The Demythologization and the Pleasure of Visual Writing: Hilma af Klint Through the Lens of Roland Barthes' Semiotics
Abstract
Hilma af Klint stands as a pivotal pioneer of early 20th-century abstract art. Long marginalized in canonical art historical narratives,
her work was rapidly constructed into a myth of the "origin of abstraction" after its first public exhibition in 1986. Adopting Roland Barthes'
semiotic framework as its core methodology, this article focuses on af Klint's The Paintings for the Temple and her late watercolors, deploying key concepts including secondary signification, anchorage, the scriptable text, and Le Neutre to analyze three core sign systems—spiral
motifs, reworked androgynous imagery, and the systematic use of black. It argues that af Klint's practice constitutes a mode of visual writing
marked by a dual logic of "myth production" and "demythologizing escape": she mobilizes Theosophical signs to construct a visual myth of
spiritual truth, while simultaneously destabilizing semantic determinacy via the slippage of the signifier, offering a paradigm of visual practice
inherently resistant to ideological co-optation for contemporary art.
her work was rapidly constructed into a myth of the "origin of abstraction" after its first public exhibition in 1986. Adopting Roland Barthes'
semiotic framework as its core methodology, this article focuses on af Klint's The Paintings for the Temple and her late watercolors, deploying key concepts including secondary signification, anchorage, the scriptable text, and Le Neutre to analyze three core sign systems—spiral
motifs, reworked androgynous imagery, and the systematic use of black. It argues that af Klint's practice constitutes a mode of visual writing
marked by a dual logic of "myth production" and "demythologizing escape": she mobilizes Theosophical signs to construct a visual myth of
spiritual truth, while simultaneously destabilizing semantic determinacy via the slippage of the signifier, offering a paradigm of visual practice
inherently resistant to ideological co-optation for contemporary art.
Keywords
Hilma af Klint; Roland Barthes; Semiotics; Mythology; Theosophy
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PDFReferences
[1] Barthes, R. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.
[2] Barthes, R. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.
[3] Barthes, R. The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collège de France (1977–1978). Edited by Thomas Clerc, translated by Rosalind E.
Krauss and Denis Hollier. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
[4] Fant, Å. Hilma af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2021.
[5] Burgin, C., ed. Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
[6] Besant, A., and C.W. Leadbeater. Thought-Forms. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2020.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.70711/rcha.v4i7.10105
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