GayTuckerCarlson

The Ten Largest, No. 2

The Ten Largest Painting Series

Hilma af Klint was a Swedish abstract artist who was way ahead of her time. She might just be the first abstract painter in Western modern art history but did not get recognition until just recently. Lately, there have been several exhibitions of her work; for example, at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden. Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest is iconic and has lately been shown all over the world, most notably at Tate Modern in London and a couple of years ago at Guggenheim Museum in New York. It is one of her most important works, and the large scale of the paintings is quite striking.

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) started as a landscape and portrait painter after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1887. During her career, she also had an interest in the spiritual world—an interest she later employed in her art. According to the artist, she received messages from the spirits telling her what and how to paint.

The Ten Largest is a group of works comprising ten 10,76 x 7,87 ft (328 x 240 cm) egg tempera paintings. The paintings depict the spiritual evolution of humans, taking us from childhood, through youth, and adulthood to old age. Let’s take a closer look at the history and the meaning of The Ten Largest!

History of the Paintings

Hilma af Klint took precise notes on her work with The Ten Largest, and therefore we know a lot of the meaning and how to understand the paintings through her notebooks. The Ten Largest is part of a larger series of artwork called Paintings for the Temple, a series she was assigned from the spiritual world. We know, from Hilma af Klint’s notes, that there were more spirits involved in the assignment, whom she called “The High Masters.” She saw herself as a channel between the spiritual world and this world.

Af Klint painted The Ten Largest during a 40-day period in 1907, and the spirits were very specific with the timeline. They told her to paint each painting in four days, following each other, which she completed with help from at least two friends. She created the paintings swiftly and spontaneously, with little planning. She completed the whole series in 40 days.
The Meaning

The paintings depict the evolution of human consciousness and the spiritual evolution of the human mind. Each painting should be interpreted as a phase in life. Hilma af Klint was very interested in spiritualism, which was not uncommon in the early 20th century, especially in the cultural circles. The paintings were supposed to give humanity images of life beyond everything, which were not visible otherwise. However, when Hilma af Klint searched for a suitable place to exhibit and show the world these beautiful abstract paintings, she did so in vain. In 1932 she decided that since the world was not ready to take part in and understand the spiritual messages in her paintings, most of her artwork and her notebooks were to be kept from the public for 20 years.

Childhood

Ten Largest No.1

The two first paintings in the series represent childhood. These two works have a blue background. They also depict Hilma af Klint’s fascination with duality. She described in her notebooks two principles in the spiritual world. These principals were not to be understood as opposites but as something forming a whole together. In these paintings describing childhood, we see a lot of individual shapes forming pairs. According to the artist herself, the lily and the color blue represented the feminine principle, and the rose and the color yellow symbolized the masculine principle. We can see a lot of organic forms and shapes in all of The Ten Largest. Furthermore, in the paintings representing childhood, we see a lot of forms associated with plants and vegetation.

Ten Largest analysis source

Biography source

Join our public Matrix server!

https://rentry.co/tracha#tracha-rooms

As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.

Im not malding just becuase im bad please dont print in the newspaper that im bad at hm2

Group X, Altarpieces, Nos. 1

Esther Rose - Wanton Way of Loving

Boulevard Montmartre - Night by Camille Pissarro / La Vie en Rose - Louis Armstrong

Tracey Chapman - Fast Car

Elvis - If I Can Dream

Huangguoshu Waterfall

Pang Xunqin - 1940

Owl on a Pine Branch (1833)

Utagawa Hiroshige

Boston Cremes (1962) - Wayne Thiebaud

Join our public Matrix server!

https://rentry.co/tracha#tracha-rooms

As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.

(Updated post with a better source)

Metro is making plans to close an eight-mile gap in the L.A. River bike/walk path. The project is largely funded, but don't expect construction any time soon.

Metro's 2016 Measure M sales tax expenditure plan funds for two long stretches of L.A. River path: in central Los Angeles and in the San Fernando Valley. Additional Valley path is expected to be under construction soon.

This post concerns the central city path, which will extend from the existing Glendale Narrows bikeway in Cypress Park/Elysian Valley through Downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights, to connect to the South County River Trail in the cities of Vernon and Maywood.

Measure M programmed $365 million for the river path, scheduled for a 2023 groundbreaking and a 2025-27 opening. The project had been on the initial Metro Olympics project list, but was quietly removed when it became clear that construction would not be completed ahead of 2028.

Metro held river path project input meetings in 2019. That year the Metro board approved proceeding with environmental studies. Then nothing happened.

In a project update meeting yesterday (a second similar meeting will be held tomorrow - Thursday evening), Metro project staff now anticipate some portion of the path might be open in "at least five years." Or maybe not.

As SBLA noted earlier, the delays are mainly caused by the lack of a public agency that will be responsible for path operations and maintenance.

When Metro expands freeways, the state (Caltrans) maintains them. When Metro expands rail or bus facilities, Metro maintains them. When Metro expands bicycle and pedestrian transportation... it depends.

Metro is maintaining the new Rail-to-Rail bike/walk path, which Metro built on a Metro-owned right-of-way.

But Metro representatives state that Metro will not maintain the L.A. River path because Metro doesn't own the right-of-way it will be built on.

Yesterday, Metro reps stated that they had "started [a] conversation with the leadership level of at least the County of L.A." as a possible maintenance partner. L.A. County, through its Flood Control District (responsible for the concrete structures encasing local rivers and creeks), does maintain several waterway paths. These include the downstream L.A. River paths: the South County Bike Trail and the Lario Bike Trail (along the Rio Hondo and the lower L.A. River).

Upstream, L.A. River path segments (in northeast L.A. and the San Fernando Valley) are located in L.A. City, and maintained (somewhat imperfectly) by the city.

Based on past and current maintenance practices, one would expect the city to maintain its part (~5 miles in DTLA) of the Metro river path project, with the county responsible for its part (~3 miles in Vernon).

Yesterday Metro staff suggested that project maintenance could go to a new governmental agency not yet formed: a Joint Powers Authority spanning the full ~51 mile L.A. River. The idea of a single river authority has been proposed since the early 1990s, and is no closer to happening today than it was then. Waiting to put any cart behind that non-existent horse would be a recipe for years of delay.

And speaking of delays, the wait for a maintenance agency has delayed the central river path project for a half-dozen years, during which the construction costs have risen.

This means that Metro's ~$430 million (the above-mentioned Measure M funding adjusted for inflation) is no longer enough to build the entire project, now expected to cost around ~$1 billion.

It was never a cheap project to thread a path along a river (prone to rapid water level rise), active freight/passenger rail, freeways, bridges, electrical towers, and other infrastructure - but it appears that Metro's design team may have overshot an optimal affordable design. The funding picture worsened as the project scope expanded from a mostly less-expensive at-grade path, to one that features more costly structures and bridges.

Metro anticipates the current funding shortfall means the project will need to be broken up into several phases. Phasing an 8-mile long multi-city path project makes a lot of sense. It probably should have happened around 2019.

Metro anticipates the project's draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will be released this fall. That will be followed by the Metro board selecting the final project design (the Locally Preferred Alternative - LPA) soon thereafter.

Despite so many prior delays, it might be premature to finalize an EIR before finalizing maintenance arrangements.

It is unclear how this project gets built any time soon. For years, Metro staff have been unsuccessful in arranging for someone else to pay for facility maintenance in perpetuity. It will likely take leadership from L.A. City and L.A. County elected officials (all facing their own budget issues) to get this project out of the limbo it has been trapped in for the last half-decade.