Forms of Life
A Review of ‘Forms of Life’ at the Tate Modern (2023)
When I left, I noticed immediately:
- The Tate is stupidly dimly lit
- Hilma af Klint’s Swan series wasn’t present in full
- 3 works brought literal tears to my eyes: No. 1 Childhood in Ten Largest, No.8 in Swan Series by af Klint, and Composition with Grid 3 by Mondrian.
- My Haus Labs eyeliner and foundation didn’t budge through sweat and tears.
Some themes of thought below.
Spirituality and Theology
Mondrian felt all religions were ‘essentially the same but differed in form’. In Series II, af Klint abstracts major world religions as spheres, varying form and color. I wondered if both had absorbed Meister Eckhart’s quote “God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere”. In af Klint’s case the circumference was visible to us, almost viewing as God.
Becoming, Time and Temporal Distance
Mondrian’s abstractions are sometimes considered Platonic ideals, viewable in a ‘being’ state. I disagree – his paintings ‘become’ through the use of viewer and time as additional mediums. Mondrian left explicit instructions on viewing after the initial ‘one-shot’: taking eyes from plane to opposing plane to deepen an overall impression (Cooper, 1998). The work doesn’t exist as intended without you, and time spent looking.
This is most obvious (to me) in ‘Composition with Grid 3: Lozenge Composition’ (1918). In the Tate Modern, your first glimpse is the ‘whole thing’, maybe over people’s shoulders, partially obscured. When you’re stood in front of it, you run your eyes methodically in the ‘primary directions’: ↕ and ↔ to find an anchor point. The intersections of vertical and horizontal lead to the magical union, and balance.
Then– suddenly it’s flickering! I saw circles, stars and electric lines, transforming from precise gray-black grid to something alive, dynamic and expansive. This is the process of input transformed by viewer and time to output (something more than the canvas). It’s I/O! (also, Hegelian…).
Given Mondrian flat out refused to include diagonals when asked by Theo van Doesburg, it’s curious there’s diagonals here (and curioser still how fundamental to ‘movement’ they are). This is also my favorite Mondrian because it’s sort of subversive to art history’s perception of a Mondrian. For example, in his pop history book on Modern Art, Will Gompertz says Mondrian is ‘always asymmetrical’. But he’s not here. Cool.
In af Klint’s work, the passing of time is harnessed in series: showing ascendant transformation or ‘evolution’ (e.g. The Swan, Ten Largest). Offensively, the Tate didn’t actually have the entire series on display, so you’re not seeing the ‘evolution’ to abstraction fully. However, No. 8 in the Swan series has a similar effect to Mondrian’s flickering grids: it’s visceral and alive. I almost fell over when I took my glasses off to look deeper. I wish I could capture how beautiful the transition from blurred vision to full quality was. There is similar dialectical intention here, as in Mondrian’s work.
Most curiously, af Klint used temporal distance to influence perception of her work in the public eye. This is the first time I’ve encountered art left for the future not incidentally, but intentionally.
Mondrian’s work also benefitted from temporal distance; I’ve seen it on everything from socks to fashion runways. It’s generous to say this is because abstraction is universally understood, more accurate that his work is within our tolerance limits today (primary colors do not offend, straight lines do not provoke in the same way ovaries and eggs do). Capitalism loves a good, inoffensive minimalist – time passing makes you forget how radical his work was then, and how different from abstractions before it.
Both used the concept of ‘becoming’. In Mondrian’s hideous ‘Evolution’ painting (Avatar X ‘Global Village Coffeehouse’) you see what he’s trying to go for, but the becoming is too obvious, too balanced. His skill is evident despite the ugliness: the painting glows from within, like stained glass.
Becoming is a major theme in af Klint’s series. In Swan Series, I felt she was When Two Become One’ing us. Both swans are swans, both had elements of feminine and masculine. I saw this as a collision of conflicting selves (an identity in question, resolved, leading to ‘ascension’?) or a fusion of two souls, but one devoid of dichotomy: the becoming was messy and in every ‘component’ vs above or below the line.
Of course, the obvious becoming is the artists’ own evolution from pictorial representations of Nature to abstractions. Mondrian took the grid as a base, whereas af Klint went loosely towards spirals. I personally find it a little repulsive that ‘Evolution’ appeared in writing in both bodies of work; but this is because I like to be showed, not telled.
Nature, Precision and Scale
The Tate named a room ‘The Ether’ and rammed it full of af Klint’s notes, Jungian imagery, even Goethe’s color theory in an effort to contextualize the artists’ environment. Suffering from poorly displayed items and dim lighting, this room had little impact on me personally.
In botanical paintings, you see af Klint’s precision and neat handwriting. But for Mondrian, his botanical work is fluid and more delicate than his abstract work – curiously his abstractions grow ‘tighter’, much more precise.
In contrast, af Klint’s abstract work is more fluid, messy, organic. She is abstracting something vaguer than nature in trying to capture ‘the soul’ in Ten Largest, religions in Series II. I know she got some flack for the flowers, eggs and snails, but I feel her work is more notional in being conceptually – not just visually, abstract.
In the process of depicting concepts like union, age, eroticism, evolution and transcendense, I feel af Klint put more of herself into the paintings. I see her abstraction as more open to artistic license and ‘creation’, whereas I view Mondrian’s as ‘discovery’ – a distillation of Nature to its barest elements. For me, Mondrian’s path is less inventive, more concerned with finding the ingredients of balance.
This is why I believe the Tate made a powerful decision bringing these artists together: they take radically distinct paths in exploring (sort of) similar metaphysical concepts.
Scale is another interesting dimension of comparison. As af Klint’s Ten Largest overwhelm and tower, intended as temple decoration, you lose yourself in the depths. They are fresco-y, Rothko-esque in totality: they demand your attention. You can very nearly feel the soft tempera paint without touching it.
I find it curious that Mondrian experimented with placement (diamonds, not squares) but not extensively with scale; especially given he sought to explore totality, intentionally wanting to extend past the canvas. I wonder if making his later primary colored abstractions bigger may have made them less dynamic, harder to talk to. They are such a pleasing size, echoing precision and control.
In conclusion…
Seeing these bodies of work together was important. I did have a very “She’s everything! He’s just Ken” moment when I switched focus from af Klint’s Eros to Mondrian’s yellow lozenge: but this was necessary in getting me to talk to the yellow lozenge.
I’m really pissed about the whole of the Swan series not being there. There is something magical about seeing the brushstrokes and canvas edges in real life. You can’t spot every detail in photographs. I loved the work overall.
The great writer and poet Lana del Rey sings “Woah woah woah whatever. Everything. Whatever” – reminding me of Mondrian’s 1915 comment “The rhythmical expansion in height and width, or radiation, or whatever this is, is the universal image of the beautiful movement of the universe”.
Af Klint said ‘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” – prompting me to play Nature Boy on repeat, Nat King Cole’s version.
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