Charmion von Wiegand’s Buddhist-Inspired Abstractions Are Earning Overdue Acclaim
Charmion von Wiegand, installation view of “Charmion von Wiegand” at Kunstmuseum Basel, 2023. Photo by Julian Salinas. Courtesy of Kunstmuseum Basel.
Today, the American painter, journalist, and art critic Charmion von Wiegand is largely unknown. If she is mentioned at all, it will likely be in connection with Piet Mondrian, who had a profound influence on her early artistic output. Yet von Wiegand would move beyond this early inspiration to create bold, colorful compositions which innovatively combine Eastern iconography with geometric abstraction, defying easy categorization. An exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel is now hoping to bring her distinctive oeuvre to the attention of a wider audience.
Von Wiegand’s early painting practice was spurred by a conversation with her psychotherapist in 1927. When asked what she would do if she could do anything, she replied, “Why, paint of course.”
At the age of 30 she feared she was too old, yet for the next decade she would combine painting with criticism for left-leaning journals such as New Masses and Art Front. It was a period of “trying and testing out how she could behold the world. Sometimes she was trying to find words, sometimes she was trying to find figuration,” explained Maja Wismer, head of art after 1960 and contemporary art at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Portrait of Charmion von Wiegand in her studio, 1961. © Arnold Newman Properties / Getty Images. Courtesy Kunstmuseum Basel.
In these early days, von Wiegand was convinced that artists should be socially aware and that art should reflect its creator’s political views. She saw figurative art as a way to be socially engaged and dismissed abstract art as devoid of content. The turning point came when she initiated a meeting with Mondrian, having read that the British art historian Herbert Read considered him to be one of the only true revolutionary artists. They met in April 1941, and their conversation about art and ideas would profoundly change her work. “From that first meeting my eyes were transformed,” she said.
The two would remain in contact until Mondrian’s death in 1944, with von Wiegand helping him translate his writing into English for an American audience. Their ongoing discussions led to von Wiegand’s deep engagement with his ideas in her work, particularly around the utopian possibilities of abstraction. “I think he opened the door for her to see a light at the end of the tunnel of where abstraction could have meaning,” said Wismer. However, Mondrian was dismissive of her own attempts to be an artist. “You are a writer and I don’t want to know about your painting,” he said scathingly when she attempted to discuss one of her own compositions with him.
Charmion von Wiegand, installation view of “Charmion von Wiegand” at Kunstmuseum Basel, 2023. Photo by Julian Salinas. Courtesy of Kunstmuseum Basel.
Despite the lack of encouragement, von Wiegand continued to paint throughout the 1940s, a period when Wismer says her oeuvre truly came into its own. Her painting from this time varies from Miró-esque organic forms to gridded compositions such as Night Rhythm (1948), which clearly shows the influence of Mondrian.
At the same time, von Wiegand was becoming increasingly interested in East Asian art and Buddhist practice. These combined influences would lead her to create what are possibly her most original and important works. “The moment she really blossomed was when she was able to make a connection between her spiritual way of life and her painting, when it was not about reading someone else’s works but really through experiencing spirituality. That, I think, is unique,” said Wismer.
Charmion von Wiegand, installation view of The Great Field of Action or the 64 Hexagrams, 1953, in “Charmion von Wiegand” at Kunstmuseum Basel, 2023. Photo by Julian Salinas. Courtesy of the estate of the artist and Kunstmuseum Basel.
A painting such as The Ascent to Mt. Meru (1962) is, to Western eyes, a geometric depiction of the Tibetan Buddhist symbol Mount Meru. But, as Felix Vogel, art history professor at the University of Kassel, points out in the exhibition’s catalogue, the work is also “bound by a traditional Tibetan Style of representation in which showing an object at once from above and from the side is entirely normal.” In this sense, he suggested, it could be read as a mandala, a geometric configuration of symbols seen in a number of spiritual traditions which is often used as an aid to meditation.
For Haema Sivanesan, chief curator of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada, von Wiegand’s use of such symbolism makes her “perhaps one of the first American artists to produce an image of ‘Modern Buddhism,’—that is, an image of Buddhism as a transcultural phenomenon constituted through the encounter between East and West,” she wrote in the catalogue.
Charmion von Wiegand, The Ascent to Mt. Meru, 1962. © Estate of the artist. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Charmion von Wiegand, Untitled, 1946. © Estate of the artist. Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York.
The catalogue essay by Sivanesan, a specialist on the influence of Buddhism on North American art, was important to the development of the exhibition as it allowed the museum to “understand that these works are readable to a knowledgeable and practicing audience,” said Wismer.
In one of von Wiegand’s last paintings, To the Adi Buddha (ca. 1968–70), a mesmerizing depiction of an altar, one of the most profound symbols of Buddhist faith, “the predominance of dramatic yellow and white suggests the luminous and uplifting qualities of Buddhist practice, distilling the experience of Buddhism to an aspirational vision of visualization,” wrote Sivanesan in the catalogue.
Whether contemporary viewers are practicing Buddhists or not, the contemplative beauty of these stunningly original works is sure to make a lasting impression.
