Our Spectral Gardens: An Ecological Re-Interpretation of The Ten Largest (1907) by Hilma af Klint

Authors

• Janice McNab The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54916/rae.142379

Keywords:

Hilma-af-Klint, feminism, painting, textiles, climate

Abstract

Archival research on artist Hilma af Klint explores how feminist networks and eco-vitalist beliefs underlie The Ten Largest, the Swedish painter’s most famous work. These findings re-position the series in relation to climate breakdown, and at a time when re-imagining the connections between people and things has become a cultural imperative. How we now approach the patterns of the past is further explored, as artistic research, with the painting series Our Spectral Gardens (2021-23). Here, parallel image roots define synthetic representations of nature and a reconsideration of eco-vitalism as a force of the present.