Drawing Analogies
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350334762
I found the artist Mary Yacoub at the Slade open day and she mentioned the launch of her book, which is sadly prohibitively expensive to buy but I found an open link on the publisher’s website.
Mary Yacoob | Hilma al Klimt
Introduction: ‘A Pioneer of Abstraction’
The Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) has been described as a ‘pioneer of abstraction’. At the same time, it has been widely acknowledged that her works resemble diagrams.[1] This chapter discusses the connections between the abstraction in the works of af Klint and diagrams as abstract representations of ideas by drawing on the ideas of the American philosopher and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), one of the founders of semiotics, the general theory of signs. Peirce’s ideas about how diagrams enable us to visualize relationships, and his ideas about the role of annotations in diagrams, a distinctive feature of some of af Klint’s more diagrammatic works, will be used to analyse af Klint’s drawings and paintings. Also important will be Peirce’s division of signs into three main categories: icons (which include diagrams), symbols and indexes. Peirce maintained that most signs contain the characteristics of all three of these categories, and this chapter will examine the ways in which interpretations of af Klint’s works can be enriched by distinguishing between these different types of signs in her works.
The paintings and drawings of af Klint address relationships between matter and spirit, visible and invisible, and duality and unity. Af Klint’s works illustrate how diagrams can facilitate the schematization and manifestation of that which is intangible or invisible, such as imaginary, sacred, or metaphysical ideas, and how they can be the space in which observations of known entities can be analogically explored to speculate about unknown entities. The artist’s works 62demonstrate how diagrams can function as a kind of conceptual laboratory in which visual imagery and ideas from varied disciplines can interact. Though af Klint’s works were rooted in her spirituality, they were influenced by geometry, natural science and ideas about evolution and taxonomy. Af Klint’s practice points to the relevance of diagramming as an exploratory, meditative and creative practice, and her esoteric approach to diagramming raises questions about our interpretative responses.
‘A Great Commission’
That af Klint chose to use drawing and painting to develop her spiritual research reflects her education at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts from 1882 to 1887. The artist was one of the first generation of female students to be permitted to study art. Her training was in the conventional portraiture and landscape styles of her era. As the art historian Julia Voss writes, her early works included watercolours of wildflowers (2022: 110), and in 1900 she worked at the Veterinary Institute in Stockholm as an illustrator for a book project on horse surgery 63(Voss 2019: 37). This early technical work had its influence: botanical and biological imagery became key aspects of her art practice. Another influence on her work might have been af Klint’s family association with the navy, mathematics, hydrographic surveying, and the making of charts and tables for astronomical navigation, all of which meant that the artist would have been familiar with diagrams and maps (af Klint 2005: 6).
In 1896, af Klint and four other female colleagues set up a group called De Fem (The Five). They studied the New Testament and Rosicrucianism, conducted seances, and meditated. De Fem believed that higher spirits wanted to communicate to them through pictures and they recorded these messages in automatic drawings, an inventive practice that allowed them to move beyond academic paradigms (Lomas 2013: 227).[2]
From 1889, af Klint attended meetings at the Theosophical Society, an esoteric movement founded by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott in New York in 1875. The popularity of Theosophy reflected that era’s growing interest in spiritualist ideas and occultism. Central tenets of Theosophy included spiritual emancipation, universal brotherhood and reincarnation, and Theosophy was influential in the introduction of aspects of Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Western societies. Af Klint also joined the Anthroposophical Society, founded by Rudolf Steiner in 1912, and visited The Goetheanum, an Anthroposophical study centre in Dornach designed by Steiner, eight or nine times between 1920 to 1925.
As the art historian Åka Fant explains, in attending to spiritual beliefs and higher spirits through paintings and drawings, af Klint had doubts about how to understand some of her own works as she felt she was merely channelling messages from spirit guides (2021: 44). Af Klint made few statements about the sources of her art, and ‘she was constantly surprised by the results of her unconscious activities and was unable to explain them’ (Fant 1986: 157).
In 1906, af Klint believed that she received a ‘great commission’ from a spirit guide to complete a body of work which manifested in Paintings for the Temple, a series of one hundred and ninety-three individual works organized into groups of paintings, created between 1906 and 1915. These works entailed a shift away from the portraits and landscapes of her academic training towards a more diagrammatic style that often included annotations and symbols. Her works incorporated botanical and biological imagery, progressing, as time went on, to more geometric and abstracted forms. Expressive and symbolic use of colour, gestural drawings and paintings, and poetic language all played roles in the gestation of af Klint’s art, as did her notebooks, which contained preparatory sketches and reflections about her works.
Af Klint recounted that some of her works were created whilst she acted as a medium. She claimed that she was directed by spirits and that images were then transferred onto canvas. Some images were communicated to the artist whilst she was asleep (Svensson 2005: 27). Sometimes af Klint believed that spirit 64guides instructed her to work independently of them (Svensson 2005: 27). From 1912 to 1915, af Klint worked as a ‘partial medium’, exercising more direct control over the composition of her pictures (af Klint 2005: 8). From 1916 onwards, she was more active in creative decision making, although she retained contact with her spirit guides (af Klint 2005: 8).
