence your creative practice? Because clearly, like, you're someone who believes in magic, like, in a really real way and had this upbringing where that was sort of normal.

Yeah.

similar to Hilma af Klint like do you channel your writing like how how does that mystic part of you impact your art

I think I think we all I think when we make art I think we all go to a channeling state like I think even if we're not trying to you know we'll always kind of when we get in flow state I think that's as close as we'll get and I do think it's like a spectrum too where it's like you could be kind of right here then sometimes you can be like all the way over here and you're like whoa like I do think like a dead philosopher speaking through me, you know what I mean? Like you can get there.

I was operating on a little one plane higher.

So my hinge photos were at like the Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Getty, which, you know.

That's who you were signaling to.

Yeah, that's who I'm signaling to.

So, short answer, yes.

So, with Hilma af Klint, for example, it felt very pronounced.

I spent so much time with her and her works, over one year of continuous research, which culminated in a class I gave for Morbid Anatomy in June 2026.

I read her biography, stared at hundreds of her paintings, read her personal journals, visited her physical art in a museum.

Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, wanted to write the best damn songs possible and prove that a nobody like him could make it.

But he wanted to do it his way, in his style, without selling out to someone else's vision.

Hilma af Klint had a spiritual vision for her work, which guided her motivation to see it through.

So yes, high creatives can have a very successful career in their art form, but it's always driven by some larger vision.

When dark, this is overwhelmed by the bigness of existence.

To go deeper, you can look into alchemical drawings of Anima Mundi, the life and paintings of Hilma af Klint, The embrace of Anima Mundi is available anytime, anywhere, to anyone, day or night, rich or poor It is the process of unveiling our resistance to its love Anima Mundi is the energy behind the world card and the tarot deck Both carry themes of universal unity, completeness and embrace Your reading is quite subtle, group 2 We're reading into a lot of subtleties here energetic and emotional subtleties The quote here really stands out, accept all, reject none So you're really in this emotional space of Learning to hold disconnection within connection You're learning to accept the disconnection the disappointment in that and hold it lovingly So an example of this can be you know, being with your parents and not really receiving what you wanted from them, be it a boundary or an acknowledgement of some sort and you're still having to go through Christmas dinner So you're really forced to hold that and still see them compassionately or experience them compassionately with the three of cups and temperance here So that's a very practical way in which this might unfold This can of course all kind of happen internally if you're not actually in connection with any of these people You could still be sort of processing this and making sense of it in this way But ultimately, you're learning to hold duality and see the wholeness in it Let's get a Wisdom of the Oracle card, group 2 How can we ground this a bit more? What does group 2 need to know? You have poised and go the distance So, being poised, being tempered will help you go the distance You're learning to remain regulated in all circumstances This way of self regulation is going to help you go the distance TikTok.

Interesting.

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