Acknowledgements

Home , Gesamtkunstwerk, Hermann Obrist, The Yellow Sound

Kelley Daley

2015

To my parents for supporting me and to Remy, for making it entertaining.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Juliet Bellow and Dr. Andrea Pearson, who served as advisors for my M.A. thesis project. From the inception of the idea in Dr. Bellow’s Expressionism course, to travelling to Murnau to see the house, and final publication as a M.A. thesis, both Dr. Bellow and Dr. Pearson generously offered their time, assistance and continual encouragement. I would also like to thank the wonderful, strong, intelligent women (and man) in the American University

Art History department for providing suggestions, edits, and humor.

TOGETHER AT HOME: WASSILY KANDINSKY AND GABRIELE MÜNTER’S

DOMESTIC GESAMTKUNSTWERK

Kelley Daley

ABSTRACT

This thesis project investigates the correspondences between the domestic residence of

Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter in Murnau, Germany, from 1909 – 1914 and Richard

Wagner’s theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk. I focus on Kandinsky’s designs for the house, tracing his adaptation of Wagner’s theory, and late-nineteenth-century versions of Wagner’s imagined total work of art, to the domestic realm. Scholars often argue that Kandinsky’s first experimentation with Wagner’s theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk was with his stage composition

The Yellow Sound, which he began to write in 1909 and published in Der Blaue Reiter Almanac in 1912, the same years that he lived in and decorated the home in Murnau. This thesis posits that

Kandinsky worked on two Gesamtkunstwerke simultaneously, the home in Murnau and The

Yellow Sound, two different iterations or manifestations of Wagner’s theory. Through an analysis of the house and its connections to a wide range of precedents, and to works Kandinsky made while living there, this thesis provides a deeper understanding of this early period in Kandinsky’s career, which is often regarded as mere precursor for the abstract work he began to produce in the mid-1910s.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... ii

ABSTRACT ...... iii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... v

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1 THE ADAPTABLE GESAMTKUNSTWERK: WAGNER AND LATE- NINETEENTH-CENTURY WAGNERISMS ...... 7

Wagner’s Utopian Social Vision ...... 8

The British Arts and Crafts Movement: Dissolving Artistic Hierarchies ...... 10

Jugendstil: The Unity of Arts and Crafts and Communities ...... 12

French Symbolism: Poetry and Musical Correspondences ...... 14

The Nabis: Intimacy and the Gesamtkunstwerk ...... 18

CHAPTER 2 TO MURNAU VIA MOSCOW: RUSSIAN INFLUENCES ON KANDINSKY’S GESAMTKUNSTWERK ...... 22

From Moscow to St. Petersburg ...... 23

Ethnographic Research and the Fairy-Tale Paintings ...... 30

CHAPTER 3 MURNAU: ARRIVING AT THE DOMESTIC GESAMTKUNSTWERK ...... 34

Diverse Collections: Creating Unity and Totality ...... 37

Utopian Iconographic Imagery ...... 39

Unifying Ornamental decoration ...... 43

CONCLUSION ...... 48

ILLUSTRATIONS ...... 50

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 52

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustration

Figure 1: Murnau House, Murnau Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 50

Figure 2: Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky working in the garden in Murnau, c. 1910-11...... 50

Figure 3: Hermann Obrist, Cyclamen, 1892 ...... 50

Figure 4: Wassily Kandinsky, cover of Der Blaue Reiter Almanac, Woodblock print, 1912 ...... 50

Figure 5: Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de vivre, Oil on canvas, Barnes Foundation, 1905-1906. . 50

Figure 6: Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels: Nursemaids and Children in a Public Park, Oil on panel, Private Collection, 1892...... 50

Figure 7: Elena Polenova, Painted cupboard, 1885 ...... 50

Figure 8: Wassily Kandinsky, Painted cupboard, 1902-1908 ...... 50

Figure 9: Viktor Gartman, Studio at Abramtsevo, 1873 ...... 50

Figure 10: Wassily Kandinsky, Arrival of the Merchants, Tempera on canvas, Miyagi Museum of Art, Japan, 1905 ...... 50

Figure 11: Wassily Kandinsky, Song of the Volga, Tempera on cardboard, Centre Georges Poompidou, Paris, 1906 ...... 50

Figure 12: Wassily Kandinsky, Decorative border, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photography, 1902-1908 ...... 50

Figure 13: Painted armoire, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 50

Figure 14: Above Gabriele Munter’s bed, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 50

Figure 15: Three drawer dresser, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 50

Figure 16: Wassily Kandinsky, Riding Couple, Tempera on canvas, Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1906 ...... 50

Figure 17: Female on bookcase, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 50

Figure 18: Wassily Kandinsky, Motley Life, Tempera on canvas, Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1907 . 50

Figure 19: Painted staircase, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 50

Figure 20: Kandinsky’s painted desk, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 51

Figure 21: Detail of Kandinsky’s painted desk, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph 51

Figure 22: Ornamental design in living room, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph .. 51

Figure 23: Gabriele Munter’s Toilette, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 51

Figure 24: Gabriele Munter’s chair, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 51

Figure 25: Gabriele Munter’s table, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 51

Figure 26: Painted mural in Kandinsky’s bedroom, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph ...... 51

INTRODUCTION

This thesis focuses on the influence of Richard Wagner’s theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk

(total work of art) on the house in Murnau Germany that Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter

decorated and used as a live-work space [fig.1]. The decision to implement Wagner’s ideas in the

domestic sphere constitutes a break from the original conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk. For

Wagner, the natural “home” of the Gesamtkunstwerk was lyric drama, or opera, performed in a

public setting. Conceived in the wake of the 1848 revolution, Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk used art as an instrument for social cohesion: this unified artwork modeled an ideal community, and helped an actual community to come into being as its audience. The question then remains, why

did Kandinsky and Münter utilize a private home as the site for a Gesamtkunstwerk?

I argue that Kandinsky and Münter hoped to make the house a Gesamtkunstwerk as a model

of, and a vehicle for, a utopian community they hoped to bring into being. Located in the market

town of Murnau, the cottage sits on top of a hill over-looking the town and the Bavarian Alps.

Kandinsky and Münter lived there on and off from 1909 until 1914 at the onset of World War I.

In the home, they experimented with hinterglasmalerei (reverse glass painting); exhibited a range

of objects collected from their travels; implemented a decorative program throughout the home,

painting the walls and the furniture; and acted out a “Bavarian peasant” lifestyle, dressing in

clothing typical of local inhabitants [fig. 2].

The house functioned as the center for a variety of intimate utopian communities. It served

as the founding location of the artists’ group Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”). Formed by

Kandinsky and Franz Marc, the group rejected the conservative Munich Academy and embraced

the emerging style of Expressionism. The home was also, as I noted above, both a domestic

residence and artistic studio for Kandinsky and Münter, who were at that time a romantic couple 1

and professional partners. The various relationships cultivated within the home were cohesive,

egalitarian communities that paralleled Wagner’s original aspirations, even though this

Gesamtkunstwerk was essentially a private, not a public one.

While working in the house at Murnau, Kandinsky embarked upon the painterly

experiments that eventually led to his abstract paintings of the early 1910s. Employing musical

titles for many of these works, Kandinsky made clear his interest in correspondences among

different artistic media. However, the relation of his applied art projects in the house in Murnau to his developing ideas about the unification of art forms has not been fully recognized in the scholarly literature on the artist. In this thesis, I connect Kandinsky’s decoration of the house in

Murnau to his earlier affiliation with Jugendstil (“Young Style”), and trace that group’s emphasis on decorative art back through the influential British Arts and Crafts movement and to Wagner’s original theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk. As I show, the various applied-art movements that influenced Kandinsky’s work derived key ideas from Wagner. Combining his concept of artistic unification with the goal of eliminating distinctions between the “fine” and “applied” arts,

Jugendstil and other late-nineteenth-century movements created totalized decorative environments with the goal of cultivating a cohesive community within. When Kandinsky utilized the ornamental style to decorate the entire home in Murnau, he was invoking the utopian, communitarian dimensions of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, albeit in a very different venue than the composer imagined.