In summary, the use of drawing and painting by De Fem as a means to translate spiritual experiences into visual form, and more specifically, af Klint’s background in technical drawing and her family history in diagrams and maps, may all have contributed to the importance of diagrammatic form in her works.
Evolution, Optics and Esoteric Diagrams
There are numerous ways in which af Klint’s spiritual ideas and their expression in diagrammatic works may have been influenced by scientific ideas and visualizations. Both Theosophists and Anthroposophists aimed to unite spirituality and science. Whilst acknowledging the achievements of science, Steiner believed that its disciplinary boundaries cannot penetrate into spiritual super-sensible worlds. At the same time, he believed that the clarity of thought and investigatory approach of science should be applied to spirituality to guard against ‘illusionary elements’ or hallucinations when entering higher spiritual worlds.[3]
An example of the way in which scientific ideas influenced esoteric thinking can perhaps be seen in af Klint’s series The Evolution. It has been argued that Charles Darwin’s ideas about biological evolution, published in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859, influenced ideas about spiritual evolution. For example, the art historian Linda Dalrymple Henderson suggests that Darwin’s ideas about evolution influenced the mystic philosopher Carl du Prel’s thinking about the evolution of human consciousness to higher levels. Af Klint is known to have had du Prel’s book in her collection (Henderson 2019: 80).
The Evolution series explores the spiritual evolution of the self. Af Klint writes that in the sixteenth work of the series (Figure 2.1), the lower half of the work depicts ‘body, soul and spirit in hibernation’ and the top mandala-like shape represents innocence, though, as Fant argues, even with these explanations the full meaning of the work is still remote from viewers (2021: 60). Another series of works exploring the theme of evolution was af Klint’s The Ten Largest, which the artist said provide insight into the ‘systemisation of four stages of human life’: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age (Fant 2021: 48). The seventh in this series is an annotated diagrammatic form surrounded by motifs reminiscent of flowers, petals, seeds, coils, and reproductive cells, etc. (Figure 2.2).
There is another way in which scientific ideas may have influenced Theosophical and Anthroposophical ideas. It has been argued that scientific discoveries that were revealing the hidden properties of matter influenced ideas in esoteric circles that there were hidden spiritual facets of the universe that may be uncovered by prayer or meditation (Müller-Westermann 2013: 38). In this way, it might be said that religion was being re-imagined through the perspectives being developed in science. In 1831 Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, and in 1838 Matthias Schleiden proposed that all plants are made of cells. The late nineteenth century saw the discovery of the X-ray by Wilhelm Röntgen and the discovery of electromagnetic waves by Heinrich Hertz (Müller-Westermann 2013: 38). These discoveries, indicating that the universe is permeated with unseen particles or force fields, undermined confidence in the adequacy of the naked human eye as a perceiving instrument (Henderson 2019: 6673). These ideas may have had a bearing on af Klint’s attempts to diagram the spiritual forces of plants, as can be seen in Violet Blossoms with Guidelines and the Flowers, Mosses and Lichen series, discussed later in this chapter.
Af Klint’s adoption of diagrams reflects their use in religious and esoteric practice. For example, kabbalistic ‘tree of life’ diagrams have been used in Jewish, Christian and Theosophical mystical traditions, and mandalas are used as meditative devices and tools for spiritual guidance in Buddhist practices. Af Klint’s works can be considered alongside the diagrams in Occult Chemistry (1908) by her contemporaries Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater, some of whose books af Klint had in her collection.[4] Occult Chemistry presents the authors’ claims that clairvoyance can offer an alternative instrument of observation that can supplement what cannot be observed through the five senses. The book includes diagrams of circular and oval shapes that contain spirals and molecular-like structures composed of circles and dotted lines. Images are annotated with letters, numbers, and plus and minus signs.[5]
The next section considers Peirce’s definition of diagrams and the roles that symbolic and indexical signs play on diagrams. Following sections will then include an analysis of which of these signs can be detected in af Klint’s works and how this analysis can assist in our interpretations of her works.
Peirce: Types of Signs
Charles Sanders Peirce wrote about a wide range of topics including semiotics, logic, metaphysics, mathematics and astronomy, amongst others. Peirce’s understanding of semiotics involves a sign, its object (what the sign refers to) and its interpretant, the latter meaning, for example, an idea that the sign/object relation excites in the mind. In Peirce’s semiotic theory, an emphasis is placed on how a sign is interpreted and the process of interpretation.[6]
A significant aspect of Peirce’s broader classification of signs, for the purposes of this chapter, is his division of signs into three main categories: icons, symbols and indexes. Symbols rely on the application of a general rule or convention for comprehension, for example, the way in which the word ‘book’ is interpreted by an English speaker to indicate the general concept of a book. The relationship between symbols and what they represent may be arbitrary as they do not need to have any similarity with their objects to function. For example, the word ‘book’ does not look like what it represents.
