99 Qualities – A Series of Paintings by Kathryn Jaliman
By Thomas M. Messer
Director Emeritus,
The Guggenheim Museum and the Guggenheim Foundation
“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts — such is the duty of the artist,” Kandinsky wrote. Kathryn Jaliman has clearly heard Kandinsky’s call, embracing an uplifting purpose in abstract art throughout her career. Kathryn Jaliman’s new series the 99 Qualities is an important work of 99 luminous paintings which inspire and enrich through universal themes of Love, Wisdom, Determination, Nobility, Kindness, Patience, Justice and other Qualities. To view the 99 Qualities is a richly rewarding aesthetic experience that expands our appreciation and comprehension of life. Ms. Jaliman’s paintings are important for their depth, meaning and contemporary relevance. The 99 Qualities is a laudable expression of the transcendent purpose of abstract art set forth by Wassily Kandinsky that points decisively to a new direction for Contemporary Art.
Spiritual Power
The 99 Qualities is a contemplation of universal Qualities — each work abstractly related to one of the 99 universal Qualities in the Islamic tradition. The series is inspired by the 99 Beautiful Names of Allah, Asma’ul Husna found in the Koran. Ms. Jaliman, faithful to a post-modern view, asserts that these abstract paintings do not prescribe — they do not attempt to portray Divinity Itself — but rather act to stimulate the heart and mind of the viewer.
There is a direct connection between the palpable spirituality of Kathryn Jaliman, her creative process and her art. Each of the paintings of the 99 Qualities began with a contemplation of that quality. Viewers who are not religiously or spiritually inclined can be moved by the sheer aesthetic power of these paintings and attune their being to a particular quality.
Musical Sensibility
As with Kandinsky’s work, the 99 Qualities is infused with a musical sensibility. Like great music, Ms. Jaliman’s series of paintings invites the viewer to transcend thought and enter the realm that Kandinsky called “lofty emotions.” In Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst), Kandinsky described a future where artists: “will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty emotions beyond the reach of words.” Viewing the Reflections on 99 Qualities with attention and a stilled mind provides access to lofty emotions and a sublime aesthetic experience.
Kathryn Jaliman has used pure abstraction to ingeniously create a surprising range of distinct visual images. A luminous white circle acts as the central and unchanging focus of each painting, while the surrounding field of spontaneous color and non-geometric gesture is thematically varied in rhythm and intensity. Such variation around a fixed center gives cohesion to the 99 inter-related works, the sacred mood changing from one painting to the next in a continuous melodic flow. The quasar geometric center changes its relationship to what is around it in a spontaneous and unexpected play of light and dark, color, movement and tone. In this manner, the series of paintings creates something akin to a musical experience. There is a central theme which is elaborated upon … so that each variation is different; a difference in mood, in emphasis, in rhythmical treatment … and yet still always returning to the base from which it emanates.
Exhibition
The 99 Qualities are important works worthy of a major exhibition both at a gallery and a museum level. Though each painting retains the essence of the whole and can stand individually as a strong and complete work, there is a cohesive integrity to the series that argues for its being shown and collected as a whole.
It will be quite a challenge to present this series in an appropriate manner; after all, an installation can do justice to the artist’s intention or it can do the opposite. An ideal placement would be if the paintings were hung starting at the top ramp of the Guggenheim, spiraling down to the bottom of the rotunda.
Exhibiting the 99 Qualities at the Guggenheim would be in keeping with the founding purpose of the museum. Kandinsky was something of a Patron Saint of the Guggenheim Museum. The Guggenheim was originally established as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting with the intent to follow Kandinsky’s direction of displaying transcendent non-objective art. Kandinsky’s paintings emphasized structural perfection with overtones of spirituality rather than relating a particular work to a spiritual mood, as Kathryn Jaliman has done.
Historical Importance
Perhaps, more than any paintings before them, the 99 Qualities have the capacity to foster a dialogue between Western and Islamic cultures: they have the potential to introduce Western audiences to universal Islamic themes and to open Islamic viewers to contemporary Western Art. Ms. Jaliman’s paintings inspire respect for the 99 life-enhancing Qualities found in the Islamic tradition. Thus the series is of considerable historical significance.
In viewing Kathryn Jaliman’s artistic world of form, color and luminosity, the more sensitive among us will understand that she has risen to the challenge of a most difficult theme. She merits the approbation Kandinsky gave to artists “who really are artists, that is, who consciously or unconsciously, in an entirely original form, embody the expression of their inner life; who work only for this end and cannot work otherwise.”