Though Kandinsky, like Wagner, hoped to achieve a universal means of aesthetic communication, and to pursue through artistic means a utopian society, the means to realize these principles differed in the two artists’ practice. Wagner first published his theory regarding the

unification of the arts in his treatise The Art-Work of the Future (1849). The Art-Work of the Future

served as a revolutionary model for the art world at the time. Through the combination of distinct media, he believed, those arts became purified; in this process of combination, they created an aesthetic experience more heightened than any single art could achieve on its own. Wagner believed that this process happened most successfully in lyric drama, or opera. Wagner’s theories influenced a plethora of late nineteenth-century artists and movements, but his followers adapted various components of Wagner’s theories to serve their specific needs. Kandinsky, an artist steeped in a variety of artistic theories and styles, took Wagner’s concepts, and the Wagnerisms popularized in the decades following, implementing them in his designs for the home in Murnau.

This thesis is indebted to the research of Peg Weiss and Bibiana Obler, both of whom connect Kandinsky’s work in Murnau to his interest in applied art and to his belief in the utopian possibilities of artistic communities. Weiss provides the most thorough investigation into the significance of Kandinsky’s Jugendstil period for his “mature” style: she argues that the Jugendstil interest in decorative ornament catalyzed his eventual move into abstraction. It was through this decorative lens that Kandinsky was introduced to avant-garde ideas regarding the synthesis of arts and media. She connects this experimentation with decorative art to Kandinsky’s ethnographic research in Russia, suggesting that even after his departure, Kandinsky maintained a connection to

Russian identity and culture. However, Weiss falls short in connecting Kandinsky’s work in this proto-abstract period, particularly his decorative activities in the house at Murnau, to the theory of

Gesamtkunstwerk.

Likewise, although the focus of this thesis is Kandinsky, its interpretation of the home in

Murnau as central to the latter’s artistic practice relies heavily on Obler’s analysis of his complex artistic and personal collaboration with Gabriele Münter. Obler discusses the importance of craft and decorative art to both Kandinsky and Münter’s artistic development. While living together in

the home in Murnau, Kandinsky painted the furniture, and both he and Münter experimented with the local Bavarian art of hinterglasmalerei (reverse glass painting); Kandinsky designed women’s handbags and clothing that Münter executed. Obler discusses the role that the decorative and applied arts played in both artists’ transgression of the traditional hierarchy between fine and applied art, which for Kandinsky played a key role in his path to abstraction later. She relates the artists’ craft practices to the domestic setting and to these artists’ desire to create an ideal community in Murnau, but does not trace their ideas back to their Wagnerian roots.

Most other scholars relate Kandinsky to the concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk in terms of his experimental stage production The Yellow Sound (Der Gelbe Klang, written in 1909; published in

1912). Never-produced, this abstract composition consisted of no narrative, relying solely on the relationship between colors, performers, and music to affect the (imagined) audience. Kandinsky worked on both The Yellow Sound and decorating the house beginning in 1909; therefore, I argue that Kandinsky’s interest in the Gesamtkunstwerk began at this point, but manifested in two very different artworks. The stage composition is more in line with Wagner’s original premise of synthesis because more or less uses the form of lyric drama; however, as this thesis demonstrates, the home also created a synthesis of art forms and aspired to form community in an equal parallel to Wagnerian thought.

Chapter 1 discusses the adaptability of Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and shows how this theory both influenced and paralleled the Arts and Crafts movement that emerged in Britain during the 1860s and subsequently spread across Europe. At that time, many European artists and movements were reframing the relationships between “fine” or “elite” arts and “low” art or “craft.” Wagner’s theories appealed to artists in part because of his call for the equalization of the arts. Kandinsky encountered these adaptations of Wagnerian theory in various forms; as I

discuss, he was directly inspired by the Jugendstil movement and, indirectly by the French

Symbolists and the Nabis. Several of these groups attempted to eliminate artistic hierarchies by working on large-scale decorative projects in which ornament created a totalizing, unifying effect.

Through Jugendstil aesthetics, Kandinsky found a decorative style of flowing, organic lines that he used to unify the house; the Symbolists awakened his interest in analogies between music and the visual arts; the Nabis influenced Kandinsky’s decision to create a Gesamtkunstwerk in a

domestic setting.

Chapter 2 focuses on the Russian Wagnerisms that also inflected his approach to, and his

designs for, the house in Murnau. Within the Russian context, the issue of craft revival came to

the forefront through the revival of “kustar” (peasant) handicraft and the establishment of artistic

workshops to disseminate those crafts. These kustar workshops manifested a desire to cultivate a

national style by appropriating traditional folk art and traditions that connoted a specifically

“Russian” style. Products made in these kustar workshops were shown in the St. Petersburg-based

journal Mir iskusstva; this journal also featured work by avant-garde groups in Europe, including

some of the same groups and movements discussed in chapter one. Their joint “exhibition” in Mir

iskusstva showed that the same decorative aesthetic could simultaneously connote an indigenous,

“Russian” folk style and an avant-garde, international one. Inspired by the folk style he saw both

at the workshops and in his ethnographic research into Russian folk communities, Kandinsky

painted a series of ‘fairy-tale’ images in Munich closely linked to the style he used in the house in

Murnau soon afterward. In the decorative program at the home, a mélange of various styles

allowed the Bavarian cottage to seem both “local” and “international—another manifestation of

the unifying properties of the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Having discussed the variety of theoretical and practical models for the Gesamtkunstwerk,

Chapter 3 addresses the home itself, and the sense of intimate community Kandinsky created there with Münter. Through the diverse craft collection that the two exhibited in the home; the

implementation of a utopian iconography in the decorated furniture; and the use of decorative

embellishments to visually unite the different parts of the structure, Kandinsky created a private,

domestic Gesamtkunstwerk. Ultimately indebted to Wagnerian concepts, the house represents a

culmination of various artistic interpretations of Wagner’s theory. My analysis shows that

Kandinsky’s designs, by drawing on specific precedents, constitute an attempt to make the house

a Gesamtkunstwerk, realizing Wagner’s original vision of social cohesion through artistic

synthesis.

Within this study, I address tensions between fine and low art, universalizing ideals and

national identifications. Kandinsky attempted to mobilize his Russian roots, his German education,

and his pan-European knowledge of artistic precedent, unifying them all in the house in Murnau.

By acknowledging this underdeveloped area in Kandinsky’s oeuvre, this research hopes to produce

a better understanding of the theory of Gesamtkunstwerk as it was applied by an early twentieth-

century artist.

CHAPTER 1

THE ADAPTABLE GESAMTKUNSTWERK: WAGNER AND LATE-NINETEENTH- CENTURY WAGNERISMS

Following the publication of Richard Wagner’s The Art-Work of the Future in 1849, his concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork, spread across Europe. Wagner’s writing served as one possible response to artists’ uncertainty regarding the form and function of art in modern society. Broadly speaking, technological and industrial modernity created crisis for artists: what role would man-made objects or the traditional skills of the artist/craftsman play in the modern world? Wagner’s treatise provided a hopeful answer to this question: through the synthetic properties of the Gesamtkunstwerk, he outlined a utopian future for art, which in his vision played a key social role, bringing spectators into a unified and harmonious community. During the second half of the nineteenth century, this Wagnerian belief in the utopian possibilities of a fusion of artistic genres or media—a fusion that produced a heightened aesthetic response, thus helping to bind individuals together—strongly resonated with artists and movements across Europe.

