Bilderboken som medium för konsthistorieskrivning : En analys av samverkan mellan bild och text i Ylva Hillströms & Karin Eklunds bilderbok “Hilma af Klint - kartor över osynligheten”

Sammanfattning

In this essay, the children’s picture book Hilma af Klint: maps of invisibility by Ylva Hillström and Karin Eklund is analyzed with the aim of exploring the picture book as a medium and tool for art history writing. The analysis examines how the artist Hilma af Klint is portrayed and how art history is presented, as well as placing a particular focus on analyzing the interaction between image and text. The content is examined with semiotic image analysis, an inductive literature study as well as reception aesthetics analysis. The analysis concludes that Hilma af Klint as an artist is portrayed as fearless, curious and serious, and her artistic ambition is described as the desire to understand the universe. The design of the picture book and the ability to freely place and combine images and texts in different ways means that it is possible to convey the history of the art in several ways. With the picture book, sometimes several parallel stories are told; sometimes picture and text work together to complement each other, other tims the same thing is presented in both text and picture, or the pictures tell a story of their own or provide additional information that does not appear in the text. Depending on the experience of the viewer/reader, it is possible to derive different things from the picture book, and gaps can be filled as well as be left empty, which creates excitement and curiosity about the rest of the art world. Through the illustrations representation of af Klint's work and Eklund's way of illustrating the works the images in the book relate back to the children's/viewer's own world. The design of the picture book functions as a gateway to what it is like to look at art and art books and it works to create images within the viewer.