Page 25 - Studio International - January 1967
P. 25

decoration. Certainly Kandinsky kept the memory of it                             Kandinsky was born
                                                                                                                   in Moscow on
                                 throughout his life. He filled his house in Murnau with
                                                                                                                   December 4, 1866.
                                 similar decorations, some of which still exist.                                   He arrived in Munich
                                  As a lawyer he was fascinated by Russian peasant law.                            in 1896 where he
                                                                                                                   helped found and
                                 Its form, in contrast to the ius strictum of classical Roman
                                                                                                                   lead the Blaue Reiter.
                                 law, was considerably more liberal, determined not by                             From 1922 to 1933 he
                                 external but by internal forms . . .`the basis for the verdict                    was an influential
                                                                                                                   teacher at the
                                 is not sought for in the official physical action of the crime
                                                                                                                   Bauhaus.
                                 alone, but also in the quality of inner motivation, arising                       To commemorate the
                                 in the soul and spirit of the accused. How close this                             anniversary of his
                                                                                                                   birth Marlborough
                                 comes to the very foundation of art !'
                                                                                                                   Fine Art has organized
                                  It was in any case easier for a Russian to conceive of an                        an exhibition
                                 abstract art than for someone rooted in the European                              Kandinsky and His
                                 tradition. The idea of perspective and illusionistic art in                       Friends
                                                                                                                   —until February 24.
                                 general was something foreign to the Russian artist. It                           (photo Bauhaus-Archiv)
                                 was adopted rather late, was taken consciously as an
                                 influence from the West, and was still regarded as some-
                                 thing very Western even at the turn of the century.
                                 Kandinsky had in fact grown up understanding the world
                                 of icons, believing that a painted picture was in the
                                 first place a magic object and did not have primarily an  in fact no more than an Expressionist paraphrase of
                                 imitative significance. In Europe artists created facts, in  Goethe's investigation into the spiritual effects of colour.
                                 Russia mysteries, and in 1918 in the German version of   At the turn of the century Munich was certainly the
                                 his autobiography Kandinsky adds the footnote: 'the  most important of all the cultural centres of Germany.
                                 long Russian word for creation, proisvedenie, so different  Rilke was there in Schwabing, as were Thomas Mann,
                                 from its shorter counterparts in English, French and  Wedekind and Schoenberg. August Endell, the architect
                                 German, expresses for me the whole history and process  who had designed the abstract facade for the Atelier
                                 of creation : lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and  Elvira, since destroyed, stated in 1898 that he was in at
                                 foreshadowed by divine predestination'. Earlier he had  the start of the development of a new form of art, an art
                                 once defined art as the 'mysterious expression of the  which would consist of forms 'which meant nothing,
                                 mysterious'.11                                     represented nothing and were reminiscent of nothing,
                                  `It was a great period of artistic renewal,' wrote  which would excite our souls so deeply and so strongly
                                 Gabriele Münter, 'as I came to Munich to study in  in a way which was previously only the domain of
                                 1901.  jugendstil  had begun in its way to overthrow  music'.16
                                 naturalism and to be aware of the virtues of the pure   Actually some experiments in non-figurative art had
                                 line.'12   Certainly it was wise of Kandinsky to decide in  been carried out in Munich since the turn of the century.
                                 1896 to go to Munich to study. Having decided that  One of Olbrich's students, Schmidt-Hals, did a series of
                                 there was nothing for him in Russia (painting at the  abstract ornamental paintings as early as 1904. In 1906
                                 time was at a low ebb; only later did the situation change  Adolf Hoelzel, whose writings had already suggested the
                                 because of artists like Bakst and Vrubel) he made up  possibility of an abstract art, experimented with abstract
                                 his mind to go to the one city in Europe where discussion  ornament even though he never went as far as to create
                                 about non-objective art was at its most advanced.  an entirely non-objective picture. Macke, who was later
                                 Kandinsky already spoke German—one of his grand-   to become a close friend of Kandinsky and exhibited
                                 mothers came from the Baltic states—and this perhaps  with him in the Blaue Reiter exhibitions, said in a letter
                                 helped him make up his mind.                       how he tried to compose colours on a board without
                                  On a purely theoretical level, German writers had been  thinking of a real object.17   In 1906 a look through a
                                 aware throughout the nineteenth century of the basic  microscope convinced Kubin,18  another artist who was to
                                 problems which would later concern non-figurative  exhibit with the  Blaue Reiter,  that the existence of the
                                 artists. The theoretician Fiedler,13  for example, took  visible world was by no means as self-evident as he sup-
                                 strong issue with the idea of art as the imitation of  posed. He then proceeded to paint a series of abstract
                                 nature, and the concept of empathy, or  Einfühlung,  as  pictures, an experiment which he did not repeat.
                                 described by Lipps and Vischer, is based on the idea that  Kandinsky also became friends with Arnold Schoenberg
                                 the personal identity and the artistic object disappear, so  who, apart from his musical activities, thought of himself
                                 that the object itself becomes a direct reflection of the  as a painter (he exhibited with the  Blaue Reiter),  and
                                 personality.14  On a more specific level the association of  had begun to think of a new form of music more in keep-
                                 painting and music which is central to Kandinsky's  ing with the modern spirit. His Harmonielehre was pub-
                                 Ueber das Geistige in der Kunst was a favourite idea of the  lished in the same year as Kandinsky's Ueber das Geistige
                                 German Romantics from Wackenroder to Tieck, Runge  in der Kunst.19
                                 and Novalis. Goethe's  Farbenlehre,  particularly in the   There is no doubt that both musician and painter had
                                 version of Rudolf Steiner,15  the theosophist in whom  profound effects on each other. Both propounded a
                                 Kandinsky was deeply interested, also had a profound  revised conception of traditional artistic means and both
                                 effect on Kandinsky's thought. Much of his writing is  demanded a revision of the entire idea of reality and it is
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