Mystery Road
Writers like to pin things down. Understand what a work is saying or doing. But one Friday in June, I stood in front of Hilma af Klint’s No.7 Adulthood, a 1907 painting, part of a series called The Ten Largest. A swathe of lilac deepens the longer you look at it. Shapes bubble and bloom, morphing into each other. Trying to capture the experience in words is like trying to stop alchemy in motion or attempting to grab a fistful of air.
Af Klint, we know by now, was a Swedish mystic overlooked by the art world., these biographical particulars feel irrelevant; the artist’s life makes a great backstory, but it doesn’t solve the mystery of the work itself.
