The Abolition Of Time:Klint & Mondrian @ Tate Modern.

"I want to abolish time, especially in the contemplation of architecture" - Piet Mondrian

"Life is a farce if a person does not serve truth" - Hilma af Klint

Mondrian - Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937-42)

Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint were born within ten years of each other (Mondrian in 1862, Klint 1872), they both lived in Europe (Mondrian - the Netherlands, Klint - Sweden), and they both died in 1944. They were also both very early pioneers of abstract art. They also, as far as it is known, never met. So Tate Modern's current Forms of Life exhibition which brings the two artists together is, in a way, their first formal introduction.

It's a good show and if Mondrian is the bigger name (and, therefore, the Tate are surely selling more of his merchandise) then Klint holds her own throughout. These shows, however, all like to begin with a room that shows us some early, more figurative, work by the artists in question. As if to say "they could paint properly - they just chose not to".

Klint - Lake Scene (undated)

Mondrian -Evening Landscape with Cows (1906)

There's Klint's lake scene and Mondrian has gone for the ever so Dutch theme of cattle. They're not bad paintings but they're hardly remarkable. Although they are, I think, included in the exhibition because despite outward appearances it seems that neither Klint nor Mondrian ever really strayed too far from the natural world. They just abstracted it and abstracted it until it didn't, specifically in the case of Mondrian, look very natural at all.

Klint had joined the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1882 (where she studied for a lustrum) at a time when they'd only just started to take on female artists. Mondrian, a decade later, joined the Rijksakaemie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and, as a man, faced considerably fewer barriers in the early part of his career.

Mondrian - Geinrust Farm in the Haze (1906-7)

Both artists' road to abstraction started earlier but they were to be lengthy journeys. Both were inspired by new technologies (microscopes, photography, radiography) and how these technologies challenged existing perceptions and opened up new ways of seeing. They also took a serious interest in spirituality and new ideas relating to it. Former EIAPOE favourite Madame Blavatsky crops up more than once in the exhibition.

Mondrian would spend several summers at an artists' community in Zeeland where he'd make works like 1911's Evolution triptych (below, a painting of which Mondrian said "it's not so bad but I'm not there yet") and Klint started to use colours and symbols (including spirals and snails) to represent spiritual evolution as well as numbers which would correspond to certain geometric shapes, different aspects of the world and even the cosmos. You'd need a guidebook to understand just one of her paintings but they're visually very impressive.

Mondrian - Sea After Sunset (1909)

Mondrian - Dune Landscape (1911)

Mondrian - Evolution (1911)

Mondrian - Lighthouse at Westkapelle (1910)

The Red Cloud (1907)

Klint - The Evolution (undated)

Klint - The Evolution (undated)

Metamorphosis became a feature of Klint's work while Mondrian started to focus on drawing single flowers, some blooming, some wilting. They are, in many cases, incredibly detailed. Both artists believed that to drill down on small single entities helped them see much bigger pictures. In Klint's words:- "those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form - which is called life".

Mondrian - Red Amaryllis with Blue Blackground (1909-10)

Klint - Thistle (undated)

Trees, as well as flowers, came to feature in the work of both artists. Klint's Tree of Knowledge is a 'world tree', an 'axis mundi' that connects every part of the universe in Norse mythology (I never said her paintings were easy to read) from the heavens in the sky to the roots underground and, just for good measure, she even chucks a bit of Art Nouveau into the frame.

Mondrian had visited Paris and been exposed to the Cubism of Braque and Picasso and you can see, at this point, his paintings reflecting this. There's also a Fauvist energy to works like Evening:The Red Tree. A restless energy that Mondrian would later excise from his later paintings. Or at least pare down and control.

Mondrian - Evening:The Red Tree (1908-10)

Mondrian - Flowering Apple Tree (1912)

Klint - The Tree of Knowledge:The W Series (1913-15)

Mondrian pushed past Cubism and eventually his paintings, still - apparently - of towers, starry skies, and sea views, dissolved into complete abstraction. Some of the early fully abstract works may look like a load of Post-It notes or a checkerboard but they were all stopping posts on his way to a style that is now so clearly defined that even a Morph statue on the South Bank outside the Tate is decked up in a classic Mondrian inspired outfit.

Mondrian saw his verticals representing the 'male' principle and his horizontals the 'female' and Klint, also, claimed her work balanced opposing male and female forces. I must admit some of this heavy hanbed symbolism baffles me but it was about this point that both artists really hit their stride, found their own unique vision. So I guess there's something in what sounds a bit like mumbo-jumbo to an uneducated philistine like myself.

Mondrian - Composition No.3 with Colour Planes (1917)

Composition with Grid 9:Checkerboard Composition with Bright Colours (1919)

Composition in Line:Second State (1916-17)

Composition in Oval with Colour Areas II (1914)

Klint - The Eros Series, The WU/Rose Series Group II (1907)

While we're on the subject of mumbo-jumbo, there's an information board about halfway through the exhibition devoted to WORLD RELIGIONS with some lengthy digressions on The Theosophical Society and a quote from Mondrian in which he proffers that "all religions have the same fundamental content, they differ only in form. The form is the external manifestation of this content and is thus an indispensable vehicle for the expression of primary principles".

Mondrian was a brilliant painter but he doesn't sound like he'd be much of a laugh at a party. Klint's Series II paintings all have subtitles that echo religious belief too. There's The Jewish Standpoint at the Birth of Jesus, Buddha's Standpoint in Worldly Life, The Mohammedan Standpoint, and The Standpoints of Judaism and Heathendom. Klint was nothing if not inclusive in her work - and her standpoints!

