THE INVENTION OF ABSTRACTION

helmut friedel Vasily Kandinsky was among the key pioneers of . Along with painters such as Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, he opened up an important new dimension of visual representation that explores another quality in pictures over and beyond portraying the directly apparent reality of the tangible world. The controversy about pictures was fundamentally influenced by the debate as to what painting could and should do. Mimetically speaking, the centre of interest is portrayal. But often something ‘sinful’ is seen in this effort to replicate the world as we see it that ultimately elicits a demand for visual representation to be banned. The Jewish, Islamic and even some Christian traditions base their rejection of portrayal on the same source, i.e. that man should not make images of God. In this context of denying images, representative forms of expression spring up which dispense with portrayal and make use of ornamental and symbolic, or at least not directly representative, forms of expression in their place. These forms of abstraction and reduction are based on a different line of thinking and imagination from the abstractions at the beginning of the twentieth century. As we know, in the West a culture of images developed, particularly from the late Middle Ages, that strove for as accurate a rendering of body and space as possible in terms of their external appearance. Thus at the end of the nineteenth century, when he decided to become a painter, Kandinsky found himself confronted with an academic tradition that was con- cerned with the refinements of rendering different types of materiality, variable light condi- tions and other phenomena of reality, and in this way sought to fabricate real and imagined life. On the other hand, the Impressionists at the time, above all Monet, had already allowed colour per se to have precedence over academic representational techniques and therewith discovered a wholly different kind of life in painting. It therefore seems a logical conse- quence that Kandinsky, when he was searching for his own vocation as an artist and had turned away from his ethnographic and legal studies, should recognize precisely in Monet’s Haystacks (c.1888–93) what would turn out to be a new challenge to painting (fig.2). Kandinsky had seen Monet’s painting in an exhibition in Moscow (1896).1 The encounter with these pictures, which depicted something as unspectacular, indeed as insignificant as a 1 | STUDY FOR haystack, had the effect of a key trigger in Kandinsky’s decision to become a painter. Ren- COMPOSITION VII (detail) 1913, watercolour, Indian ink and dering the fascinating variety of apparent colour in varying daylight conditions in successive pencil on paper, mounted on grey paintings of the same subject demonstrated the richness of an approach to painting that did paper, 18.5 x 27.1 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich not see objects as such in immutable reality. Real things were understood in relation to their

21 appearance. Henceforth it was the task of painting Infinite joy!” or: “...and not subordinate colours to express that fact with its own resources, namely but place everything at the feet of colour”, colour and form. It was not the ‘great theme’ that and then the critical sentence: counted but the power of colour. When Monet “If fate grants me sufficient time, I shall discover turned to painting pictures of Rouen Cathedral in a new international language that will be eter- his second series of pictures, he was indirectly nal, and will develop infinitely and is not called putting the haystacks on the same level as the Esperanto. It is called painting. An old word that Gothic cathedral – and vice versa (fig. 3). has been abused. It should be called copying Along with this encounter with the art of the in paint. Everything done so far is just copying. Impressionists, there were a series of scientific dis- Colour was rarely used for composition, and coveries in the period around 1900 that contributed then only unconsciously.”4 towards a changed image of reality. In Wilhelm Therewith Kandinsky sets out one of his great Conrad Roentgen’s X-rays, the solid bodies of artistic objectives. He believed he could achieve a living creatures appeared transparent; Einstein’s universal comprehensibility with the resources of discoveries undermined the space-time constant. colour. In the subsequent part of the text, he went That alone was enough to show that the familiar on to define the ‘characteristics’ of colours, their received concept of reality was becoming rather correspondences with the sounds of musical in - shaky. struments, the moods that they could produce and Thanks to the force of habits gained in his legal their innate qualities, for example: studies, Kandinsky conquered the new, unknown “light red – strength, energy, purpose, striving, territories of painting not so much through sundry resistance, resoluteness, violence, passion, joy, artistic works and experiments but essentially triumph, high sound, and the penetrating call of through the written word. By about 1904 he was fanfares mixed with tuba./Everything human.”5 writing a series of notes and draft texts2 in which Finally there followed observations on the relation- he sought to define the effect and quality of colour. ships between colours, where Kandinsky intro- In Defining Colour3 formulations appear that attrib- duced very vivid parallels: ute very particular meanings to colour: “There must be a reason that light blue, pink “Music and colour . . . the finest feelings that and yellow suit young girls . . . An old, wrinkled, future man will develop he will communicate to toothless woman with a brown face and muddy his fellow humans through colour. eyes in a light blue dress can only look like a lie.”6