Wagner’s theories proved as malleable as they were influential: few of the artists and movements that found themselves drawn to Wagner’s ideas left them intact. Though Wagner’s most basic premise—the concept of artistic synthesis—remained consistent, the dissemination of his theory across the continent resulted in a variety of disparate ideas and forms.

This chapter addresses the adaptability of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk model across

Europe, with particular attention to the ways this theory paralleled and dovetailed with that of the

British Arts and Crafts movement, which emerged during the 1860s. The similarities between

Wagner’s total artwork and the theories of John Ruskin and William Morris—two of the most influential figures in the Arts and Crafts movement—helped visual artists to see how they might

imagine forms of Gesamtkunstwerk outside the sphere of lyric drama. This chapter will center its

discussion on the mutations of Wagnerian theory in Germany and France, two of the places where

a concept of Gesamtkunstwerk proved particularly influential during the late-nineteenth-century.

(I address turn of the century Russian interpretations of Wagner separately, in chapter two). Here,

I focus on Jugendstil, the French Symbolists, and the Nabis, three movements whose work ultimately proved foundational for Kandinsky’s evolving concept of a total work of art, which he eventually implemented at the house in Murnau.

For these groups, a key facet of Wagner’s theory that they all adapted was his rejection of

traditional hierarchies among artistic media. These groups directly and indirectly used craft or the

decorative as components of their work which broke the boundaries between pre-conceived notions regarding the hierarchies of the art world. Craft was historically viewed as a lesser craft, confined to the domestic domain; therefore, when these groups incorporated craft into their work, they attempted to disintegrate the gap between private and public art communities. The decorative was viewed as lesser, or ‘feminine’, because of the abundance of organic lines. This thesis posits that the undoing of artistic traditions, a main component of both Wagner’s theory and those of the

Arts and Crafts movement, and further elaborated by the Jugendstil and Nabis, influenced the version of a Gesamtkunstwerk that Kandinsky created in Murnau.

Wagner’s Utopian Social Vision

In order to address the various adaptations of Wagnerian theory that emerged during the

second half of the nineteenth century, I must first establish Wagner’s original premise for the

Gesamtkunstwerk.1 The basic idea of his theory—artistic synthesis—cultivated a social response;

his initial conception for the Gesamtkunstwerk depended upon a public setting, therefore creating

a unified audience. As Wagner formulated in The Art-Work of the Future, the Gesamtkunstwerk refers to the combination of three distinct media—poetry, music, and dance—under the umbrella

of lyric drama, or opera. Together, he theorized, these three arts would transcend the limits of art

as it was traditionally understood, and thereby could produce new, powerful effects on the

spectator.2

Wagner related his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk to his vision of ancient Greek artistic

and political culture: by going back to the model of the Greeks, he believed, modern artists could

reinvent art and make it relevant again to the political and social sphere. As Juliet Koss argues,

when The Art-Work of the Future was published, Wagner saw himself as the messenger for a

society that was in a crisis: having witnessed the failure of the 1848 revolution, he came to believe

that only through art could a new society come into being.3 For Wagner, the Gesamtkunstwerk looked back to the Greek model in three key and related ways. One had to do with the ideal of artistic “purity,” which for Wagner implied a close relationship to nature. He felt that the union with nature meant that humans had replaced humanity’s materialism and antagonism with an aesthetically renewed mythology, which would introduce man to archaic experiences appreciated

1 Though the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk often is attributed to Wagner, both the term itself, and the idea of a synthesis between arts, predated the composer. Anastasia Siopsi traces the history of the idea of artistic synthesis from the Ancient Greeks up until Richard Wagner’s revolutionary interpretation of a unified work of art in the nineteenth century. Anastasia Siopsi, “Influences of ancient Greek spirit on music romanticism as exemplified in Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk” Muzikologija (2005): 257.

2 Wolfgang Domling, “Reuniting the Arts: Notes on the History of an Idea” 19th Century Music 18 (1994): 3

3 Juliet Koss, Modernism after Wagner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 4

by the Greeks.4 In purifying artistic practices, the output became more authentic because of its allegiance to nature, which Wagner regarded as the pinnacle of artistic expression. Second,

Wagner praised artisanal handiwork, arguing that modern viewers had forgotten the beauty of useful objects:

But where men had forgotten that the truly beautiful is likewise the highest expression of the useful, in so much as it can only manifest itself in life when the needs of life are secured a natural satisfaction, and not made harder, or interdicted, by useless prescripts of utility…5

Providing a strong counterpoint to the “art for art’s sake” doctrine that emerged during the

Romantic period, Wagner argued that humans often forget that things of utility can in fact, be

beautiful; like the Greek artists’ decoration of functional objects.6 Finally, Wagner believed that

ancient Greek art related directly to the democratic foundations of Greek culture. Greek theatre

cultivated an egalitarian aesthetic atmosphere and modeled the ideal political community or polis.

For Wagner, lyric drama was the closest analogue to ancient Greek theater, both in terms of the

form of the artwork and its relationship to its audience. Wagner’s imagined, utopian

Gesamtkunstwerk would achieve both artistic and social equality.

The British Arts and Crafts Movement: Dissolving Artistic Hierarchies

The British Arts and Crafts, which emerged in Britain during the 1860s, was one of the

first major nineteenth-century movements in the visual arts to combat the hierarchy of genres.

Wagner’s call for an equalization of artistic media appealed to many artists dissatisfied with the

4 Siopsi, “Influences”, 259.

5 Richard Wagner The Art-Work of the Future (Samtliche Schriften und Dichtungen: Volume 1, 1849), 72.

6 Wagner claimed that visual artists supported the total work of art through the decoration of set design. Ibid., 78.

hierarchies established during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by state-sponsored

Academies. In an attempt to distinguish themselves from the medieval artisanal guilds, Academies

across Europe privileged painting and sculpture—which were intended to be shown in Academy-

sponsored, public exhibitions—over the “applied” or “decorative” arts designed for domestic use.

Strongly reacting against the industrial revolution, which had greatly impacted Britain during the

late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, adherents to the British Arts and Crafts movement

advocated a return to the medieval guild system, and to artisanal craft practice. Debora Silverman

argues that technological advances in the industrial sector were a leading factor in the increase in

many late-nineteenth-century movements based in the decorative arts: she posits that while many

artists accepted industrial production, they also wanted to embellish objects in order to showcase

the artist’s handiwork, and thus make traditional craft still relevant to modern processes of

production.7 William Morris, one of the leaders of the Arts and Crafts movement, claimed that,

“apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is the hatred of modern civilization.”8 In emphasizing the beauty of handicraft, artists and theorists

of the Arts and Crafts movement hoped to provide a counter to the encroachment of mass-produced goods, to maintain a humanistic basis for artistic production, and, through the making of utilitarian objects, to join the sphere of art with that of everyday life.

Both Wagner’s theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk and the related ideas promulgated by the

Arts and Crafts movement in Britain proved extremely adaptable to future generations of artistic movements. As I demonstrate in the remainder of this chapter, and in the following one, several

7 Debora Silverman Art Nouveau in Fin-de-siecle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkely: University of California Press, 1989).

