New paint at Artifact Gallery New York december 2021

 

intimacies - natural female expression - female subject

 

Text by Wim Wiklund and Agneta E Hildén

 

 

 

Agneta E. Hildén had been a practicing artist and architect for 25 years and had been driven projects in many different countries and won several awards for her work.

She was an architect and artist educated at KTH Royal Institute of Technology , University of Arts Craft and Design in Stockholm and throughout her life as an artist she’d had two main recurring studies – LA Modulor and Odd Realism, of which the first one this essay will revolve around. She was also a publisher of wellknowed and appreciated books such as “Villa Spies”, “The last picture” author Svenolof Wallenstein and “Bengt Edman “complete works”, whom she worked close with during many years.

 What I am honoured and about to reveal about LA Modulor and the methods and cognition of Agneta E Hildén, is super intimate and important knowledge which should not be misunderstood or abused by anyone ignorant to the super weird awareness of certain aspects in art and architecture. Therefore, I will try to express myself gently but sometimes cryptic on the matter. All for the sake of safeguarding Agneta E Hildén’s and by all means all fellow artist and architects integrity. After all, I believe some aspects of art can and should remain sacred.

 About the Study LA Modulor

 Leonardo da Vinci's illustrations of polyhedra in De divina proportione (On the Divine Proportion) and his views that some bodily proportions exhibit the golden ratio have led some scholars to speculate that he incorporated the golden ratio in his paintings. But the suggestion that his Mona Lisa, for example, employs golden ratio proportions, is not supported by anything in Leonardo's own writings. Similarly, although the Vitruvian Man is often shown in connection with the golden ratio, the proportions of the figure do not actually match it, and the text only mentions whole number ratios. Within aesthetics, in art as well in architecture, there is a strong tradition of using the golden section to create harmonious proportions, that according to Agneta E Hildén, rely heavily on the study of the male body.

As Agneta E Hildén puts it in her own words:

“LA MODULOR is about female proprotions etc in the grammar in architecture, Of course in history, mens body and mind has been the issue. For example who I studied in Paris was Le Corbusier, Vitruvius etc The old grammar in Architecture I call my study LA MODULOR. The study is based on observations of my own body and mind and space and time. To me art and architecture connect more and more on an deeper plane inside the human as archetypes.”

 

Agneta E Hildéns study in female appearance is built on a vast number of paintings but also diagrams and models. Looking at the images, not only do you notice a wide variation in contour systems. you also sense the tendency of movement. Depicting and translating movement in bodies, also seems like a vital part in the study of LA Modulor.

 The Body could be seen the generator for art and architecture and at the same time the perception system with which we experience it. A wider understanding of the body and biodiversity, is therefore necessary for broadening the vocabulary of art and architecture.

Could it be that societies fetish with female appearance and the sexualizing of femininity is because of the lack of representation of true femininity within aesthetics?

 “La Modulor is a figure. It’s about how women can express themselves from their body and soul. Express themselves as a subject in architecture, not as an object or defined as an object in architecture, but themselves. It’s very important and absolutely necessary because otherwise in the future we will create empty rooms in society. Females have to express their own rooms.”

 As it seems, the female body, the female body in movement and the female experience are all central parts in LA Modulor. Connected to these three aspects is Agneta E Hildén’s own experience with gymnastics. As a girl, and as a young woman Agneta E Hildén was a part of a gymnastics troop called “The Sofia-girls”. This troop of girls in motion has gained a symbolic value in Hildén’s art practice. These women, are recurring in her imagery.

Experiencing acts of movement from within it and also through the surrounding environment, framing the event of the movement, is according to Agneta E Hildén, how you get to know your body. The transformation of the body seems secondary to the act of the actual exercise. She perseveres the importance of using her own body as a tool:

 “I use my own body for this you know. That’s the only method I have. You use your senses you use your body you use your arms, legs and also your soul. I was trained to do that when I was a young gymnast in the Sophia-girls so for me it was natural to do the same in architecture. To develop a kind of language in feministic architecture. I think that’s wats in it. You have to use yourself for it because you can’t go to the books with this subject. I can’t really go to the history. I have to just trial and error and find out things in my own experience.

“And when you make a study like La Modulor, you can’t reach all the way. You have to be glad if you sometimes reach some goals. But you can’t reach them all. That will happen in the future. Maybe its an study with no beginning and no end  Many female artists and architects are going to express themselves in the future. I think women overall, are gonna become stronger subjects in the future.

It was absolutely necessary to do this study. To tell the truth, I was affected about my deep study. It was tough for the soul and the body to work with constant transformation. When you use yourself in a study, every artist do, they use themselves as a base in their studies. I felt that I had to go out to the nature and to the sea and the sky and the woods. But now I have the the opportunity to rent a house, where the forest meets the sea.”