Indexes rely on a direct and factual connection with their objects to convey meaning, for example the way in which a weathervane indicates the direction of wind. Indexes also direct attention, an example being the way in which a pointing finger draws attention to something. Annotations on diagrams are also indexes. 67Peirce gives the example of the way in which ‘geometricians mark letters against the different parts of their diagrams and then use those letters to indicate those parts’ (1998a: 8). For example, the letters A, B and C on a geometrical figure are indexes.
All icons resemble their objects in some way, and so for Peirce, both images and diagrams are types of icon because they both have some sort of resemblance to their objects.[7] An image resembles its object by representing the ‘simple qualities’ of that object – an example is a portrait. This differs from a diagram, which resembles its object because the relations between the parts of the diagram are analogous to the relations between the parts of what it is representing, such as a thing or an idea (Peirce 1998b: 274). For example, in a pie chart, the proportions of the diagram are analogous to the proportions of the data it represents. As the writer on semiotics and philosopher of science Frederik Stjernfelt explains, a diagram resembles its object through ‘a skeleton-like sketch of relations’ (2000: 358). The historian and philosopher of science Chiara Ambrosio explains, ‘for Peirce, diagrams make relations visible’ (2014: 259). Af Klint’s works can be said to bear comparison with these examples and descriptions of diagrams in that her works filter the complexities of thought and perception into structures that make visible the relations between matter and spirit.
Ambrosio writes that Peirce suggests that the process of designing an icon, for example a diagram or image, is a process of discovery. Dynamic acts of interpretation are triggered by the process of selecting relevant qualities that can, in some respects, enable the icon to capture aspects of the object it stands for (Ambrosio 2014: 256). Furthermore, observing an icon and trying to decipher how it represents its object invites the viewer to re-enact the process of its construction. This is a fruitful and dynamic act of interpretation that reveals new facets of the object (Ambrosio 2014: 261).
Peirce noted that sharp distinctions cannot be made between different types of icons because the concept itself is inherently vague (Stjernfelt 2000: 358). This suggests that, for example, some images may have diagrammatic qualities. Furthermore, Peirce wrote that although some signs may predominately contain one or two of these characteristics, all signs include a blend of different measures of iconic, indexical, and symbolic characteristics. Accordingly, this chapter will consider how a mixture of diagrammatic, symbolic and indexical characteristics in af Klint’s works can be detected and how this mode of analysis supports interpretations of her works.
As regards the ways in which af Klint’s works can be considered diagrammatic, one factor to consider is how they are annotated. Peirce explains that indexical information on diagrams plays an important operational role. Discussing the example of a map, he writes that unless a map carries the mark of a known locality, a scale, and a compass, it can fail to convey where a place is to be found (1998a: 8). Peirce also writes:
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It is, however, a very essential feature of the Diagram per se that while it is as a whole an Icon, it yet contains parts which are capable of being recognized and distinguished by the affixion to each of a distinct Semantic Index (or Indicatory Seme, if you prefer this phrase). Letters of the alphabet commonly fulfil this office. (1976: 317)
Later sections will discuss how af Klint’s lettered annotations can enable us to distinguish different parts of the diagrams in the artist’s Primordial Chaos series.
It should be noted that Peirce wrote about diagrams in relation to their functional roles in logic, mathematics and science.[8] This raises the question of how we can relate his ideas about diagrams to those made in an artistic context. The semiotician Nicole Everaert-Desmedt explains that Peirce did not write extensively about art, but he did specify the purpose of a work of art is to capture what he called a ‘quality of feeling’ that seems ‘appropriate’ or ‘reasonable’ to the artist but which leaves the artist in an unsettled state. The artist tries to capture a quality of feeling and aims to give it intelligible form by embodying it in an artwork. Peirce believed that artworks are ideally received with a kind of ‘intellectual sympathy’ and a type of ‘cognition’ that differs from that used in scientific contexts. Furthermore, artworks remain incomplete in the sense that they continue to unfold themselves through new interpretations (Everaert-Desmedt 2006).[9] Again, this emphasizes the important role of interpretation to the way in which signs operate.
Diagrams and Abstraction
However, what happens when we do not fully understand the meanings that af Klint may have been trying to convey in her diagrams? Perhaps we can consider this in the light of everyday experiences of, for example, encountering a map or an engineering diagram and not fully understanding it, but nevertheless engaging with its aesthetic and structural qualities, its geometric patterns and linear systems. When this happens, are we merely engaging with the diagram’s formal and abstract qualities and eliding the diagram’s meaning? Or does something of the diagram’s intended meaning or purpose carry through, even if we cannot fully unlock it? These questions will be considered in a section about af Klint’s Primordial Chaos series. But before that, it would be useful to consider the connections between diagrams and art via the concept of abstraction.
