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Wassily Kandinsky

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ISBN: 978-1-78525-060-6

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily

Kandinsky

CONTENTS

Foreword

A. About General Aesthetic

I. Introduction

II. The Movement of the Triangle

III. Spiritual Revolution

IV. The Pyramid

B. About Painting

V. The Psychological Working of Colour

VI. The Language of Form and Colour

FIGURE I

FIGURE II

FIGURE III

VII. Theory

VIII. Art and Artists

Conclusion

Biography

List of Illustrations

Notes

Kandinsky in Berlin, January 1922.

Photograph. Musée national d’Art moderne,

Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris.

Foreword

Russian painter, designer and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) counts among the creators of Abstract Art. Originally pursuing a career in law, he only decided to turn towards a life as an artist at a relatively late stage, but succeeded in radically changing the world of art nonetheless. A member of several groups of artists such as Phalanx, Die Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artist’s Association), Jack of Diamonds and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), he was a leading influence in contemporary art. This book takes Kandinsky’s theoretical treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) as a starting point to approach both the artist and his work. The theories about colour and form presented in his text become manifest in his entire work and gain more and more importance throughout his creative life. Kandinsky’s artistic roots can be found in Russian icon painting, his subjects of Russian folklore prove his connection with his home country; later in his life he would return to, and reclaim Russian fairytales. Initially, Kandinsky adheres to Realism; followed by phases in numerous different movements – Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Neo-Impressionism and Expressionism – before gravitating towards abstraction. During his first years as an artist in Munich (from 1896) his style can be described as organic. Together with his spouse and artistic colleague, Gabriele Münter, he paints colourful images of Bavarian nature and people’s lives; his representations of the small town Murnau would later become characteristic for this period. Kandinsky remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I. After returning to Russia in 1914 he was influenced by Constructivism, resulting in compositions dominated by hard lines, points and geometrical shapes. Part of the Russian avant-garde, Kandinsky became an important figure of public cultural life in post-revolutionary Russia, until he left for Berlin due to the changing political climate.

During his time in Berlin (1920-1922) his landscape paintings from the Munich period are eventually replaced by increasingly abstract pictures. In the following years, whilst he is teaching at the Bauhaus – first in Weimar, later in Dessau – his style develops a more geometric direction in the form of pictographs and hieroglyphs. In the following period, in Paris (from 1933), biomorphic shapes appear more and more often in his works. Like other contemporaries Kandinsky recognises the necessity of combining different artistic disciplines, particularly music and colour. In Kandinsky’s world colour becomes a medium to mainly express emotions rather than simply depict reality. Kandinsky created an impressive collection of oil paintings, watercolours and woodcuts which, each in their own way, reveal his artistic genius. He wrote other theoretical art texts like Point and Line to Plane (1926). Both his paintings and his writings make him one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.

A. About General Aesthetic

The Port of Odessa, 1898.

Oil on canvas, 65 x 45 cm.

The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

I. Introduction

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born.

It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek methods in sculpture achieve only a similarity of form, the work remaining soulless for all time. Such imitation is mere aping. Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning.

There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.

An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives. Like ourselves, these artists sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of external form.

This all-important spark of inner life today is at present only a spark. Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.

Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul, when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and the gulf of darkness reality. This doubt, and the still harsh tyranny of the materialistic philosophy, divide our soul sharply from that of the Primitives. Our soul rings cracked when we seek to play upon it, as does a costly vase, long buried in the earth, which is found to have a flaw when it is dug up once more. For this reason, the Primitive phase, through which we are now passing, with its temporary similarity of form, can only be of short duration.

These two possible resemblances between the art forms of today and those of the past will be at once recognised as diametrically opposed to one another. The first, being purely external, has no future. The second, being internal, contains the seed of the future within itself. After the period of materialist effort, which held the soul in check until it was shaken off as evil, the soul is emerging, purged by trials and sufferings.

Shapeless emotions such as fear, joy, grief, etc., which belonged to this time of effort, will no longer greatly attract the artist. He will endeavour to awake subtler emotions, as yet unnamed. Living himself a complicated and comparatively subtle life, his work will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty emotions beyond the reach of words.

The observer of today, however, is seldom capable of feeling such emotions. He seeks in a work of art a mere imitation of nature which can serve some definite purpose (for example a portrait in the ordinary sense) or a representation of nature according to a certain convention (“impressionist” painting), or some inner feeling expressed in terms of natural form (as we say – a picture with Stimmung).[1]

All those varieties of picture, when they are really art, fulfil their purpose and feed the spirit. Though this applies to the first case, it applies more strongly to the third, where the spectator does feel a corresponding thrill within himself. Such harmony or even contrast of emotion cannot be superficial or worthless; indeed the Stimmung of a picture can deepen and purify that of the spectator.

