Kandinsky [antikvár]

Introduction by Herbert Read ^s a painter Kandinsky's achievement was coherent /-\in development, original in style, and accumu-J. \_lative in force; but the painting was the direct expression of a slowly matured philosophy of art. It is possible that this philosophy of art has as much significance for the world as the paintings that were its outcome, but in this essay I shall try to show how the philosophy and the painting evolved, step by step in dialectical correspondence. Wassily Kandinsky was born on 4th December, 1866, in the city of Moscow. His father belonged to a family that had for many years lived as exiles in East Siberia, near the Mongolian frontier. There seems to have been some mingling of blood in the family history: one of Kandinsky's great-grandmothers is said to have been a Mongolian princess, and there was a distinct Mongolian cast on Kandinsky's own features. His mother, however, was a true Moscovite, and the son was always sentimentally attached to the city of his birth. His maternal grandmother was German, and German was a language he spoke in his infancy; he was fascinated by German fairytales. The Kandinskys seem to have been fairly well-to-do; when Wassily was only three he travelled with his parents in Italy. Then in 1871 they all moved to Odessa, where Kandinsky began to learn music and where from 1876-85 he went to school. At the end of this period it was decided that he should study law, which meant a return to Moscow. These legal studies lasted until 1892, but during this period lie paid his first visit to Paris (1889), an experience he repeated as soon as he had passed his final examinations (1892). These visits to Paris seem to have been for recreation only—Kandinsky does not record any artistic experiences at this time. More significant, from this point of view, was an exhibition of the French impressionists which he saw in Moscow in 1895. A painting by Monet was a revelation to him, and made him aware of a nascent longing to paint. In 1896 he declined an offer of a post in the Univeristy of Dorpat and went instead to Munich, determined to test his now fully awakened desire to be an artist. In 1897 he became a pupil of Anton Azbe, but did not make much progress in the academic methods of his school. There, however, he met a fellow Russian student, two years older, Alexei von Jawlensky, from whom he first heard about van Gogh and Cezanne. In 1900 lie joined the Munich Academy where Franz von Stuck had been the master of painting since 1895, and had gained considerable fame as a teacher. Von Stuck was a romantic landscape painter of the school of Bocklin, but his influence on Kandinsky was not profound. Of more significance, probably was the movement which, originating in England, Scotland and Belgium, swept over Europe in the last decade of the 19th century and was variously known as the Modern Movement, l'Art Nouveau and Jugendstil. In Germany, Munich became the centre of this movement, and Jugend and Simplicissimus, two illustrated magazines founded in 1896, represented its spirit and style. In painting the style was represented by Munch, Hodler and Klimt, and this is the style adopted by Kandinsky in his apprentice years. Will Grohmann, in his recent monograph on the artist,1 illustrates a poster which Kandinsky designed for the first exhibition of the Phalanx, a group he himself had founded in 1901. It is in the new style, and apart from the typography typical of the movement, represents two knights with shields and lances attacking an encampment in front of a castle. The stylization is already extreme, and from this design onwards we can trace a gradual evolution of form which ends in the first completely abstract paintings of nine years later. Other influences w-ere to be superimposed, particularly that of the French Fauves-, but the argument I shall put forward in this essay is that the continuity of Kandinsky's stylistic development is unbroken from this early Jugendstil phase until the end of his life. One must therefore begin with a consideration of the formal qualities of Jug;endstil or Art Nouveau. The formal characteristics of distinct periods in the history of art have often been described, especially since Woelfflin's invention of a useful terminology; but the psychological motives that determine these morphological peculiarities are still very obscure. Following Woelfflin we can speak of linear as opposed to painterly composition, and such a linear emphasis became apparent in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. We find it manifested not only as a renewed interest in drawing as such, and in the popularity of etching and engraving among amateurs of art, but as a quality in decorative motifs of every kind—in wrought ironwork and silverware, in furniture and above all in typography. Book design, including magazines and catalogues, provides a very good index to the whole development, and in this medium one can follow the gradual transition from the naturalistic fantasies of a Beardsley or a Crane to the linear abstractions of a Van Doesburg or a Mondrian. Kandinsky's designs for catalogues and posters, for the decoration of the two books he produced at this time (ZJcber das Geistige in der Kunst and Iilaenge) illustrate this same gradual transition from naturalism to linear abstraction. Nevertheless, gradual as the transition was, there came 1 Cologne, 1958 (Du Mont Schauberg); London, 1959 (Thames & Hudson).