SCHEMATIZING (38)

By: Joshua Glenn
June 19, 2024

One in a series of posts via which HILOBROW’S Josh Glenn will attempt to depict the intellectual and emotional highs and lows of developing a semiotic schema. Series dedicated to its target audience of one: Malcolm Evans.

Hilma af Klint’s “The key to the work up to this point” (1907)

“The key to the work up to this point” — I’d like to use this portrntous phrase when presenting a semiosphere chart to my clients.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), as many of us now know, is an artist who — under the influence of spiritualist, Theosophical, and Anthroposophical notions — produced nearly two hundred non-representational / abstract paintings between 1906 and 1915. (Some of the artwork attributed to her was actually created by her colleagues, other female Theosophists who with Klint intended to decorate a [never-built] temple with these works. Scholars are still figuring this stuff out.)

Klint’s multifaceted imagery aims to provide insight into the different dimensions of existence, where microcosm and macrocosm reflect one another. To that end, she developed a visual lexicon of her own — the “key” to which is somehow revealed in this image. What I see here is: a squared-circle chart, in which lines criss-cross concentric circles. I’m immediately intrigued.

Populating this diagram, if that’s what it is, are symbols representing the principles with which Klint was fascinated. These overlap one another, and overflow their various locations within the chart… in a way that is organic but also purposive.

One of several takeaways, for me: Why are my “code” symbols always the same size, color, and shape as one another? Should their shape, color, and size reflect their nature — should more important codes be larger, say? Should more complex codes take more complex forms? Are some codes conjoined with others?

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SCHEMATIZING (38)

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