Stjernfelt offers a useful means of connecting the abstraction of diagrammatic form with developments in Modern Art when he writes that ‘twentieth-century high modernism often approaches diagrammatic qualities’ (Stjernfelt 2017: 135). Stjernfelt argues that the abstract nature of diagrams is one of a number of their 69‘potential aesthetic qualities’ that may be exploited for artistic purposes. Diagrams are abstractive in that they abstract away properties of objects that are seen as irrelevant to the considerations in hand. They are also abstract in the sense that the properties and relations that they represent are subject to idealized depictions. Diagrams filter out what are considered to be irrelevant points of information in order to focus the eye on structures that reveal significant information (Stjernfelt 2017: 135). The way in which diagrams can help us distil ideas in visual form so that we can process complexities of thought and experience is exploited by artists to articulate ideas and visions. Accordingly, we might see af Klint’s artworks as abstractive (rather than as abstract works of art), i.e. works that use diagrammatic properties to filter out unnecessary information in order to focus on specific qualities and subject them to idealized depictions in, as Stjernfelt puts it, skeleton-like sketches of relations.
As already noted, in 1906, af Klint believed that she received a ‘great commission’ from a spirit guide to convey a ‘message to humanity’ about ‘the immortal aspect of man’ (Adams 2020: 2). So, for af Klint, the communication of the meaning of the works was important. Indicating why the communicative power of signs is important in her work, she wrote of:
an artist or author who, in his dreams, can fully and totally perceive beauty, the greatness of things. But it is not enough for him to see, others must also be allowed to see. What does he do? He creates, you say. That is to say, he limits his own free, lofty flights of thought in order to give his vision a form that others can understand. This is an inadequate image but it suffices to indicate the essential limitations of form.
--LINDEN 2005: 42
In what seems like a cautionary note, Peirce writes about how viewers may get lost in dreamlike and imaginary moments when looking at diagrams or paintings. During these moments, a painting or a diagram may become the ‘very thing’, and we may forget they are representations (Peirce uses the word ‘abstractions’) of something else. Peirce writes:
but in the middle part of our reasonings we forget that abstractness in great measure, and the diagram is for us the very thing. So in contemplating a painting, there is a moment when we lose the consciousness that it is not the thing, the distinction of the real and the copy disappears, and it is for the moment a pure dream. (1992: 226)
Some of af Klint’s diagrams are cryptic, and the annotations on her works can be difficult to understand. The enigmatic nature of af Klint’s works may lead us to get lost in the dream of the picture plane as if that is the ‘very thing’. This may 70lead us to lose sight of the spiritual themes that af Klint was trying to communicate through diagrammatic form. The potential for loss of meaning in the viewing of works of art was an issue addressed in the 1986 exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Af Klint’s inclusion in this exhibition was instrumental in attracting world-wide attention to her works. The exhibition built on the research that had been emerging in the 1960s which, according to the art historian Sixten Ringbom, countered a tendency to overlook the influence of occultism and Theosophy on the art of some early modern abstract artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. Both Kandinsky and Mondrian believed that art was a route to spiritual knowledge and that what Theosophists aspired to achieve by their methods, for example doctrinal instruction or meditation, etc., ‘the artist visualizes by the means at his disposal’ (Ringbom 1966: 414). In Mondrian’s works, for example, horizontal and vertical lines represent the sea and the forest as well as the relationships between matter and spirit.
In his influential 1939 essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch, the American art critic Clement Greenberg advocated formalist readings of art. He argued that an artwork should call attention to the unique attributes of the medium with which it is made. For example, paintings should explore the properties of line and colour on the two-dimensional picture plane. Greenberg argued that representation, subject matter, or narrative were properly the domains of other spheres such as literature or theatre. However, the growing interest in the esoteric subject matter of early modern abstract artwork made by artists such as Mondrian and Kandinsky, explored by Ringbom and The Spiritual in Art exhibition, provided an alternative to such purely formalist readings of their works.
Artists such as Mondrian were taking advantage of an abstraction that approached diagrammatic qualities as a means to visualize that which is invisible, such as metaphysical relationships. As we will see, a distinctive feature of af Klint’s more overtly diagrammatic approach to schematizing metaphysical relations were her annotations.
‘A Language of Symbols’
Af Klint’s creative mixture of iconic and linguistic registers can be considered in relation to the ideas discussed by Sybille Krämer and Christina Ljungberg in Thinking with Diagrams who argue that almost the entirety of intellectual and cultural history treats image and language as ‘disjoint orders that differ in their semiotic registers’. However, they contend that from both a cognitive and aesthetic point of view, our creativity is rooted in hybrids of the iconic and the discursive, the figurative and the symbolic, and that diagrams, maps, technical drawings, and graphs are examples of these ‘mixed forms’ (2016: 1).