2 | CLAUDE MONET: HAYSTACKS IN THE MORNING, SNOW EFFECT 1891, oil on canvas, 65 x 92 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

22 HELMUT FRIEDEL colour, this form has also to be clearly rendered. But where colour alone . . . has sufficient effect without the physical shape, this shape is not required at all . . . The ideal form is the absence of physical shape, as this limits the effect and as it were makes it too specialized and much too definite. But the indefinite has a greater wealth of results.”10 From these short extracts, but particularly in the revised texts of the Language of Colour of 1908–911, which largely formulates the content of On the Spiritual in Art, it is evident that Kandinsky at this stage had made greater and more radical progress with his theoretical deliberations than in his art. Statements such as “In order for colour to have an effect, it needs as such to be freed from real form”12 shows which way his thinking was heading. Abstraction was thus seen by Kandinsky more as 3 | CLAUDE MONET: an essential revival of art than something actually ROUEN CATHEDRAL FAÇADE, EVENING EFFECT translated into paintings. It was there as a discov- 1894, oil on canvas, 101 x 65 cm, The ery and postulate before it could be incorporated Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow into pictures. The thing was, for a long time he was reluctant Another manuscript from the same year (1904) to abandon the referential aspect of visual symbols already bears the decisive, programmatic title altogether in his great paintings.13 Among the The Language of Colour.7 There Kandinsky pro- predominant motifs were boats and riders, even claims on the very first page: though they are largely not recognizable as such “We painters of our time cannot suddenly and can only be interpreted as definable represen- abstract from the shapes that nature offers us.” And he therefore proposes: “We should not think of nature, we need to forget it when we have to make a colour composition.” 8 In all these deliberations, which would later inform his important and (for abstract art) highly influential essay On the Spiritual in Art9 (fig. 4), there is often concern about the meaning of pure ‘colour thinking’: “Combining beautiful colours that have no further meaning, is nothing but ornamentation. This would be the result of emancipation if we

entirely disregarded the inner value of colour. 4 | COVER DESIGN FOR But as soon as putting together colours awakens ‘ON THE SPIRITUAL IN ART’ c.1910, gouache and Indian ink on psychic echoes, that is composition.” white paper, mounted on dark grey/ “Where the object or the usual physical form brown paper, 17.5 x13.5 cm (sheet), Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, intensifies or even causes the psychic effect of Munich

THE INVENTION OF ABSTRACTION 23 tations because of the genesis of the work. In the audible and thereby visual. In a number of other layout of Composition VII, which is documented at ‘poems’,16 Kandinsky dispensed with the meaning critical phases in the photographs by Gabriele of words and found pleasure in the sensuality of Münter 14, it is easy to see that Kandinsky saw the sound and the ring of the words and syllables. two motifs mentioned as two starting points for his Thus Kandinsky had found a form of abstraction pictorial composition (fig. 5). for his paintings through theoretical musings, Thus Kandinsky sought to capture and represent through the comparison with music and also in his painting a reality behind the visible world. through his handling of language, which aimed at How much painting and representation with colour preserving an ultimate reference to reality.17 In his mattered to him, is obvious when you look at his own account, he was aiming at a ‘universal lan- paintings. The whole musicality of his paintings guage of painting’, i.e. general comprehensibility. becomes evident in the use of the brush, the This went beyond the narrow confines of termino- rhythm of the paint application, the intensity of the logical logic and basically expressed itself in colour chosen, and the dimensions of the shapes sensual directness. and colour fields chosen. Kandinsky involves us in the painting process by leaving all traces of the brushwork on the canvas. In this way, the eye can experience posthoc the way the picture evolved (fig. 6). The comparison between music and paint- ing that meant so much to the artist is thus con- firm ed. Other correlations are mentioned in Kan - dinsky’s publication Sounds, which appeared in 1913.15 Language thereby reached the frontiers of unambiguous meaning, in other words it became