Such works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they “key it up,” so to speak, to a certain height, as a tuning-key the strings of a musical instrument. But purification, and extension in duration and size of this sympathy of soul, remain one-sided, and the possibilities of the influence of art are not exerted to their utmost.

A Street at Sunlight, date unknown.

Oil on canvas, 23 x 32 cm.

Odessa Art Museum, Odessa.

Autumn, 1900. Oil on plywood, 19.9 x 30.8 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

Achtyrka. Autumn, sketch, 1901.

Oil and tempera on canvasboard, 23.6 x 32.7 cm.

Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

Imagine a building divided into many rooms. The building may be large or small. Every wall of every room is covered with pictures of various sizes; perhaps they number many thousands. They represent, in colour, bits of nature – animals in sunlight or shadow, drinking, standing in water, lying on the grass; near to, a Crucifixion by a painter who does not believe in Christ; flowers; human figures sitting, standing, walking; often they are naked; many naked women, seen foreshortened from behind; apples and silver dishes; portrait of Councillor So and So; sunset; lady in red; flying duck; portrait of Lady X; flying geese; lady in white; calves in shadow flecked with brilliant yellow sunlight; portrait of Prince Y; lady in green.

All this is carefully printed in a book – name of artist – name of picture. People with these books in their hands go from wall to wall, turning over pages, reading the names. Then they go away, neither richer nor poorer than when they came, and are absorbed at once in their business, which has nothing to do with art. Why did they come? In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys.

Whither is this lifetime tending? What is the message of the competent artist? “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist,” said Schumann. “An artist is a man who can draw and paint everything,” said Tolstoi.

Of these two definitions of the artist’s activity we must choose the second, if we think of the exhibition just described. On one canvas is a huddle of objects painted with varying degrees of skill, virtuosity and vigour, harshly or smoothly. To harmonise the whole is the task of art. With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoisseurs admire the “skill” (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the “quality of painting” (as one enjoys a pie). But hungry souls go hungry away.

The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures “nice” or “splendid”. Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing. This condition of art is called “art for art’s sake”. This neglect of inner meanings, which is the life of colours, this vain squandering of artistic power is called “art for art’s sake”.

The artist seeks material reward for his dexterity, his power of vision and experience. His purpose becomes the satisfaction of vanity and greed. In place of the steady co-operation of artists is a scramble for good things. There are complaints of excessive competition, of over-production. Hatred, partisanship, cliques, jealousy, intrigues are the natural consequences of this aimless, materialist art. [2]

The onlooker turns away from the artist who has higher ideals and who cannot see his life purpose in an art without aims.

Sympathy is the education of the spectator from the point of view of the artist. It has been said above that art is the child of its age. Such an art can only create an artistic feeling which is already clearly felt.

This art, which has no power for the future, which is only a child of the age and cannot become a mother of the future, is a barren art. She is transitory and to all intent dies the moment the atmosphere alters which nourished her.

The other art, that which is capable of educating further, springs equally from contemporary feeling, but is at the same time not only echo and mirror of it, but also has a deep and powerful prophetic strength.

The spiritual life, to which art belongs, and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forwards and upwards. This movement is the movement of experience. It may take different forms, but it holds at its core the same inner thought and purpose.

Veiled in obscurity are the causes of this need to move ever upwards and forwards, by sweat of the brow, through sufferings and fears. When one stage has been accomplished, and many evil stones cleared from the road, some unseen and wicked hand scatters new obstacles in the way, so that the path often seems blocked and totally obliterated.

But there never fails to come to the rescue some human being, like ourselves in everything except that he has in him a secret power of vision.

He sees and points the way. The power to do this he would sometimes fain lay aside, for it is a bitter cross to bear. But he cannot do so. Scorned and hated, he drags behind him over the stones the heavy chariot of a divided humanity, ever forwards and upwards.

Often, many years after his body has vanished from the earth, men try by every means to recreate this body in marble, iron, bronze, or stone, on an enormous scale. As if there were any intrinsic value in the bodily existence of such divine martyrs and servants of humanity, who despised the flesh and lived only for the spirit!

But at least such setting up of marble is proof that a great number of men have reached the point where they would now honour the being that once stood alone.