Visual Art

On January 1, 1906, during a séance in Stockholm, Hilma af Klint accepted a major commission from a spirit named Amaliel. The result was an astounding series of abstract paintings, created years before the conventionally understood beginnings of abstract art, typically associated with figures like Kandinsky and Mondrian. But after unsuccessful attempts to exhibit her works, af Klint instructed that they be locked away until twenty years after her death. Only in the new millennium would their significance be widely recognized.

Occult movements such as Spiritualism and Theosophy were instrumental in shaping af Klint’s vision, but she was far from alone. Many prominent artists of the era—including Kandinsky and Mondrian—engaged with occult ideas and practices as they rebelled against scientific materialism and sought to portray unseen forces. In this piece, Marina Smith and Ron Hanson explore the occult’s profound influence on modern art, the long suppression of this history, and its re-emergence as a subject of contemporary interest.

Cornelia Lauf’s love affair with Rome spans four decades of her work as an art historian, deepening after she moved to the Eternal City in 1998 with her then-husband, Joseph Kosuth. For nearly three decades, she has been both a participant and an observer of Rome’s contemporary art scene. From this vantage point, Lauf shares her perspective on the city while inviting a voice forty years younger—Lebanese artist-curator Majd El Roumi, based in Rome—to contribute his own portrait of this community through photographs of key practitioners.

In 2016, amid Hungary’s sharp illiberal shift under Viktor Orbán, White Fungus published a roundtable discussion on the state of the country's contemporary art scene. The conversation featured Gábor Rieder, art critic and former editor-in-chief of Flash Art Hungary; Dávid Fehér, art historian and associate curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; and Áron Fenyvesi, writer and curator at Trafó Gallery, Budapest. First published in issue 15 of White Fungus, the discussion is now available online.

Roger Boyce explores the photographic still lifes of New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington in lucid, evocative prose. Drawing on the history of painting, he examines their rich pathos and visual power as an 'amor fati'—a profound veneration of things in their inviolable circumstance.

Yao Jui-Chung is one of Taiwan’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. In this major 2020 interview with White Fungus editor Ron Hanson—conducted on the occasion of his mid-career retrospective Republic of Cynic at C-LAB—he reflects on coming of age after martial law, running a karaoke room during his Air Force military service, and Taiwan’s complex history and identity.

In 1959, Wallis Islander Aloï Pilioko met Russian French artist Nicolaï Michoutouchkine in what is now Vanuatu. The encounter proved pivotal as Michoutouchkine encouraged Piliko to become an artist, and he would go on to become one of the most famous Pacific artists of his generation. The pair became inseparable and began a remarkable decades-long adventure of traveling, collecting, exhibiting, and making Oceanic art all over the world. Peter Brunt wrote about the unique artistic collaboration for White Fungus.