8 William Morris, “How I Became a Socialist [1894],” in May Morris, ed., The Collected Works of William Morris, vol. 23, (London: Longmans Green and Company, 1910-1915), 279.

different artistic groups across Europe adapted these ideas in a variety of distinct ways: among the

most potent concepts were that of a synthesis of artistic media; the belief in art’s ability to create

or to cement communities; and praise for “decorative” or “applied” arts. In what follows, I explore

important precedents for Kandinsky’s interest in, and use of, this constellation of related ideas

about totality and synthesis.

Jugendstil: The Unity of Arts and Crafts and Communities

The Jugendstil movement, which emerged in Munich around the turn of the twentieth

century, brought together Wagner’s theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk with the Arts and Crafts

interest in revitalizing “decorative” or craft production in ways that proved influential for

Kandinsky’s work in Munich and Murnau. Upon moving to Munich in 1896, Kandinsky entered

the studio of Anton Ažbè, whose studio was in Schwabing, the bohemian center of Munich. Ažbè,

a well-known Yogoslav artist, had one of the most popular studios in Munich outside of the

Academy. His studio was a site of experiment and familiarity as many young, avant-garde artists

chose to study under him.9 It was from his participation in Ažbè’s studio that Kandinsky became

acquainted with young avant-garde artists, most notably August Endell and Hermann Obrist—the

forefathers of Jugendstil.10

Jugendstil was one of the many ‘Secession’ movements of the late-nineteenth-century. Its founders sought to free themselves from the rigid values and practices of Germany’s art

9Weiss argues that Ažbè’s method was of great importance to Kandinsky; Ažbè believed in the use of pure color applied directly to the canvas and the significance of color theory in relation to the composition. Peg Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: The Formative Jugendstil Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 15.

10 Both Endell and Obrist were leaders of the Munich secession. They wanted to emphasize the decorative quality of art; both were inspired by Art Nouveau and adapted that movement’s primary aesthetic scheme to that of Jugendstil. Jugendstil is often called ‘Germany’s Art Nouveau.’ Ibid., 22.

Academies: rejecting the primacy of history painting, Jugendstil artists worked in a variety of media, including the applied arts. Inspired by the emphasis on ornament and patterning in decorative art, these artists privileged the linear and two dimensional over the illusionistic style valued by Academies during that period.11 In 1897, Munich held an international Arts and Crafts exhibition that championed the Jugendstil movement’s success, and connected the movement to applied arts by collaborating with the artists from the Munich Society for Applied Art.12 At that exhibition, Society for Applied Art member, Obrist, exhibited embroideries [fig. 3] that took the

Jugendstil style to a ‘lower’ craft medium. These embroideries were well received by critics, and garnered Obrist an international reputation. In 1896 the writer Georg Fuchs wrote positive reviews of Obrist’s work in the new avant-garde periodical, Pan, based in Berlin, and a review of his work was also published in the English periodical Studio. In exhibiting embroideries in a public exhibition, Obrist called for a re-evaluation of artistic standards that privileged fine art over craft.

In addition to embroidery, an important medium for the Jugendstil movement was the woodblock: the Jugendstil attitude toward woodblock prints connects with Wagner’s ideas about artistic authenticity. As Robin Reisenfeld has argued, the woodblock came to be seen as both an

“authentic” practice (because of its rootedness in craft tradition) and a specifically “German” one.13 The critic Max Osborn, for example, stated in 1905 that the woodcut is at its essence,

Germanic:

There is no art practice that is so closely intertwined with the innermost presence of our people as the woodcut…The peculiar mixture of roughness and tenderness, of energy and dreaminess,

11 Walter Frisch, “Music and Jugendstil” Critical Inquiry 17 (1990): 140.

12 Kandinsky attended many meetings of this society, which developed from the original United Workshops group begun by Obrist, Endell, and others at the turn of the century. Weiss, Kandinsky, 119.

13 Robin Reisenfeld. “Cultural Nationalism Brücke and the German Woodcut: The Formation of a Collective Identity,” Art History 20 (1997): 292.

which is essential for the German character, has nowhere found clearer expression that in the results of the art of woodcut, so long as it has remained on its natural course.14

Osborn characterizes woodblock printing as a natural, indigenous medium; the finished product

has a close connection to the artist because of the intense physical handwork used to create the

work. The natural and physical handwork required of the medium paralleled Wagner’s call for

authentic work; Kandinsky experimented with woodblock printing during his Jugendstil period

and at the home in Murnau, with the cover of Der Blaue Reiter Almanac [fig. 4]. The cover of the

almanac—a book intended to produce authentic artwork—suggests a further influence the

Jugendstil movement had on Kandinsky during this time period.

None of the media that Jugendstil artists employed could be considered Gesamtkunstwerke

in the Wagnerian sense: lyric drama is a public, performative medium; Jugendstil practitioners centered on craft production of objects made to be used in the home or other small, intimate communities. However, many of the precepts they held paralleled Wagner’s. Jugendstil artists adapted the universalizing aspects of Wagner’s public Gesamtkunstwerk in their desire to diminish artistic hierarchies. By incorporating craft production and ornamentation into exhibition settings, the Jugendstil artists and movement put this lower medium (craft and decoration) onto the same level as fine art held. Kandinsky, greatly steeped in the Jugendstil movement, adapted these ideas concerning elevating craft and decoration to create a ‘fine’ art work, all of which are seen at the home in Murnau. What proves essential for this thesis is the importance of craft production as a source to diminish artistic hierarchies in communal contexts

French Symbolism: Poetry and Musical Correspondences

14 Ibid., 298.

In Germany, Wagner was seen as an avant-garde artist whose ideas became widespread and served as a marker of the country’s artistic success; whereas in France, Wagner was not immediately well-received, in part because of the political antagonisms between France and

Germany during this period. His ideas did not become popular until the 1880s and 1890s. Wagner’s ideas took hold within literary circles first, then visual artists adapted those literary versions of the theory to their own practice. French Wagnerisms encompassed a different range of media than

Jugendstil but shared many of the same theoretical impulses including a leveling of artistic hierarchies. It is in the Parisian mutation of Wagnerism, most notably French Symbolism (that inspired the Nabis), which encouraged an intimate environments that emphasized abstract

decoration that impacted Kandinsky’s Gesamtkunstwerk in Murnau.

Kandinsky was introduced to Symbolism and the Nabis through various direct and indirect

influences; he and Münter spent a year in 1906 in Paris where they witnessed a plethora of artists

and exhibitions that impacted his decoration of the home in Murnau.15 This trip allowed him

firsthand experience to see works by Neo-Impressionists, the Nabis, French Symbolists, and other

avant-garde movements; while he was in Paris in 1906 he went to the Salon des Indépendents,

where the Fauves exhibited and Henri Matisse exhibited Le Bonheur de vivre [fig. 5] and the Salon d’Automne, which showed a retrospective of Paul Gauguin’s work.16 Although Kandinsky wrote

letters extensively on his interest and fascination with French avant-garde movements while he was there, he had been aware of their presence while he lived in Munich due to their exposure in

Mir iskusstva (The World of Art) journal published in St. Petersburg. Mir iskusstva will be discussed in greater detail in chapter three but it is important to note that it was another source

15 Annegret Hoberg Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter: Letters and Reminiscenes 1902-1914 (Prestel: Munich, 2005), 10.

16 Magdalena Dabrowski Kandinsky Compositions (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1995), 14.

where Kandinsky was exposed to these groups, who by extension were influenced by Wagnerian

theory.

