Chapter 11 What Only They Could See: A Comparative Analysis of Hilma af Klint’s Swan Paintings and C.G. Jung’s Mandala Sketches

In: Collective Structures of Imagination in Jungian Interpretation
Author:
Kathrin Schaeppi
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Abstract

In this paper, I will illuminate the striking parallels in the life and art of the contemporaries Hilma af Klint and C.G. Jung through a comparative analysis of their art—specifically af Klint’s swan paintings and Jung’s mandala sketches. Hilma af Klint and C.G. Jung, who never met during their lives, were informed by several shared factors. Particularly their sustained dedication to self-experimentation and connecting with a similar stream of archetypal images would result in their works’ uncannily echoing the other. What is it about their art that resonates with us a century after it was produced? In this comparative analysis of their life and art, I attempt to illuminate how Hilma af Klint and C.G. Jung inadvertently offer structures through which it is possible to better imagine what each has brought into the world and how it took extremely individual journeys to achieve this. In essence, af Klint’s commission was to paint “the immortal aspects of man” while Jung conceived representations of Self.

In particular, I will examine af Klint’s swan paintings and Jung’s mandala sketches and illuminate how each series—curiously similar in both development and in length—is a whole reflecting the other. I will demonstrate how it is the archetype, and specifically the archetype of number, that lies at the basis of the human psyche—and the individuation process, as Jung revealed—that binds these images together.

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