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Af Klint created a list of the words and abbreviations that appear in both her visual works and in more than twenty thousand pieces of writing. Entitled Letters and Words Pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint, the list is thought to have been compiled in the 1930s. The artist described the work as a ‘language of symbols that has already existed forever and that has now been given to humanity by the creative spirits’ (Müller-Westermann 2018: 246). Some words refer to a concern with overcoming physical desire. Others allude to the Old Testament, Rosicrucianism and to Buddhism. Metaphorical relations are created between natural elements and emotional and spiritual qualities:
Het sand [Hot sand] = the fire of desire
Hyskan [The eye, hook-and-eye] = love
Skär ros [Pink rose] = spiritual knowledge and devotion
b = broken rays of WU
m = the caged bird’s struggle
t = beneath the beds of dust the seed will grow
Ö = the end of everything
BURGIN 2018: 259–85
Af Klint’s list exemplifies an individual’s attempt to construct a private symbolic system as a creative and exploratory exercise. However, this raises the question of how such individually created symbolic systems can be understood by others, and perhaps Peirce’s definition of symbols can help here. As previously stated, Peirce writes that symbols, which include words and abbreviations, rely on working general rules. Symbols depend upon ‘habit (acquired or inborn)’ (1998a: 9). Symbols, then, are generally held to be conventions that are communally understood. However, in Letters and Words Pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint, the artist assigned her own meanings to words and letters of the alphabet.
Af Klint included some of these words and abbreviations as annotations on her diagrams. Whereas diagrams often have a key that explains the meanings of abbreviated annotations, af Klint’s did not. Even if viewers had access to af Klint’s list of words and abbreviations, the artist often included multiple definitions for the same abbreviation. Viewers may be able to acquire an understanding of (or speculate about) af Klint’s intended meanings through a study of her works and the wider context of the artist’s practice and interests. However, these symbols would need a greater degree of interpretative attention than more conventional symbols. Or, if the viewer cannot understand the annotations on af Klint’s diagrams, then they might perhaps construe them as images that signify the notion of language. For example, the philosopher Douglas N. Morgan refers to the pictorial function of verbal signs played by newspaper headlines in the paintings of Georges Braque (1955: 52).
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The following section considers the role of lettered annotations in af Klint’s works, how they can potentially unlock af Klint’s intended meanings, and what other interpretative responses come into play when we do not fully understand these annotations.
Primordial Chaos
Primordial Chaos is a series of twenty-six works made by af Klint between 1906 to 1907.[10] It is one of the groups of works that comprise the larger body of work Paintings for the Temple. Primordial Chaos includes a mixture of images and diagrams in which symbols and indexes play important roles. As such, the series demonstrates that although Peirce divided signs into the three categories of icon, index and symbol; in fact most signs contain all of these characteristics but in different degrees and combinations.
The Primordial Chaos series can be seen as a diagrammatic unit that unfolds a progressive series of developments. Each work narrates a different stage in the story of the formation and evolution of the cosmos. Images that refer to the natural world are used to visualize abstractions, such as the evolution of spiritual consciousness or the idea of creation. This reflects the practice in esoteric circles of searching for real or symbolic links between the visible and invisible, to clarify, interpret and distribute knowledge to others (Svensson 2005: 24). Af Klint’s use of natural imagery as signifiers for thought processes suggests a kind of continuum between the spirit and natural world. As such, the imagery reflects the artist’s pantheistic leanings and the resurgence of vitalism at the turn of the twentieth century (Lomas 2013: 228).
The Primordial Chaos works reflect the themes of the broader series of The Paintings for the Temple. The art historian Iris Müller-Westermann explains that Primordial Chaos depicts the dissolution of oneness that existed at the beginning of creation, the splintering of unity into dualities, and the emergence of matter out of spirit. The works explore polarities between male and female, matter and spirit, light and dark, and good and evil. Although polarity is presented as an organizing principle of life, embedded into this polarity is a yearning to return to unity, which leads to spiritual evolution. A core theme of the works is the unity of all existence, which lies hidden behind the polarized dual world in which we live (Müller-Westermann 2013: 34, 38). As Svensson puts it, the series conveys the aim to achieve ‘the union of opposites, a total dissolution of matter and spirituality or of the male and female’ (2005: 17). Af Klint’s ideas may have been influenced by Carl du Prel, who argued against materialism and dualism, and in favour of a continuum between matter and spirit (Henderson 2019: 72).[11]
In the seventh painting of the Primordial Chaos series, an orb seems to be hurtling through space against a stormy atmosphere (Figure 2.3, top right). The 73orb is split into two by a cross which lies inside a shape that resembles a kite or a diamond. The letters ‘W’ and ‘U’ appear on either side of the horizontal bar of the cross. These letters serve an indexical function as their placement indicate and distinguish between different parts of the diagram. The letters also have a 74symbolic function as they are invested with literal meaning. In af Klint’s works, the letter ‘U’ symbolizes the spiritual and ‘W’ symbolizes matter (Müller-Westermann 2018: 34). Here, af Klint’s work conforms to Peirce’s idea of a diagram, as the relations between the parts of the diagram are analogous to the relations between the parts of the idea it references: the dual relationship between matter and spirit. The work recalls Peirce’s dictum that signs may combine iconic, symbolic and indexical qualities because the work is a diagram (a type of icon), and the W and U have both indexical and symbolic qualities.
n the fifth work of the Primordial Chaos series, a yellow snail shell is outlined in blue and shaded in green (Figure 2.3, top left). Af Klint wrote that in her works, the snail shell represents spiritual evolution or development (Fant 2021: 56, 58). Af Klint depicts a logarithmic spiral, also known as a growth spiral, by which the distances between the curves increase at each turn. This differs from the Archimedean spiral in which the distances between the curves stay the same.[12] Af Klint’s botanical knowledge would likely have made her familiar with logarithmic spirals in nature, such as in sunflowers or pinecones. Logarithmic spirals are also dynamic organizing principles on the macrocosmic scale, such as in the formation of hurricanes and galaxies.