5 | DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF KANDINKSY’S COMPOSITION VII 25–8 November 1913, Photographs by Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich

24 HELMUT FRIEDEL 6 | DRAFT FOR COMPOSITION VII 1913, watercolour, Indian ink and pencil on paper, mounted on grey paper, 18.5 x 27.1 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

THE INVENTION OF ABSTRACTION 25 1 , ‘Rückblicke’, 1913, Hans K. Roethel and KANDINSKY’S ‘SMALL WORLDS’ Jelena Hahl-Koch (eds.) in: idem, Die gesammelten Schriften, vol.1, Berne 1980, p. 32. “At the same time [1896] I experienced two events that left an impression on my entire life and, at Kandinsky's Small Worlds (Kleine Welten), an that time, shocked me to the core. They were the French impres- important portfolio in his oeuvre, was published in sionism exhibition in Moscow – primarily The Haystacks by December 1922 by Propyläen Verlag in Berlin after Claude Monet – and a performance of Wagner at the Hoftheater – Lohengrin .” After establishing his Phalanx art school, Kan- Kandinsky had spent a half a year teaching at dinsky put on an exhibition of works by Monet in 1903. This sug- Walter Gropius’s renowned Bau haus school. At the gests that Monet was an artist whose work was of major time, Small Worlds had a print run of 230 copies significance to him. 2 Cf. Wassily Kandinsky, Die gesammelten Schriften 1889–1916, and contained twelve prints – four (I–IV) litho- Munich 2007, p. 237ff. graphs, four (V–VIII) woodcuts and four (IX–XII) 3 Op. cit. 249ff. etchings. In a subsequent letter written by 4 Op. cit. 251. 5 Op. cit. 256. Kandinsky to Galka Scheyer in May 1932, details of 6 Op. cit. 257. the printing emerge: 7 Op. cit. 267ff. “All the plates and stones I made with my own 8 Op. cit. 274. 9 Published by Piper in Munich in 1911 but dated, with a second hands, all the reprints were made under my impression in spring, 1912. Published in Russian with further constant supervision– partly at the Bauhaus additions by Kandinsky in 1913, and in English the same year (etchings, black woodcuts) and partly at an (1920). This work was the primary basis for the debate about non-representational art. excellent printers in Weimar (lithographs, the 10 Op. cit. 279. colours in the woodcuts). The binder was the 11 Op. cit. 289ff. famous Professor Dorfner in Weimar. Thus: the 12 Op. cit. 311f. 13 Cf. Armin Zweite, ‘Kandinsky zwischen Tradition und Innova- entire execution was first rate.”1 tion’, in: exh. cat. Kandinsky in München, Lenbachhaus, Munich This portfolio originally included a foreword 1982, p. 34. 14 Cf. Helmut Friedel, ‘Kandinsky und die Photographie’, in: printed on loose flyleaf paper and written by Gabriele Münter, Die Jahre mit Kandinsky, exh. cat. Städtische Kandinsky himself. In it he explains that besides Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 2007, p. 34. the triad of classic printing techniques – woodcuts, 15 Piper, Munich. Poem in prose with woodcuts. The volume con- tains 38 ‘poems’ in prose, 12 coloured and 44 b/w woodcuts. etching and lithography – the colour allocation was 16 Op. cit. p. 511ff., esp. 525 and 535ff. 17 Cf. Vivien Endicott Barnett, ‘Kandinsky and Science: The Intro- duction of Biological Images in the Paris Period’, in: Kandinsky in 7 | SMALL WORLDS II Paris: 1934–1944, exh. cat. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1922, colour lithograph, 25.4 x 21.1 cm, New York 1985. According to this, even in his late work Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Kandinsky was preoccupied with natural scientific discoveries, Munich which he incorporated into his pictures.