Due to nationalist tensions between France and Germany, Wagner’s arrival in Paris in 1839

was not welcomed; French audiences and critics largely viewed his works as anti-French and

extremist, and it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that his works became

appreciated in Paris.17 Wagner first became accepted and appreciated amongst avant-garde writers,

most notably by the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire in the 1860s, and the poet Stéphane

Mallarmé in the 1880s. These two poets’ creative interpretations alongside the journal Revue wagnérienne (1885-1887) encouraged the development of Symbolism. The Symbolist movement was largely against naturalism and realism—movements that privileged realistic, faithful depictions—and encouraged art that grew from the imagination. Visual artists affiliated with

Symbolism, including the influential Nabis group, adapted poetic variants of Wagner into a visual language that united free association with musicality in form and color.

The first major French figure to champion Wagner, Baudelaire was attracted to the composer’s work and ideas because the latter was interested in how music operated indirectly, through suggestion, rather than through concrete or literal meanings. In Baudelaire’s essay entitled

“Richard Wagner and Tannhauser in Paris” from 1861, he states,

I have often heard the opinion expressed that music could not claim to convey anything with precision, as words or painting do. That is true to a certain extent, but it is not wholly true. Music conveys things in its own way and by means peculiar to itself. In music, as in painting, and even in the written word, which, when all is said and done, is the most positive of the arts, there is always a gap, bridged by the imagination of the hearer.18

17 Gerald D. Turbow, “Wagnerism in France” Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 138.

18 Charles Baudelaire, “Richard Wagner and Tannhauser in Paris” in Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists, edited by P. E. Charvet (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1972), 328.

In this, Baudelaire suggests that it is on the musical platform that intangible ideas, concepts, and

feelings are most clearly displayed; painting and literature, he says, provide literal interpretations

whereas music is left to the imagination of the audience. In many instances Baudelaire misinterpreted Wagner’s writings because he never saw Wagner perform, but adapted key components to his own writings.19 The idea of free association and admiring music’s intangible

qualities is found in Symbolist poetry. Baudelaire’s infatuation with Wagner paved the road for a

greater appreciation in the 1880s as the poet represented alternative, avant-garde ideas that younger groups latched onto and expanded upon.

French Symbolism inspired by Wagner began to formulate in the pages of the short-lived

journal, Revue wagnérienne. Edouard Dujardin, Teodor de Wyzewa, and Houston Stewart

Chamberlain created the journal after attending a Bayreuth festival in Munich in 1884.20 The

journal published monthly listings of concerts and productions of Wagner’s operas both in France

and abroad, reviews of new books on Wagner, reports from other cities regarding Wagnerian-

influenced activities (like the Bayreuth festival). Most importantly, the journal not only praised

Wagner’s theories, but also provided a platform for discussion of those theories and their

application in a wide range of media. As the journal evolved, so did its primary focus; while

Wagner remained the underlying emphasis in the journal, it began to showcase avant-garde groups

that applied Wagnerian concepts to larger contexts. Mallarmé and his circle of avant-garde poets came to dominate the journal; the Revue wagnérienne thus fostered the growth of French

Symbolism.

19 David Michael Hertz The Tuning of the Word: The Musico-literary Poetics of the Symbolist Movement (SIU Press, 1987), xiii.

20 Turbow, “Wagnerism in France,” 160.

In some regards Mallarmé saw Wagner as his rival; he said Wagner was only “halfway up

the Holy Mountain,” whereas his own work was the “peak of the absolute.”21 Nonetheless, the young poet appreciated Wagner’s theories on purity in art; for Mallarmé, he regarded purity similar to what he believed essential in symbolist poetry, introspection.22 Mallarmé believed that intimacy provided the greatest experience for introspection; and through this introspection, one could experience a sense of totality and unity.23

The symbolism that Mallarmé created and showcased in Revue wagnérienne represented a

different pure art style, yet one that demonstrated similar concepts to Wagner’s writings. Mallarmé

fixated on the idea of a pure literary art that was controlled by the abstracting sense of musicality.

This style offered a connection to mysticism, and idealism that greatly impacted visual artists of

the time. It was through Mallarmé and his contribution to Revue wagnérienne that his ideas spread

throughout Europe. Mallarmé, his writings, and the Symbolist theatre were often showcased in

Mir iskusstva, which Kandinsky read and contributed to prior to the time he spent in Paris. He

served as the conduit for Symbolist poetry and theatre ideas that were adapted by various artistic

groups and artists, most notably the Nabis.

The Nabis: Intimacy and the Gesamtkunstwerk

21 Ibid., 162.

22 Rebecca Saunders. “Shaking down the Pillars: Lamentation, Purity, and Mallarme’s “Homage” to Wagner,” PMLA 111 (1996): 1108.

23 Katherine Kuenzli, The Nabis and Intimate Modernism: Painting and the Decorative at the Fin-de-Siecle (Connecticut: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), 1.

One of the most influential applications of Mallarmé’s Symbolist-inflected

Gesamtkunstwerk was by the artists affiliated with the Nabis group. 24 The Nabis were a group of decorative artists who primarily worked for private patrons but did work in the public domain by assisting stage production decorations and costumes. As Katherine Kuenzli notes in her book on the Nabis, the artists affiliated with the movement believed in the power of decorative art, made chiefly for domestic settings as a way to dissolve the hierarchies between craft and fine art, public and private experience. Influenced, too, by Baudelaire’s and Mallarmé’s interest in correspondences between visual art and music, the group represented ambitions to equalize various medias, mostly music to visual art through the decorative program employed in their work.

The Nabis created a variety of works for both public and private settings that could be considered variants of the Gesamtkunstwerk. For example, Edouard Vuillard’s Desmarais Panels:

Nursemaids and Children in a Public Park [1892, fig. 6], though large in size, was intimate in narrative and suggested a sense of reverie through its rhythmic repetitions of ornamental subject matter. The image shows a scene in a Parisian park, country homes; however, upon further inspection, Vuillard makes the scene rather abstract because he of the arrangements of line and color. Vuillard depicted a public scene, for a private commission, through the decorative arrangement—this suggests a renegotiation of public and private at the service of the decorative.

The artists created large-scale set decorations, where form and color served as a representation of the rhythm of movement, language, and musical accompaniment for the production. The artists in

24 The connection between Revue wagnérienne and the Nabis happened through Mallarmé’s famous mardis gatherings at his home on Tuesday evenings where artists across media came to discuss their ideas about art. One artist who frequently attended was Maurice Denis, a painter who helped to found the Nabis group in the 1890s. Mallarme more than likely modeled this gathering after domestic Salons popular during this time period, but also from Wagner himself. The composer would have concerts at home ever Wednesday evening. But rather than having just a performance, Wagner welcomed a diverse group of people and spoke in detail of his aesthetic theories and his plans, and thereby inspired the local Wagnerian supporters on how to carry out his ideas and theories. Gerard Vaughan. “Maurice Denis and the Sense of Music,” Oxford Art Journal 7 (1984): 38

the group were inspired by literary Symbolism—the valuation of interiority, a musical approach to formal characteristics, and aspiration to unite the arts—and applied elements into their designs.25

In their collaboration with Symbolist theatre, they hoped to destroy the distinction between art and

life and create a more totalizing aesthetic environment similar to the wishes of Wagner.26 Their

public work (mostly theatre production) was aesthetically similar to their private work, which

cultivated a sense equality between both realms. The Nabis implemented decorative designs into

private and public works to suggest an intimate viewing that they paralleled with Wagnerian

theory.27

As I have shown, then, the dissemination of Wagner’s theories following their publication

in 1849 was circuitous and complex. His theories clearly were deemed important, and for many

artists and movements, constituted an answer to the problems that industrialization and social

atomization presented to the art world, and to the world at large. Artists working in a variety of

media were influenced by his writings and began to adapt those specific principles they felt most

pertinent. The underlying connection amongst these groups is the desire to unite art genres to create

a total work of art at the service of craft or decoration. Within this endeavor, the aspiration to

eliminate artistic hierarchies surfaced to create a universal artistic community. Through the

elevation of craft and the decorative, these groups hoped to achieve equality and recognition for

all artistic pursuits - a democratic ideal that Wagner applauded in his writings. As I will

demonstrate in the next chapter, where I investigate yet more variants of Wagnerism, Wagner’s

25 Kuenzli, The Nabis and Intimate Modernism, 70.

26 Ibid., 81.

27 Ibid., 74.

interest in the handiwork and authenticity in art was essential in Russian variants of Wagernian theory.

