Directed by Halina Dryschka
Featuring Josiah McElheny and Julia Voss
Running time: 1 hour and 34 minutes

by Fiona Underhill

While not an art expert by any means, I know my way around art from the first half of the twentieth century more than the average person, I would say. It’s a keen interest of mine; I own many books on the subject and have visited art galleries in many European and North American cities, including the Scandinavian cities of Oslo and Copenhagen. Two of my favorite artists are the abstract painters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. So, in 2018, when I heard about a new exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York by an artist named Hilma af Klint and then saw the paintings online, my jaw dropped to the floor. I had never heard of this Swedish artist, who was a contemporary of both Klee and Kandinsky. When I saw her paintings, I fell immediately in love. The geometric designs in bright rainbow colours are vividly beautiful. My emotions started with guilt and shame that I had never heard of this artist before, but this fairly quickly turned to anger – why had I never heard of her?

This is perhaps the central question that director Halina Dryschka addresses in her new documentary Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint. She rightly considers it a scandal that Klint has not been revered or celebrated in the same way as her peers or had her place in art history properly recognized. In fact, it has now been discovered that Hilma af Klint is the pioneer of abstract art, with her work predating Kandinsky’s by several years. There is a need to rewrite art history, something which is easier said than done.

This being a documentary about an artist, the visual stimuli are the most important aspect and Dryschka does a fantastic job of showcasing Klint’s work in a variety of contexts. One example is that she places Klint’s work next to much better-known men, working later in the century, to demonstrate how innovative and ahead-of-her-time she truly was. One of the most striking is her Warhol-like quadriptych of portraits of a close friend. We also see her notebooks and sketchbooks, providing invaluable insight into Klint’s process. Dryschka discusses Klint’s two main influences – the world of science (atoms, radioactivity, the Fibonacci sequence and chaos, quantum and relativity theories were big themes in her work) and theosophy, a religious movement led by and welcoming of women (Klint was also part of a society that took part in seances etc). Some people may have come across Klint in the 2016 film Personal Shopper directed by Olivier Assayas. The paintings inspire Maureen (Kristen Stewart) to attempt communication with her dead brother. One theory as to why Klint was not taken seriously or part of the art establishment is her interest in the mystical and spiritual, things mostly rejected by the overwhelmingly secular Swedish society.

The best talking head is art critic Julia Voss, but there is a good range of artists (including Josiah McElheny), critics, curators (including Iris Müller-Westermann) and those with a personal connection to Hilma af Klint. She was ahead-of-her-time in other ways, such as remaining unmarried and being a vegetarian. Klint’s masterworks are probably the series of very large panels called Childhood, Youth, Adulthood and Old Age. Seeing the scale of these works makes one long to have seen them at the exhibitions in Stockholm or New York, to fully appreciate their grandeur. The documentary also makes it clear that it is thanks to women curators, writers and editors such as Müller-Westermann, Christine Burgin and Tracey Bashkoff that Hilma af Klint is finally emerging as an important figure in art history and being given her due. This makes it clear that women need to be in prominent positions in museums, as collectors and critics in order for women artists to be able to compete with their male counterparts in the art market. 

One of the best aspects of the documentary is the beautiful and stirring score by Damian Scholl. Dryschka’s own involvement as a kind of omniscient narrator is inconsistent, to the point where it is unclear if she even is the narrator. The directorial voice could be stronger, with a sense of her uncovering the mysteries of the past, like a detective. Seeing an actor ‘playing’ Klint creating her work doesn’t really add anything to proceedings. The exhibition only really features in the last ten minutes or so and it would have been good to see more of the work involved in curating such an exhibition, unpacking works that have not been seen for a century in some cases, transporting them and hanging them etc. 

If, like me a couple of years ago, Hilma af Klint is an unknown name to you, I strongly urge you to watch this documentary and do some online research into this exciting and innovative abstract artist. I feel transformed after discovering her work and am now playing catch-up in fully exploring and embracing it. This documentary is a fantastic introduction to the artist and her work and you will come away feeling inspired, but also angry that such a pioneer has gone overlooked for so long. 

View this flick with virtual screening rooms here. Just pick the venue you’d like to support, and watch it via them and KinoMarquee.