26 HELMUT FRIEDEL also subject to a numbering system: of the twelve prints, six are in colour (four coloured lithographs, two coloured woodcuts) while the other six are black-and-white (the four etchings and two woodcuts). A central point is Kandinsky’s statement that each of the three printing techniques was chosen “on account of their innate quality: The char ac - teristic of each technique restores the design’s exterior into four different ‘Small Worlds’.” Meaning that the twelve designs have been real- ized according to their specific printing techniques. For example, the designs which fill the allotted space with strong squares, circles, segments and lines employ the historically oldest technique, the woodcut, with its strong surfaces and contours. This intense high-low contrast is made clearly visible by the ‘mild’ printing on paper. The fine web of lines found in Kandinsky’s sketches was reproduced using a newer technique, etching, with On the other hand, ease in creating and ease in 8 | SMALL WORLDS IV 1922, colour lithograph, 26.7 x 25.6 cm, its deliberate linear structure. Kandinsky would correcting are characteristics which are particu- Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, later write on this subject in his Bauhaus book larly suited to the present day. The present day Munich Point and Line to Plane, published four years later: is only springboard to ‘tomorrow’ and only in “Of the various kinds of etching, drypoint is this role can it be accepted with innermost used by preference today because it harmonizes tranquillity.”3 especially well with the present day atmosphere Not for nothing does this last ‘democratic’ print- of haste, and because it possesses the incisive ing technique allow for numerous and inexpensive character of precision. The basic plane can here reprints; most of Kandinsky’s other graphic prints remain entirely white, and in this white the during the Bauhaus years were made using this points and lines lie deeply and sharply embed- technique. Collectively, Small Worlds mirrors, in ded. The etching-needle works definitely and all its facets, an explanation and systematization of with the greatest determination and bores Kandinsky’s artistic vocabulary, reverting back to eagerly into the plate. The point is created first the expressive and symbolic codes of the years in the negative through a short, precise prick before the war and looking ahead towards the fur- in the plate.”2 ther consolidation of his abstract, geometric forms. And finally, the artistically recognizable designs Every sheet is therefore a floating microcosm, a produced in the lithograph, the newest and sim- small world in itself, just as Kandinsky wished to plest to manipulate of the printing techniques, per- express with his title Small Worlds. mits the artist a multitude of options: the special paste-paper is eventually affixed to a plate, thus 1 Cited after Hans Konrad Roethel, Kandinsky. Das graphische allowing the surface printing appearance to be Werk, Cologne 1970, p. 452. 2 Kandinsky: Point and Line to Plane. Contribution to the Analysis true-sided. Kandinsky therefore ascertained: of the Pictorial Elements, New York, 1947. (Originally published “It should be evident from this comparison of as Punkt und Linie zu Fläche. Beitrag zur Analyse der maleri schen the three techniques, that the lithographic Elemente, Munich, 1926.) 3 Ibid., pp. 46–7. process was bound to be the last discovered; in fact, since the discovery did not take place until ‘today’, facility cannot be attained without effort.