CHAPTER 2

TO MURNAU VIA MOSCOW: RUSSIAN INFLUENCES ON KANDINSKY’S GESAMTKUNSTWERK

As I show in chapter one, Kandinsky’s understanding of the Gesamtkunstwerk derived

from a variety of different sources to which he had both direct and indirect access. Though the

variants of Wagnerism discussed in chapter one proved influential in Kandinsky’s particular

formulation of a domestic Gesamtkunstwerk, another crucial factor in the formation of his ideas

stemmed from his circuitous route to Murnau from Russia. In this chapter, I focus on the

importance of the Russian context for Kandinsky’s approach to the house in Murnau—as aspect of his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk that separated him from Gabriele Münter. Specifically, it

was the revival of kustar (peasants) craft traditions through artist workshops—seen in the journal

Mir iskusstva—established during the late-nineteenth-century in Russia, and Kandinsky’s

ethnographic research into indigenous Russian cultures, that served as the basis for his creation of

a Gesamtkunstwerk at home.

My analysis in this chapter is intended to grapple with questions of national identity and

regional affiliation as they emerged in the home in Murnau. Kandinsky described the home as his

“German house,” but locals in the town called it the “Russian House.” We may trace this confusion

back to the fact that, though Kandinsky’s ideas about the Gesamtkunstwerk developed in a Russian

context, the concept was (as I show in chapter one) an international phenomenon by the turn of the

century—by the time he encountered it, the Gesamtkunstwerk was a hybrid of different national

traditions and international trends. Russian versions of the Gesamtkunstwerk were themselves

derived from a variety of precedents and parallels that originated outside Russia. Thus, in the

synthetic spirit of Wagner’s original idea, the Gesamtkunstwerk that Kandinsky inherited was local

and global, specific and universal.

From Moscow to St. Petersburg

The reception of Wagner’s ideas in Russia were directly inflected by the turbulent political

and social climate at the turn of the century, a formative period in Kandinsky’s career. In Russia,

Wagner’s theory took on a distinctive overlay of political and social meanings related to increasing

dissatisfaction with the Russian monarchy and the emergence of a cult of the “folk” in the hopes

of forging a distinct, Russian identity. After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the distinction

between social classes became more evident and strained.28 Russia represented a large geographic

region that was varied and multifaceted: languages, dialects, and customs differed throughout the

country. Therefore, utilizing folk imagery, indigenous throughout Russia, offered a solution to

bind the country in a nationalist revival. A desire to overcome class distinction and to cultivate a

‘Russian’ identity emerged; however, the new national identity was debated throughout Russia.

Most Russians identified St. Petersburg as the “Western,” international model for a modern city;

by contrast, Moscow was the center of the ancient Russian way of life, a more “nationalistic

city.”29 Artists based in Moscow wanted to liberate Russian art from Western Europe’s grasp by

“discovering” or inventing an indigenous tradition of art; artists in St. Petersburg appreciated a

28 The reign of Czar Nicholas I (1825-1855) deeply impacted the political and social tensions present in Russia; the Emperor believed in blind obedience, public executions and police surveillance. Alexander II presided after Nicholas I and abolished serfdom in 1861 and was an avid humanitarian who believed in reorganizing Russia; however, he was assassinated and eventually Czar Constantine Pobedonostsev came into power while Kandinsky was at University in Moscow. Pobedonostsev believed that culture was an unnecessary distraction and served as a threat to the authority of the Church and State. Wendy Salmond, ‘A Matter of Give and Take: Peasant Crafts and Their Revival in Late Imperial Russia,’ Design Issues 13 (1997): 18.

29 Orlando Figes, ‘Moscow! Moscow!’ in Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Company, 2002), 155.

more Western European tradition of art, and strove to be recognized on the international level of

successful artists in major European cities. However, this age-old opposition between Moscow and St. Petersburg, between national and international impulses in the Russian art world, belies the complexity of their interrelationship.

Wagner’s theories became prominent in both Moscow and St. Petersburg but to varying degrees, and realized in different ways. Moscow artists privileged Wagner’s emphasis on deriving art from the “folk”; like many of the movements I discuss in chapter one, this context emphasized handicraft, connected to indigenous, “authentic” traditions. Though this was a nationalist movement in some ways, it also responded to, and participated in, an international phenomenon: this search for authentic indigenous traditions of art happened throughout Europe as a method to assert national and cultural unity through the modernization of ‘vernacular’ art.30 By contrast, the

Mir Iskusstva (The World of Art) group in St. Petersburg published a journal that exposed both

Russian and international readers to a wide variety of Wagnerian-influenced artworks and

movements, both inside and outside of Russia. Both phenomena illustrated a larger desire for the

assertion of a Russian national identity, though that identity was conceived differently in these two

distinct artistic centers.

It was in Moscow that Gesamtkunstwerk manifested in the revival of folk and peasant art,

rooted in the development of artistic workshops for kustar (peasant) crafts. The workshops,

established throughout Russia, but initially right outside of Moscow, utilized a recognizable

Russian aesthetic source that perpetuated a national community but also highlighted the

30 Utilizing vernacular, or homely, art styles that depended upon peasant art in the pastoral landscapes of the designated country suggested a sense of authenticity and appraisal of the country’s origins. This also spoke to the desire to move away from historicism and hierarchies. Andrezej Szczerski, ‘The Arts and Crafts Movement, Internationalism and Vernacular Revival in Central Europe c. 1900’ in Internationalism and the Arts in Britain and Europe at the Fin de Siecle ed. Grace Brockington. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 109.

importance of craft. The kustar population developed within the peasant class as these communities utilized craft traditions, passed down from generation to generation, as a source of income. With the abolition of serfdom, the peasant class was perceived as vanishing, and along with them, their inherent artistic traditions and techniques.31 The few villages that did preserve their artistic traditions had to compete with increased industrial production; ultimately, the artistic practices of these groups waned. Scholar Wendy Salmond addresses this dilemma by stating,

As a symbol of benighted resistance to western ideas of progress, peasant culture had been the object of upper-class contempt in Russia since the early 18th century; but the discovery of spiritual and aesthetic value in peasant life began to manifest itself as early as the mid-19th century, in response to the international rise of patriotic sentiment and, to the new sympathy for Russia’s peasantry that emerged from the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861.32

Artists and members of Russia’s upper classes wanted to collect folk art objects as a means to feel connected to their native country, and the producers of such work capitalized on this market and began to exploit that style in commercial production and exhibitions. The Russian government also took part in cultivating the revival of craft by establishing craft distribution outlets that encouraged the development of urban markets for traditional crafts.33

31 Most of the producers of this ‘ethnic tradition’ of craft relocated their skills to factories or sent their female children to government sponsored institutions, such as the School of Folk Art in St. Petersburg where they learned traditional craft practices such as embroidery, furniture design, and decorative embellishments meant for domestic settings.These schools (popular throughout Russia, but the largest located in St. Petersburg) were funded by the imperial family. Peasant girls enrolled in the rigorous curriculum of drawing and various forms of ‘traditional’ women’s handwork. Upon completion of the course, each graduate was expected to return to her province to disseminate her knowledge out into the community, either reviving crafts that had become dormant or setting up new ones in order to encourage and stimulate the craft market in small villages as tourism to these locations increased. Salmond, “A Matter of Give and Take,” 12

32 Ibid.,., 6.

33 A small – but symbolically significant portion of the population was induced by clear economic interest to maintain the handcraft traditions of their ancestors, and with them a much prized social and cultural stability. Sarah Warren, ‘Crafting Nation: The Challenge to Russian Folk Art in 1913’ in Modernism/Modernity 16 (2009), 749.