The image of the snail can be seen as symbolic. Writing about Peirce, Morgan argues that in the visual arts, icons can become symbolic if they are used repeatedly to reference the same meaning. They acquire a ‘constant, conventional connotation’ (Morgan 1955: 53). As Helmut Zander explains, the spiral is commonly used in Theosophy to mean spiritual evolution (Müller-Westermann and Zander 2013: 127).
At the top of the fifth work in the Primordial Chaos series, the letters ‘u’ and ‘w’ appear united in cursive script. It is not clear what this annotation means in the context of this work, though in Letters and Words Pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint, one definition of ‘uw’ is listed as ‘symbol of the dual truth’ (Burgin 2018: 281). The letter ‘u’ appears at the centre of the snail and ‘w’ at the opening (Müller-Westermann 2013: 42). My speculative interpretation of the work is that it is depicting the emergence of matter out of spirit, one of the stages of cosmic development previously mentioned.
The work does not comply with conventional notions of what a diagram looks like, for example a graph or a geometric diagram. However, the work can be said to approach diagrammatic qualities because it maps out a process of development. The way in which the eye is taken on a spiralling path of development from spirit at the centre to matter at the outer edge is analogous to the idea it is representing (if my interpretation of the work is correct). Regarding the spiralling path of the snail, Müller-Westermann explains that spirals can be thought of as representing a ‘development from the centre outward, an expansion, but also as a path from outside towards an internal centre’ (Müller-Westermann and Zander 2013: 127).
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The spiral as a symbol of spiritual growth is to be found not only in af Klint’s drawings and paintings but also in her unrealized plan for a temple in which to house her paintings. Visitors would be guided through a three-tiered spiral pathway around a central tower. The complex was also to house a library and an altar. A tower would contain a spiral staircase leading to an observatory (Voss 2019: 39).[13]
The tenth work in the Primordial Chaos series looks like a table arranged in two columns (Figure 2.3, bottom left). There are letters of the alphabet, spirals, snails, letters, coils, dashes, swirls, dotted lines and zigzags. Voss writes that the work ‘resembles a scientific table, with formula-like symbols’. The artist compared the paintings in the series to ‘charts and logarithms for a seaman’ (2022: 134).
The colour scheme throughout the series is blue, yellow, and green. Af Klint related the colour blue with the feminine and yellow with the masculine. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colours, which Klint is known to have studied in 1921 (af Klint and Ersman 2018), blue and yellow are associated with paired forces of nature, for example, plus and minus, repulsion and attraction, force and weakness, warmth and cold, and action and negotiation (Kemp 2000: 57). Blue and yellow are therefore presented as opposites, which, when combined into green, create a unified whole.
The eleventh in the Primordial Chaos (Figure 2.3 bottom right) series looks like an annotated geometric diagram. A triangle and a diamond shape are indexed with letters of the alphabet and there are spiralling coils. We know that ‘w’ and ‘u’ mean matter and spirit. In af Klint’s notes, ‘A’ signifies the past and Kurt Almqvist writes that ‘O’ signifies the future (2023, 170). Svensson explains that for af Klint, the letters ‘ao’, when united together, symbolize spiritual evolution and quotes the artist as follows:
The idea is to present a core from which evolution starts in rain and storm, lightning and tempest. ao can also stand for Alpha and Omega: ao the beginning and the end of a day’s journey, i.e. a period of development in both climbing down into matter and rising up to full clear consciousness of life’s content.[14]
--SVENSSON 2005: 17
So perhaps the positioning of the letters ‘a’ and ‘o’ as well as the letters ‘w’ and ‘u’ diagonally across one another on the diamond shape signify the beginning and end of the spiritual journey that brings matter and spirit together. However, again, this is my speculation based on the diagram and wider discourses about af Klint’s works. Without fully understanding all the other annotations on the work, and without additional interpretative information, it is difficult to fully understand how the relations between the parts of this diagram represent the relations between the parts of its object, for example, a thing or an idea, which is central to Peirce’s notion of the operational function of the diagram.
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Af Klint’s works draw on both our familiarity with diagrams as a visual genre and the way in which we are used to interpreting letters on diagrams as indices which draw our attention to specific parts of diagrams, facilitating our interpretations of them. However, the cryptic nature of af Klint works destabilizes our habitual interpretative responses to diagrams. Nevertheless, in complying with our conventional notions of what a diagram looks like, the work strongly connotes an exercise in diagramming. The work suggests a process of schematizing relations, even if, as viewers, we may not be able to unlock exactly what the artist had in mind.
