Taking dictation — art without an author

The hand moves and the artist says it was not theirs. Spirit drawing, automatic writing, the séance as a studio practice. A working method for two generations, and the origin of the first abstract pictures anyone made.

⚠⚠ AND IT IS WHY SO MUCH OF THIS WING IS WOMEN. Authorship was the thing a nineteenth-century woman was least permitted to claim — and mediumship is a technique that requires you to disclaim it. Houghton, the five women of De Fem, af Klint: abstraction arrives forty years early, through the one door that was open.