Swedish Ecstasy

All the versions of this article: English , français

Bruxelles, Palais des Beaux-Arts (Bozar), from 17 February to 21 May 2023.

Five years ago, we discovered the art of Hilma af Klint (see article), a Swedish painter from the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, whose works were linked to spiritualism.
This is the subject of the current exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (Bozar) devoted to five personalities of Swedish art. A curious concept that thus brings together several artists who share their nationality and the strange nature of their work, which is linked to esotericism, mysticism, the occult and even madness. If we add to this the intervention of contemporary artists - who are outside our field and whom we will not discuss here - we end up with a disjointed exhibition, with no real thread other than this theme linked to the fantastic, but which nevertheless has a real charm thanks to the works it presents, and which makes us discover - at least those of us who did not know them all, and no doubt many visitors - talented painters.


1. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944)
The Swan, No. 2, The Suw Series, Group IX, 1914
Oil on canvas - 150 x 150 cm
Stockholm, Hilma af Klint Foundation
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page
2. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944)
The Swan, No. 12, The Suw Series, Group IX, 1914
Oil on canvas - 151.5 x 150 cm
Stockholm, Hilma af Klint Foundation
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page

Our review will not attempt to make this synthesis, which the catalogue does not really attempt - or succeed - in doing, contenting itself with a few brief essays and unfortunately depriving itself of detailed notes for each work presented. We will deal successively with the five painters exhibited, in an order that is not the same as that of the exhibition, and we will be content to compare the comparable artists.


3. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944)
Series of paintings "The Primordial Chaos
Stockholm, Hilma af Klint Foundation
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page

4. Anna Cassel (1860-1937)
N° 7, 1913
Oil on canvas - 55 x 40 cm
Stockholm, Hilma af Klint Foundation
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page

Thus, to Hilma af Klint (ill. 1 and 2) we must now add the name of Anna Cassel. Nothing surprising really: as we explained in the article on the New York exhibition, she formed a group of artists with four other women (known as the "Five"), engaging in seances that led them to practice "automatic drawing". Among her four colleagues, the exhibition has chosen to focus on Anna Cassel, to whom a book (with little text but many excellent illustrations) is dedicated: Anna Cassel, The Saga of the Rose.
Like af Klint, Cassel, who had followed a parallel path (they were both students at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts), was the author of fairly classical landscapes and portraits, and, like her, produced work that sometimes bordered on the abstract, but was dictated (or so she thought) by occult forces. Their paintings are very similar in inspiration, and a selection of very remarkable works can be seen at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, notably those related to the "primordial chaos" (ill. 3) for af Klint (already shown at the Guggenheim), and paintings titled only by numbers for Anna Cassel. The latter are never actually abstract. There is a kind of monstrous fish (ill. 4), or clouds in human form (ill. 5), or crosses with esoteric symbols (ill. 6).


5. Anna Cassel (1860-1937)
N° 1, 1913
Oil on canvas - 55 x 40 cm
Stockholm, Hilma af Klint Foundation
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page
6. Anna Cassel (1860-1937)
N° 17, 1913
Huile sur toile - 55 x 40 cm
Stockholm, Fondation Hilma af Klint
Photo : Didier Rykner
See the image in its page

The conditions under which these works were executed - under the dictation of ’higher consciousnesses’ - do not testify in favour of a very strong psychic balance, but it is difficult to affirm that the artists belonging to the Five were governed by madness. The same cannot be said of two other painters, men this time, a decade older than af Klimt and Cassel. They were Carl Fredrik Hill and Ernst Josephson. Both were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics.


7. Enst Josephson (1851-1906)
The Blessed Sacrament
Oil on canvas - 127 x 76 cm
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page
8. Enst Josephson (1851-1906)
Portrait of the artist’s uncle
Pen and brown ink - 31 x 20.2 cm
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page

Ernst Josephson, who was also a poet, made numerous visits to France, proclaiming himself the champion of the battle against the Academy. He also declared: "I will become the Swedish Rembrandt, or I will die!" He took up spiritualism at the end of his life, seeing, among other things, the spirits of great painters of the past, no less than Velázquez, Raphael and Michelangelo, who guided his hand and signed the drawings thus produced with their names...
While his paintings (ill. 7 and 8), as a Josephson, are not lacking in quality, the drawings signed Raphael (ill. 8) or Michelangelo seem a little weak to be attributed to them!


9. Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911)
Paysage de bruyère avec une calèche, 1878
Huile sur toile - 80 x 73 cm
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Photo : Didier Rykner
See the image in its page
10. Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911)
A tree torn up by
roots plunging into the sea

Black chalk - 18.8 x 25.6 cm
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Photo: Didier Rykner
See the image in its page

Carl Fredrik Hill was hardly more balanced, and his works are sometimes considered "art brut". It is a pity that the catalogue says almost nothing about this, merely reproducing the works on display. Of these, a beautiful landscape (ill. 9) from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, and black chalk drawings (ill. 10) with somewhat naive but expressive figures, are of interest.


11 August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Little Water, Dolorö, 1892
Oil on canvas - 22 x 33 cm
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Photo: Nationalmuseum
See the image in its page
12 August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Sunset, 1892
Oil on cardboard - 23.5 x 32 cm
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Photo: Nationalmuseum
See the image in its page

August Strindberg was certainly a complex personality. Nevertheless, he was not mad like the two previous painters, and above all he was not only one of the most important dramatists of the late nineteenth century, but also a very great painter. His association with af Klint and Cassel is debatable in terms of style, which is far removed from them, and that with Hill and Josephson is perhaps even more questionable. But it is always a pleasure to see a body of work by his hand brought together. Here again we shall confine ourselves to reproducing two very fine landscapes belonging to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (ill. 11 and 12), as the catalogue is once again very inadequate, contenting itself with a short essay on celestographs, a photographic process invented by the artist, which consisted in placing photographic plates on the ground in the hope of capturing images of the night sky, but in the end succeeded only in producing an image resulting from the mixing of light-sensitive emulsions with particles of earth and dust [1]...

It is therefore clear that this very pleasant exhibition is worth more for the works it presents than for the scientific work that surrounds it, which appears very poor, if we judge it by the catalogue. It should be noted that it is possible to make a short trip to Belgium in one day by visiting the Rombouts exhibition in Ghent in the morning (the one that is really worth the trip) and stopping off in Brussels for "Swedish Ecstasy", which only "vaut le détour", to use a tourist guide’s vocabulary.


Curator: Daniel Birnbaum.


Edited by Daniel Birnbaum, Swedish Exstasy, Mercatorfonds Bozar Books, 208 pp, €40. ISBN: 9789462303478.


Edited by Kurt Almovis and Daniel Birnbaum, Anna Cassel. The Saga of the Rose, Bokförlaget Stolpe Axel, 184 p., €41. ISBN: 9789189425828.


<Practical information: Palais des Beaux-Arts, 23 rue Ravenstein, 1000 Brussels. Tel: 02 507 82 00. Open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 am to 6 pm. Price: 14 € (reduced: 7 €).
Website.

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