THE INVENTION OF ABSTRACTION 27

RUSSIAN BEGINNINGS 21 | STUDY FOR COVER OF THE ‘BLAUE REITER’ ALMANAC 1911, watercolour and pencil on paper, 27.7x 21.8 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

98 ANNEGRET HOBERG 22 | STUDY FOR COVER OF THE ‘BLAUE REITER’ ALMANAC 1911, watercolour, Indian ink and opaque white on paper, 27.7x 21.8 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

THE BLUE RIDER 99 23 | FINAL STUDY FOR COVER OF THE ‘BLAUE REITER’ ALMANAC 1911, watercolour, Indian ink, blue pencil and pencil on paper, 27.9 x 21.9 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

100 ANNEGRET HOBERG populated traditional folk glass paintings. Horses and riders had an important role to play in Kandinsky’s art right from the beginning, and for him symbolized both “yearning and a new departure. Blue for him was a ‘typically heavenly colour’, summoning people to infinity and arousing in them the yearning for all that is pure and transcends the merely sensual. The name may also be an oblique reference to the ‘blue flower’ of German Romanticism. Because Marc thought along similar lines, as is evident from his Blue Horses, the artists were able to use ‘The Blue Rider’ as a symbol of the artistic turn then taking place.”18 As copy for the cover of the almanac, Kandinsky made a coloured woodcut based on his blue, black and white watercolour and it was this that was printed in the same combination of colours on the hardcover of the first standard edition, while the 24 | ST GEORGE II rather more upmarket clothbound edition bears the 1911, reverse painting on glass panel, 29.9 x14.7 cm, Städtische Galerie im same image in blue, black, white and red (figs. 29, Lenbachhaus, Munich 30).19 The almanac brought with it a message of salva-

tion, in several places proclaiming the coming of 25 | ST GEORGE III him all over the village, most of them in the local the ‘Epoch of the Great Spiritual’ in which the arts 1911, oil on canvas, 97.5 x107.5 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, churches and in the ever-popular paintings on and indeed all future manifestations of culture Munich glass. Kandinsky incorporated the figure into many of his own works, too, from watercolours and glass paintings to the three large canvases to which the saint gave his name – such as St George III of 1911 (figs. 25, 26). The figure of the Christian dragon- slayer even found its way into such largely abstract works as Painting with White Border of 1912 (fig. 27) as well as paintings from Kandinsky’s Bauhaus period, such as that showing an aero - dynamic horseman outlined in white, his lance pointing back into the centre of the canvas, or as no more than a line tracing the back of a prancing horse, which for the artist was invariably a meta - phor of liberation (fig. 28). For the figure of the rider on what would eventually be the cover of the almanac, however, Kandinsky by and large adhered to traditional religious iconography, mak- ing skilful use of the chivalric saint’s aura. Yet the idiosyncratic stylizing and blue colouration of this figure lend it a universal significance that certainly could not be ascribed to the saints that typically

THE BLUE RIDER 101

Previous double page would have a share and which first and foremost “(Have been working on the title page of R. R. 26 | ST GEORGE III (detail) 1911, oil on canvas, 97.5 x107.5 cm, Kandinsky, but Marc, as well, was hoping for prior [sic] all day and hope to get it finished tomor- Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, to the First World War. The name , row). – And Piper is the finest firm of them all Munich which almost certainly came from Kandinsky, must and a Munich native to boot.” also be understood in this context, and before long The meeting between the publisher Reinhard would be used to describe a whole group, even if Piper, his printer Adolf Hammelmann and Vasily few people understood what it really meant. The Kandinsky three days later resulted in an impor- spiritual aspirations of the almanac project in fact tant decision, which Kandinsky relayed to his extended far beyond Kandinsky’s much quoted, friend that very same day: but rather prosaic utterances on the subject dating “Dear Marc! Have just returned from Piper & Co. from some twenty years later. In an article re call ing Everything is going well. Discussed things for Der Blaue Reiter requested by Paul Westheim for about 2 hours. [. . .] Both Piper and Hammelmann his magazine Das Kunstblatt in 1930, Kandinsky are strongly opposed to the word ‘almanac’, and treated the name as worthy of no more far-reaching rightly so. I’ve therefore decided to cut it out analysis than an ironically understated footnote: of the block. I’ll draft the text for the advance “We invented the name ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ while notice today.”21 drinking coffee together in the arbour in Sindels- And just as Kandinsky promised, the word dorf; we both loved the colour blue, Marc the ‘almanac’ still clearly visible on the watercolour horses, I the rider. So the name came about of its design finally selected does not appear at all in any own accord. And Mrs Maria Marc’s delectable of the woodcuts used for the covers of the various coffee tasted better than ever.”20 printed editions (cf. figs. 23, 29, 30). Writing from Murnau on 18 September 1911, This same letter of 21 September also gives us Kandinsky informed Marc that he would shortly be an insight into the layout and circulation of the travelling to Munich to visit Piper and show him almanac that Kandinsky had in mind: his cover designs for the almanac:

27 | PAINTING WITH WHITE BORDER (MOSCOW) 1912, oil on canvas, 140.3 x 200.3 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

104 ANNEGRET HOBERG 28 | BACKWARD GLANCE 1924, oil on canvas, 98 x 95 cm, Kunstmuseum Bern

THE BLUE RIDER 105 An unfortunately rather blurred photograph shows the two friends standing on the balcony of Kandinsky’s and Münter’s home in Schwabing, proudly holding aloft the woodcut selected for the cover of their book, from which the offending word ‘almanac’ has not yet been erased (fig. 31). The decision to drop the word ‘almanac’, one of the few remaining leftovers of the original idea of issuing a yearbook, was confirmed by later developments, for although the talk of a second volume would continue right up to 1914, Der Blaue Reiter pub- lished in May 1912 was destined to remain a one-off. The publication of the first handbill for the almanac in October 1911 made the title Der Blaue Reiter official (fig. 32).22 Its programmatic text was again the work of Kandinsky: “The great upheaval; the shifting of emphasis in art, literature and music; the multiplicity of forms; the constructivist, compositional quality of these forms; the intense concern with inner nature, which in turn renders all prettification of appearances superfluous – these, outlined in 29 | COVER FOR THE “Piper and Hammelmann were both very decent. general terms, are the signs of the new, inner ‘BLAUE REITER’ ALMANAC It is as if they were anxious not to show just renaissance. To reveal the various characteris- 1911, blue-black-white coloured woodcut, 27.9 x 21.1 cm, Städtische Galerie im how deeply they’ve sunk their claws into this tics and manifestations of this change, to under- Lenbachhaus, Munich thing. 500 copies at . . . 20 marks are to be score its affinity with past epochs, to make printed. It could also sell for 10 marks, but Piper known the inner aspirations in every sounding & Co. think it better to have a good getup, form – that is the goal which Der Blaue Reiter numbered copies, original woodcuts and such shall set out to achieve.” like, and only ‘genteel’ buyers. Maybe they’re The revised list of contents is a good deal more right.” concentrated and concise than the one that Marc Kandinsky closes his report by admitting to feeling had compiled a month earlier and names Roger rather ill at ease: Allard (French painting) and August Macke (with “It’s a funny feeling. A bit like . . . well! Like an essay to be called ‘The Masks’) as contributors. before a tremendously interesting, but strenuous The separate chapters have dis appeared and with hike in the mountains – one that will involve them the sharp dividing lines between the arts. crawling through crevasses and capering along The ‘about 100 reproductions’ now include a much ridges. Is it possible that after years of anticipa- wider range of material, Kandinsky having supple- tion, of disappointments and so many bitter mented the examples of Bavarian, French and hours, now at last and so suddenly etc . . .?” Russian folk art with ‘primitive, Roman, Gothic art, This last exclamation being a reference not just to Egyptian shadow puppets, children’s art etc.’ While the planned almanac, but also to the impending the names Jawlensky and von Werefkin have been publication of his book On the Spiritual in Art, dropped from the section on twentieth-century which Marc had again helped make possible by art – anticipating their decision to remain in the bringing his influence to bear on Piper. NKVM when the Blaue Reiter group broke away from it a short while later – others such as