Though the kustar workshops were not explicitly dedicated to Wagnerian thought, many of the underlying premises of the workshops paralleled both Wagner’s theories and those of the

British Arts and Crafts movement. A main aspect that connects Wagner with the kustar movement is the interest in indigenous style and imagery. Wagner looked to myth to draw upon and to foster a communal Germanic consciousness. We might see the kustar communities’ use of Russian folk imagery and styles as a similar bid to assert a national style with which Russian consumers could identify. At this moment, the revival of a kustar tradition helped to shape and market an image of

Russia: as Salmond explains,

Educated Russian’s showed a strong faith in social reform through art, a commitment to healing the breach between the high art of painting and the minor decorative Arts and Crafts, and a concern for maintaining a distinct cultural identity in an era when national traditions were falling victim to the increasing homogeneity of the machine age.34

The workshop established at Abramtsevo, located about seventy kilometers outside of Moscow, was the first of these kustar inspired experiments in social reform. The community cultivated a

Russian folk influenced style through the production of woodwork-crafts. The railroad magnate

Savva Mamontov and his wife, Elizaveta, founded Abramtsevo as a woodworking colony in

1876.35 Woodwork was believed to represent one of the most pure Russian craft practices because it had served as a national tradition for centuries. As was the case with Jugendstil and the woodcut print, woodworking became recognized as one of the most “primitive” (and thus “authentic”) craft practices because of the physical labor involved in the process of production.

34 Wendy Salmond, Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries, 1870-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2.

35 Ibid., xiii.

Artists working at Abramtsevo produced decorative objects for domestic use as well as

relief carving for the external decoration of houses and other structures. In 1899, the journal Mir

iskusstva published a design for a cupboard by Elena Polenova [fig. 7] that is similar to a painted

cupboard that Kandinsky executed in Murnau [fig. 8]. Both feature ornamental embellishments on

the edge and an abstracted flower arrangement on the door. The two examples evoke nostalgia

through their simplified style and the natural motifs prominently featured. In a letter to her sister-

in-law describing the cupboard, Polenova wrote,

The door of the column cupboard with stars, moon, wild strawberries, and flowers represents untamed nature. It’s a meadow cupboard. My corner cupboard, though, is a two-story house - upstairs on the sill there’s a flower in a pot, while through the lower window you can see the sunset.36

Polenova wanted to evoke Russian identity through furniture that represented “untamed nature,”

motifs that she linked with a revival of folk art and folklore. Likewise, the studio building at

Abramtsevo, designed by Viktor Gartman in 1873 [fig. 9] exemplifies the decorative woodwork

ornamentation for which the colony became known. The intricate design on the roof is reminiscent

of wooden lace that was based on peasant prototypes.37 Both Polenova and Gartman feature an aesthetic quality that resembles manuscript illuminations which became recognized as an emblem

‘Russianess’; Russians felt it was another style that was indigenously “Russian.” In chapter three,

I will more closely analyze Kandinsky’s decorative style in Murnau; for the moment, it suffice to note that his style is reminiscent of Polenova and Gartman’s, and it seems likely that he would have known both artists’ work.

36 Ibid., 32.

37 Ibid., 22.

The Abramtsevo artist colony was the first craft workshop in Russia, but many others were

founded during this period. One important example is the Talashkino embroidery workshop,

modeled after Abramtsevo and located nearby, slightly further away from Moscow. As discussed

in the previous chapter, embroidery was a traditional domestic craft historically practiced by

women but revalued in the nineteenth century as artists like Obrist took up the medium; as in the

Jugendstil movement, at Talashkino both men and women worked in the medium. Artists at the

workshop made embroideries for personal consumption, as well as furniture that was sold at a

store established in Moscow as an outlet for the workshop’s products.38 Kandinsky began to

experiment with embroideries for domestic use in Munich and exhibited seven craft objects,

including some embroideries (small pillows intended for the use on a couch or chair) at the Salon

d’Automne in 1906.39 Peg Weiss argues that Kandinsky’s introduction to Obrist in 1904 influenced his experimentation with craft production and embroidery, but his knowledge of the workshops at Talashkino must also have served as a source of inspiration for Kandinsky as well.

Though the kustar revival is associated with Moscow, these artistic workshops became well known throughout Europe due to their exposure in the St. Petersburg-based journal Mir Iskusstva.

In 1898, Alexander Benois and Sergei Diaghilev, along with other friends, created Mir iskusstva as a venue to discuss a wide range of intellectual and artistic endeavors; articles discussed

Wagner’s ideas and performances of his works; they reviewed art exhibitions in Russia and abroad;

38 The Talashkino store was renamed by the workshop’s founder, Princess Talashkino as “Rodnik” (The Source) was in the same area as the other workshop stores. Abramtsevo had a store right around the corner and there was the Moscow Kustar Museum as well. Salmond, Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia, 125.

39 Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich, 118.

and debated questions of art and aesthetics.40 Among the artistic phenomena presented in the

journal were textile designs, book covers, and furniture ornamentation from artists at Abramtsevo

and Talashkino.41 The journal discussed various art movements throughout the world; however, the writers for the artistic section centralized their articles on the relationship between art and nationality in Russia. Mir iskusstva represented insight into Russian avant-garde art but also exposed the Russian audience to international avant-garde art throughout Europe. Kandinsky contributed to the journal in 1902 with a letter entitled, “Correspondence from Munich.” Mir iskusstva often featured these ‘correspondences’ from Russian artists living abroad to forge a familial connection between the Russian audience and avant-garde art elsewhere.42

It was through Mir iskusstva that Kandinsky saw the combination of authentic Russian folk

imagery—evidenced through the emergence of kustar communities and the success of Abramtsevo

and Talashkino—alongside avant-garde artists and movements across Europe. In so doing, Mir

iskusstva showcased a Russian aesthetic style and also, international styles throughout the

continent. The journal showcased artists from the movements discussed in chapter one among

many others. Mir iskusstva is arguably an example of a micro-Gesamtkunstwerk because it showed

a variety of art forms in a unified work; it is from this combination of various art movements—

40 The group formally began in 1898 with the advent of the journal, but the group had been meeting since the 1880s when they were all students together at the Academy of Art and the Music Conservatory in St. Petersburg. Although the group was located in St. Petersburg instead of Moscow, Diaghilev did not like St. Petersburg because it was a “city of artistic gossiping, academic professors, and Friday watercolor classes.” He found Moscow to be more in-line with the artistic, aesthetic, and national ideals the World of Art group prided. Stuart R. Grover, “The World of Art Movement in Russia” Russian Review, 32 (Jan. 1973): 34.