Klint - Seres II (1920)

Klint - Series II (1920)

Klint - Series II (1920)

Although one of the works in that series looks to all the world like a purple vinyl disc being played by a red stylus - as if painted by Kandinsky. Klint had claimed she was merely the channel for her work and that she was being directed by spiritual guides though that seemed to change around the time of World War I and she started to investigate the notion of an invisible fourth dimension.

Inspired by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (ideas that largely disappeared after Einstein's theory of relativity transformed understandings of space and time), Klint painted swans (a popular occult symbol of unity) and see through cubes. Shells reappeared, triangles and rigidly drawn geometric shapes started to dominate and one work even looks like the sort of thing a mod might proudly wear on the back of his Parka. One work even looked like Mr Spoon's home made spaceship ready to fly off to Button Moon.

Klint - The3 Swan:The SUW/UW Series, Group IX:Part I (1914-15)

Klint - The3 Swan:The SUW/UW Series, Group IX:Part I (1915)

Klint - The3 Swan:The SUW/UW Series, Group IX:Part I (1915)

Klint - The3 Swan:The SUW/UW Series, Group IX:Part I (1915)

Klint - Series V (192)

"Thought defines the universe in geometrical figures" mused Klint in 1916 and around the same time Mondrian was making work that proved just that. Mondrian's theory of neo-plasticism, a visual langauge of pure relationships, finally saw him abandon symbolism and make paintings which were sometimes described as 'jazz rhythms'. He now saw paintings with individual aspects in them as 'tragic' (!) and it was this that inspired him to make the work that remains famous for today. It was the work, I suspect, that brought many people to this exhibition.

Rectangular grids with thick greys, yellows, and reds but most individual sections painted white. Mondrian seemed to like white. I seem to remember hearing a story about him once in which if he was ever presented with a flower, or flowers, he would paint them white. It may be apocryphal just as I'm suspecting the one about him falling out with his colleague in the De Stijl movement Theo Van Doesburg because Van Doesburg dared to include a diagonal line in a painting. That's kind of disproved by the fact that one of the Mondrians on show includes nothing less than a diagonal line. Transgressive.

Mondrian - Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow and Grey (1921)

Mondrian - Composition with Grid 3:Lozenge Composition with Grey Lines (1918)

Mondrian - Stage Model for Michel Seuphor's 'L'ephemere est eternel' (1926/1964)

Mondrian - Composition with Lines and Colour III (1937)

In the middle of the exhibition there's a large room that the curators have decided to call The Ether (from an early 19th century belief that an invisible energy connected everything visible) and in this room you can explore objects and images relating to the creative circles that Klint and Mondrian were involved in. 

There's a lot in there and not all of if is satisfying or even makes sense but it does illuminate and explain some of the thinking behind their work. From the discovery of X-rays (in 1895), the development of wireless telegraphy to the botanical studies of Carl Linnaeus (who actually preceded both artists by at least a century)', Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, and the work of Carl Jung. Best of all, though, are two paintings of trees (made very close together) which showed how Mondrian was moving from figuration to abstraction. There's even a Mondrian self-portrait which I would imagine is quite a rare thing.

 

Mondrian - Forest (Study for the Trees) (1912)

 

Mondrian - Composition Trees I (1912-13)

 

Mondrian - Self-Portrait (1908)

 

Klint - Iris Diagnosis Chart, Left Eye (undated)

 

Klint, for her part, fell into some fairly heavy occult belief. As a member of De Fem (The Five) she would regularly attend seances where they believed they were communicating with spirit guides and channeling messages from higher planes of consciousness. Klint, and others in the group, made automatic drawings which they claimed, and probably believed, were directed by their spirit guides.

 

Anonymous - Dalecarlian Biblical Wall Painting depicting Jesus Sweating Blood in the Garden of Gethsemane (1850)

 

Carl Gustav Jung - The Red Book (undated)

 

Anonymous - New York Studio Reconstruction (1944/1987)

 

Once you leave The Ether, passing a rather fetching architectural model of Mondrian's New York studio - so detailed it's even got a tiny little pair of glasses left on a desk, there's just one last room and this is mostly dedicated to Klint, who perhaps elsewhere in the show has had to take a back seat to Mondrian, and her 1907 Ten Largest series.

 

This is Klint at her most Klintiest. In 1917 she announced "my mission, if it succeeds, is of great significance to humankind. For I am able to describe the path of the soul from the beginning of the spectacle of life to its end". Botanical forms, shells, automatic drawing, gaily drawn curves that border on the Art Nouveau, and symbolism. Always symbolism.

Klint dreamed of building a temple in the form of a spiral where all her paintings could be hung together. As visitors ascended through the temple they would move towards a higher state of being. But Klint knew she was too far ahead of the game (as did Mondrian) and went so far as to stipulate that many of he works not be shown until at least twenty years after her death.

In the end, it took a lot longer for Hilma af Klint to join Mondrian as an established pioneer of abstract art but she's definitely there now. Tate Modern's show helped to explain what inspired their art and how their art wasn't as rigid or as cold as critics might imagine. In fact, their art may not have depicted (very often) life but it feels, even now - decades after both artists have passed - full of life.

 

Klint - The Ten Largest, Group IV (1907)

 

Klint - The Ten Largest, Group IV (1907)

 

 

Klint - The Ten Largest, Group IV (1907)

 

Klint - The Ten Largest, Group IV (1907)

Thanks to Pam for joining me at the exhibition, the gift of a Mondrian pencil, and a not inconsiderable debrief in The Prince William Henry pub on Blackfriars Road afterwards. That wasn't a bad Friday evening at all.