106 ANNEGRET HOBERG Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Schoenberg have been added. The last item on the list is also new: ‘Musical supplements: lieder by Alban Berg, Anton von Webern’. The sales price of ‘about 10 marks’ is also mentioned for the first time. The concept un - derlying the list of contents crops up again in simi- lar form in the advertising section of Kandinsky’s book On the Spiritual in Art, albeit with two signifi- cant changes: Max Pechstein is back on the list, as is a new contributor, Nadjeschda Brüssow, who is named as the author of an article ‘On Musicology’. Kandinsky ends the text as follows: “As even just this list of contents makes clear, this publication will bring together all those efforts which are currently having such a pro- found impact on all the arts and whose basic tendency is to push back the boundaries of artis- tic expression.” Kandinsky, Marc and Münter all worked frantically hard on the book during the next few weeks, writ- ing to their fellow artists in Russia, France, Germany and Austria to request both texts and images for the almanac, corresponding with gal- leries and ethnographic museums about the photo- to be especially unreliable. Le Fauconnier, who had 30 | COVER FOR THE ‘BLAUE REITER’ ALMANAC graphs they needed as copy and again and again been a member of the NKVM since 1910 and was 1911, blue-red-black-white coloured urging their fickle suppliers to deliver. The two the Munich group’s link to French , was woodcut, 27.9x 21.1 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich Frenchmen Le Fauconnier and Girieud turned out quick to confess that his essay would not be forth- coming, although the published almanac still in- cluded two reproductions of his works (fig. 33).

31 | FRANZ MARC AND VASILY KANDINSKY WITH THE COVER FOR THE ‘BLAUE REITER’ ALMANAC 32 | HANDBILL ON THE BALCONY AT AINMILLER- FOR THE ALMANAC STRASSE 36 ‘The Great Upheaval’, Kandinsky’s text, 1911–12, photograph, Gabriele Münter Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich Munich

THE BLUE RIDER 107 As for Girieud, Kandinsky and Marc spent weeks begging him to submit photos or even originals from his collection of folk prints, the Images d’Epinal that were to serve as a French counterpart of the Russian lubki; yet not until the year follow- ing did they resign themselves to the fact that he was not going to deliver. Girieud had been the first, and only, Frenchman to be included in the NKVM’s first exhibition of 1909 (fig. 34), and it was he who had invited other representatives of the French avant-garde, among them Picasso, to take part as guests in the second NKVM exhibition in the autumn of 1910. Despite having once belonged to the ‘inner circle’ of the avant-garde and even been an associate of Picasso in Paris, Girieud retired to his native city of Marseilles following the First World War and is now a largely forgotten, marginal figure. Yet in the early days of the century he had 33 | HENRI LE FAUCONNIER: L’ABONDANCE had a number of successful solo exhibitions, in- 1911, oil on canvas, 191x123 cm, cluding one at Henri Kahnweiler’s gallery in 1907 Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague together with the Spanish ceramic artist Francisco Durrio. Then, in May 1911, Girieud was offered a conscience. I’m sure you’ll approve of it (the joint exhibition together with Franz Marc at Thann - Délonné): It’s certainly interesting and expres- hauser’s gallery in Munich, where he stayed at the sive, even if with rather too much of a whiff of home of Jawlensky and von Werefkin.23 The high theory about it. That kind of thing just has to standing that Girieud enjoyed among the Munich be put down on paper. Yesterday got to know circle of artists is also evident from the fact that Klee through [Louis] Moillet. He certainly has both Kandinsky and Marc wanted him to contrib- something on his soul. The [Eugen von] Kahler ute an essay to their almanac, which as described Collection at Thannhauser very interesting! above unfortunately never materialized. On the Pulsating! I would so much like you to see it! other hand, both Kahnweiler himself and the Druet But it runs only for the rest of this week. How auction house dutifully sent in plates of pictures wonderful it is to hear so many different sounds by Picasso, Matisse and Cézanne, even if Matisse at once! And together they are playing the preferred to deal with Kandinsky directly, magnan- symphony of the twentieth century.”24 imously granting him full permission to use his The editors were equally indefatigable in their works as he thought fit. endeavours to incorporate contemporary music as A letter from Kandinsky to Marc dated 9 Octo- well, which Kandinsky had outlined as an integral ber 1911 gives us a sense of both the intensity and part of the whole enterprise right from the start. the enthusiasm of those months and of the plethora The essays the finished almanac was to contain, of ideas the editors were toying with: some of which as we know had to be abandoned “A very nice reply from Matisse: I may repro- owing to the authors’ failure to deliver, included no duce whatever I like; he himself cannot write: fewer than four musicological texts: Schoenberg’s once wrote an x and swore never to do it again essay on ‘The Relationship to the Text’, von Hart- (‘You have to be a writer to do something like mann’s ‘On Anarchy in Music’, Leonid Sabaneev’s that’). A ‘Tour Eiffel’ arrived from Délonné [sic]. ‘Scriabin’s Prometheus’ and Kulbin’s ‘Free Music’, as That’ll look good. I’ll order all the reproductions well as the aforementioned scores of compositions so as to be able to go to Murnau with a clean by Schoenberg and his pupils Berg and Webern;