Af Klint’s works can be said to be indexical in that the artist claimed that she was channelling messages from spirits and so there was a perceived direct and causal relationship between messages from spirits and her works, and between af Klint’s perceived reality and her visualizations of this reality. We can read indexicality in another way. The works take the form of sketches made at speed with the medium of paint. Backgrounds are filled with scruffily painted marks and diagonal hatches which leave the surface exposed. These brushstrokes can be said to be indexical signs (Morgan 1955: 53). There is a causal relationship between the appearance of the brushstrokes and the gestural speed, dynamism and energy with which the artist created the works. These indexical signs manifest the work’s wider themes of vitality and change. The brushstrokes also direct our attention to the presence of the artist who is exploring and visualizing a thought process, and this creates a kind of relationship between artist and viewer.
Discussing a logician viewing a diagram, Peirce wrote that the material qualities of a diagram, for example whether it is drawn on a blackboard or piece of paper, are ‘accidental characters that have no significance’ (1976: 317). Similarly, discussing the role of diagrams in logic, Stjernfelt argues that the gestural qualities of lines are irrelevant (2000: 366). This suggests that the purpose of a diagram is to carry out a logical proof and what matters is the diagram’s structural relations, and the conventions by which we understand them, which would remain the same whatever its material qualities.
However, it could be argued that interpretative responses to the material and expressive qualities of diagrams can be important in some contexts. As previously stated, af Klint’s rapidly painted and gestural brushstrokes convey meaning, and they are integral to the way in which she uses artistic strategies to draw our attention to the themes of the works. The artist and writer Dean Kenning addresses a potential aesthetics of Peircean diagrams. In an essay published in 1906, Peirce briefly mentions the idea of ‘tone’, meaning the ‘character’ of a particular instance of a sign, such as in a tone of voice.[15] Kenning questions whether tone, or the way in which a diagram is drawn in a particular instance, might not just be of aesthetic interest but also contributes to the meaning and interpretation of a diagram. For example, a wobbly line might index the nervousness the maker of the diagram felt at the time of its making 77(Kenning 2021: 188). Therefore, the relevance of the ‘tone’, or the expressive qualities, of a diagram, may depend on the purpose of the diagram and whether the diagram-maker chooses to use the material qualities of a diagram to convey meaning. In certain contexts, focusing on the ‘tone’ of a diagram may allow us to discern meanings that we would miss if we ‘abstracted’ (or ignored) it.[16]
Furthermore, the aesthetic, formal and abstract qualities of af Klint’s works, for example their shapes and colours, connective lines and structures, can be said to attract our attention and engage our imagination. So, in the case of artistic diagrams, or diagrams that use artistic strategies such as gestural brushstrokes to convey their meaning, the moments in which we get ‘lost in the dream’ of abstract qualities may be fruitful moments which encourage contemplation and engagement with diagrams as representations of ideas. Artistic diagrams may incite fruitful transmissions between dream-like moments and ‘intellectual sympathy’ (as Peirce puts it) with the meanings that the artist is trying to convey, meanings whose full import may ultimately elude us.
The Tree of Knowledge
Another example of the use of annotations on af Klint’s diagrammatic works include those in the third work in The Tree of Knowledge series, a group of eight works made between 1913 and 1915. In the third drawing (Figure 2.4) a tree trunk is enclosed by a circle which is divided into three main sections, which are annotated ‘ether plane’, ‘astral plane’ and ‘mental plane’. These annotations have an indexical function, as they mark different sections of the circle and indicate what these parts mean, enabling us to distinguish between three conceptual realms within the plane of the drawing. The conceptual model of this part of the drawing aligns with Theosophical ideas about interconnecting but successively higher planes of existence (Henderson 2019: 79).
As in the Primordial Chaos series, images deriving from nature are used as symbols. Within the circle, there are two rows of lotus flowers, which are symbols of purity and are indicative of the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism on Theosophy (Lomas 2013: 232). The tree structure is present throughout most of the drawings in the series and reflects how trees have been used as a diagrammatic idiom in various religions, including Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Like the Primordial Chaos series, The Tree of Knowledge can be considered as a diagrammatic unit that charts stages of an unfolding process, namely, a state of innocence and balance which is followed by a bifurcation into male and female, the Fall from Grace, and finally the conception of a child (Fant 2021: 64). As such, the series connects Theosophical ideas with themes in the Christian biblical narrative.
Diagrammatic and Meditative Practice
An example of a mixture of figuration, annotation and diagrammatic form can be seen in af Klint’s Violet Blossoms with Guidelines (1919), in which observations of the external appearance of the natural world lead to speculations about the invisible spiritual world (Figure 2.5). The drawing depicts the appearances of plants as perceived by the eye and as they appear in the ‘astral plane, a supra sensible realm described by Theosophy’ (Lomas 2013: 223). This work may reflect the earlier-mentioned influences on esoteric practices of recent scientific discoveries of previously invisible realms of matter. This work also recalls the botanical drawings af Klint made early on in life. Naturalistic drawings of plants are juxtaposed with geometric forms: squares that are divided into four, some of which are filled with colour or particles that resemble seeds. The squares are annotated with the date of the drawing and the word ‘guidelines’, and they signify understandings of the plant’s inner spiritual essences.
This work was made at a time when af Klint’s working processes had become meditative rather than mediumistic. Steiner was critical of mediumistic practices as he perceived these as passive and entailing a loss of control (Müller-Westermann and Zander 2013: 125). He advocated what he saw as more active meditative practices as a means to reach higher knowledge. Indeed, David Adams suggests that works such as Violet Blossoms with Guidelines may have been influenced by Steiner’s meditative exercises which involved observing the outer form of plants and imagining the unfolding of the inner forces which drive their growth and death (2020: 14–15). The plant’s emotional or spiritual qualities are noted, for example joy, dissatisfaction, or willingness to sacrifice.
Violet Blossoms with Guidelines can be contrasted to the one hundred and forty-six botanical studies in the Flowers, Mosses and Lichen series, in which realistic drawings of the plant’s outward appearance do not appear (Figure 2.6). The latter series contains diagrammatic features, such as the use of arrows to indicate direction of travel and, again, lettered geometric shapes that are divided into sections.
The Flowers, Mosses and Lichen series presents diagramming as a framework for a daily meditative and creative practice. Af Klint made about one drawing a day. The artist’s methods may not be rational or scientific, but they do follow a self-determined system. Adams describes the three stages of af Klint’s process. Firstly, the specimen’s scientific name is recorded. Secondly, the plant’s spiritual properties are schematized in squares or circles. Thirdly, there is a written description of the specimen’s emotional, spiritual, or therapeutic qualities (Adams 2020: 14–15). As such, the drawings indicate a kind of subjective taxonomy, a naming, describing and classifying of plants according to the qualities af Klint ascribed to them.
In works such as Flowers, Mosses and Lichen, the practice of diagramming is intrinsic to a form of research, and the exploration and manifestation of ideas 8081seem to take precedence over formal concerns. The art historian Gertrud Sandqvist draws a parallel between af Klint’s working methods for this series to those adopted by conceptual artists, whose works are guided by ideas and processes. In Sentences on Conceptual Art (1968), the artist Sol LeWitt states that ‘conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach’ and that ‘irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically’ (Sandqvist 2020: 233). In this series, af Klint’s working method similarly involves setting in motion an intuitive process for creating works that is followed through systematically. In af Klint’s works, the diagramming of the perceived spiritual qualities of plants is a means to commune with the natural world. Diagrams become a kind of laboratory for exercises in observation, meditation, and the structuring of perceptions.
Conclusion: Fruitful Transmissions
Af Klint is an example of an artist creating diagrammatic works to visualize metaphysical realms, which had been an overlooked aspect of the abstraction in Modern Art. Indeed, it has been suggested that af Klint may not have considered the paintings discussed in this chapter as art in quite the same way in which they have been considered since their rediscovery in the 1980s. Rather they were a means for af Klint to convey messages about the divine to those who were prepared for the spiritual calling (Almqvist 2023: 172). Peirce’s theories unlock these readings of af Klint’s works and help us approach the possible functions of her diagrams which may be known, in detail, only to her. Furthermore, Peirce’s descriptions of the iconic, symbolic and indexical characteristics of signs can help us analyse how combinations of these characteristics can visualize ideas.
Although af Klint stated that her intention was to communicate a message about her spiritual beliefs, some of Klint’s works are difficult to fully comprehend. Furthermore, Peirce writes that when looking at paintings or diagrams our ‘reasonings’ may be disrupted as we get lost in the ‘pure dream’ of what we observe. We may lose consciousness that a painting or a diagram is not ‘the thing’, and we may forget that it is actually a representation of a thing, a process, or an idea, etc. The viewer may leave their observer’s position and enter the world of the diagram or painting, engaging in an immersive experience of its formal relations. Af Klint’s works point to the potential for abstraction at the core of the diagrammatic to invite a wide range of cognitive and imaginative responses when specific and concrete details are removed or not fully understood.[17] The cryptic nature of af Klint’s works, combined with their heightened visual and gestural qualities, may encourage these kinds of engagements, disrupting the notion of diagrams as functional or didactic tools for thought.
The compositional and painterly qualities of af Klint’s works reflect her training as an artist and demonstrate the expressive potential of diagrams. Af Klint’s works amplify the visual language of diagrams with a rich and suggestive vocabulary that exceeds the functional display of information. These kinds of artistic diagrams highlight the potential for the expressive and material properties of a diagram to facilitate the communication of ideas. The gestural brushstrokes of Primordial Chaos convey impressions of energy and movement which contribute towards our understanding of the theme of cosmic creation at the centre of the works.
Artistic diagrams may sit in a distinctive in-between space. On the one hand, their diagrammatic form conveys the impression of an artist trying to transmit specific information, and we can try our best to unlock these meanings through interpretation and speculation. Yet their aesthetic qualities or ambiguous nature may invite appreciations of the formal qualities of their structural, geometric and linear relationships, or in af Klint’s case, their rich imagery grounded in botanical and biological references. These responses may excite our curiosity and feed into interpretative responses of the meanings of the works. Artistic diagrams can invite fruitful transmissions between multiple of modes reception and perhaps this is why they are so intriguing.