108 ANNEGRET HOBERG these would then be joined by Kan dinsky’s own in raptures. The editors of Der Blaue Reiter were famous composition for the stage The Yellow therefore determined to include in their work both Sound. If Kandinsky was especially keen to win a musicological essay by Schoenberg as well as Schoenberg’s support, then doubtless in part reproductions of some of his paintings. Münter’s because on 2 January 1911, he and his new friend polite reminder of late September 1911 that ‘we are Marc to gether with various other NKVM artists had still waiting for the article and pictures’ would be attended a concert by Schoenberg in Munich– as is echoed with ever greater intensity by Kandinsky described in greater detail elsewhere in this book himself in the coming weeks, even though Münter (see pp.143ff.) – and had at once grasped just herself had certainly not been wanting when it how revolutionary his new and innovative style of came to impressing upon Schoenberg the urgency music was. It was this experience that had induced of the undertaking: Kandinsky to make contact with the composer – “The blue rider is galloping ahead. A huge pile who until then had not been a personal acquain- of work. And shortly to go to print. So please tance – by writing the letter that would initiate help! Gallop with us so that this goal can be their correspondence.25 When Schoenberg replied, achieved.”26 he wasted no time at all in confiding in Kandinsky But Schoenberg, who after spending the summer that he, too, liked to paint, and even enclosed some on Lake Starnberg just south of Munich – which is photographs of his paintings which had Kandinsky where he and Kandinsky first met – had once again decided to move house from Vienna to Berlin, was

34 | PIERRE GIRIEUD: making only slow progress on the essay, although PORTRAIT OF EMILY CHARMY he did manage to send Kandinsky some photos. 1909, oil on cardboard, 101.5 x72 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, These were well received upon their arrival in Munich, on permanent loan from the November 1911 and the editors immediately Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich selected two of them for inclusion in the almanac. Back in October, meanwhile, August Macke had arrived at the home of his friend Franz Marc in Sindelsdorf, intending to use the peace and quiet of the Alpine foothills to work on his essay ‘The Masks’. In a letter to Münter dated 25 September, Macke had described his quest for a theme as follows: “I’ve collected together a lot of important mate- rial, but am going to find it difficult to let go. My head is seething with ‘In defence of peasant art’ or ‘Temperament in ornamental pottery’, ‘The artistry of African secret societies’, ‘Masks and puppet plays by the Greeks – the Japanese – the Siamese’, ‘The mystery plays of heathens and the Early Christians’, ‘The living and the dead ornament’, ‘The naked truth in art’ etc. Whenever I fish out something interesting, then I like to write it down. And by the way, I intend to come to Munich, Sindelsdorf and Murnau before long.”27 Just how difficult Macke eventually found it to compose his semi-poetic, semi-theoretical text is evident from the fact that he was still working on

THE BLUE RIDER 109