41 Juliet Bellow, Modernism on Stage (Connecticut: Ashgate Publishing, 2012), 12.

42 Although Kandinsky left Moscow in 1896 and the journal did not begin until 1898, the ‘correspondence’ he wrote for the journal confirms his involvement and knowledge of the avant-garde journal. John E. Bowlt and Rose-Carol Washton Long, ed. The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian Art: A Study of On the Spiritual in Art. (Massachusetts: Oriental Research Partners, 1980), 3.

most influenced by Wagner like Jugendstil, French Symbolism, and the Nabis—that Kandinsky

saw a unified aesthetic that paralleled the aesthetic he created in Murnau.

Ethnographic Research and the Fairy-Tale Paintings

Another influence on Kandinsky’s reception of Russian art and craft was his ethnographic

research, which he conducted in 1889 at the Zyrian community living near the Susola and

Vychegda rivers in the remote northeastern part of the Vologda province in Russia. Kandinsky

used material from his research into this community in a series of ‘fairy-tale’ paintings created just prior to his arrival in Murnau; what proves important is that he maintained Russian sources while living in Germany. These paintings evoke a similar Russian folk theme that was prevalent in the artist workshops previously discussed and foreshadow decorative aesthetics present in the home; therefore, the fairy-tale paintings are indicative of Kandinsky’s impulses to utilize a Russian aesthetic source in combination with other international art styles in a unified decorative program to suggest unity.

Kandinsky’s ethnographic research provided him with firsthand encounters with indigenous Russian cultures of the sort valued by the craft revival movement. Kandinsky conducted field research on deities, religious beliefs, and judicial procedures of the Zyrian people as a component of his degree at the University of Moscow.43 He later claimed that the trip opened

his eyes to the connection between the spiritual and the sensory, qualities he later strove to achieve

through his abstract painterly compositions. He noted how this experience created a sense in him

that he was entering into another spiritual environment,

43 One of his primary interest was in in peasant law, and the emphasis the latter placed on humane consideration for the individual within a communal context.

In these extraordinary huts I first encountered the miracle that became subsequently one of the elements of my work. It was here that I learnt not to look at the picture from the side, but to revolve in the picture myself, to live in it. I can remember vividly stopping on the threshold of this amazing spectacle. The table, the benches, the stove so imperious and so huge, the closets, the sideboards- everything had been painted with multi-colored and bold ornaments.44

Though we only know about this period in Kandinsky’s life from memories recorded many years later, the trip does hold importance in regard to his implementation of decorative, applied artwork on the walls and staircase at the home in Murnau.

Kandinsky’s fairy-tale paintings evoke a folk sensibility and foreshadow unity and harmony in Murnau house because of the marriage between international art styles and movements that have previously been discussed. Many of Kandinsky’s fairy-tale paintings take the decorative qualities of Russian craft objects and translate them into pictorial terms. Arrival of the Merchants

[1905, fig. 10], for example, depicts a mass entrance of people into a walled castle community

(clearly depicted as Russian because of the onion domed cathedral and buildings). The vast amount of people are individually rendered in the foreground and then meld into a group composed of small individual dots of paint. The people are dressed in a variety of clothes but the abundance of caps in combination with the title suggests these are the merchants arriving to the city to sell their craft—a theme evoking the Russian kustar revival. The opaque colors on top of a black background recall the aesthetics of stained glass windows or mosaic work. Both the colors and composition emphasize its two-dimensionality, which is a style technique employed by Jugendstil artists and

44Wassily Kandinsky, Retrospects (1913) from Alison Hilton, ‘Folk Art and New Languages of Art’ in Russian Folk Art (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2011), 246.

the Nabis. This synthesis of sources—Russian indigenous cultures, Jugendstil artists, the Nabis—

represents a combination of national and international sources in a unified painting.

Another example of a fairy-tale painting is Song of the Volga [1906, fig. 11], which further

demonstrates Kandinsky’s desire to assert Russian national themes into his work. Like Arrival of the Merchants, Kandinsky continued to use an opaque paint on top of a black background and there is a gated castle community in the background behind a number of boats carrying people.

Weiss claims that the bows of the ships are of Scandinavian descent and showcase Kandinsky’s knowledge of Norse commerce along the Volga; however, he asserts ‘Old Russia’ into the image by affixing a traditionally recognized Russian icon to the central mast of the main ship.

Song of the Volga also connects visual art with music—drawing on the Wagnerian strain of French Symbolism: Kandinsky later stated his motivation for the painting as, “I tried then, through the linear directions and disposition of bright dots, to express the musical element of

Russia.”45 Kandinsky synthesized music, visual art, and his Russian heritage within this painting,

created while living in Germany, just prior to his decoration of the home in Murnau. The

ornamental designs throughout the painting visually parallel the decorative motifs utilized in the

home. At the lower right, for example, is a boat decorated with an embellishment that is directly

related to a design at the Murnau home [fig. 12]. This visual relationship connects not only the

nationally-inspired elements within both, but also a sense of musicality in the decorative program that is reminiscent of the French Symbolists interpretation of Wagnerian concepts.

The union of various sources from different regions—Jugendstil, French Symbolism, and

Russian craft—in these fairy-tale paintings foreshadow Kandinsky’s decorative and craft

45 Originally titled Gomon, the Russian word for ‘hubbub,’ suggesting not so much the physical qualities of the crowd as its sound, echoing the musical import and suggesting the lyrical Russian motifs. Weiss, ‘Motifs of the ethnographic imagination’ in Kandinsky and Old Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 42.

combination in the Gesamtkunstwerk in Murnau. Kandinsky was aware of the successes of

German and French avant-garde artists because he spent time in both countries but also because

he witnessed images in the pages of Mir iskusstva. The fairy-tale scenes are nostalgic and pastoral,

cultivating a feeling of pureness or authenticity that Wagner promoted and Kandinsky admired.

The paintings unite both visual art with craft production due to their aesthetic similarity to

woodwork which correlates to Wagner’s theories on unification.

As I will discuss in the next chapter, Kandinsky experimented with Wagnerian theory that

was inspired from a plethora of sources: French avant-garde artistic groups like the Nabis and their

beliefs on the domestic setting, French symbolists, the German Jugendstil art movement, among

many others; however, as evidenced in this chapter, I believe that Kandinsky’s Russian heritage

and his understanding of intimate communities proved to be an essential source of influence in

creating a Gesamtkunstwerk at the Murnau home. The kustar artist workshops combined an indigenous style with craft production to assert a national aesthetic that Kandinsky utilized in his fairy-tale paintings and imagery in Murnau. It was through Mir iskusstva that Kandinsky saw the success of the kustar artist workshops; the journal introduced him to a diverse showcase of artistic mediums, styles, and techniques.

CHAPTER 3

MURNAU: ARRIVING AT THE DOMESTIC GESAMTKUNSTWERK

As the first two chapters of this thesis demonstrate, a variety of art movements dedicated to the revival of “decorative” art practices, all inspired to varying degrees by Wagner’s concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk, emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century. During the early years of Kandinsky’s career, he was exposed directly and indirectly to several of those artistic movements. In this chapter, I will analyze how those influences came together in the decorative program he conceived for the house in Murnau, which he envisioned as a total artwork capable of fostering a cohesive (though intimate) social and artistic community.

The house in Murnau has been preserved and now serves as a museum to commemorate

Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter’s shared artistic practice during that formative period of both artists’ careers. Kandinsky began to decorate the house in Murnau at the same time that he was planning an explicitly Wagnerian stage composition, The Yellow Sound. Surprisingly, although scholars have recognized the Wagnerian derivation of The Yellow Sound, few have connected his interest in the Gesamtkunstwerk to the home in which he and Münter lived and worked.

One reason scholars have not hitherto recognized the relationship between Wagner’s theory and the house in Murnau lies in the shift from a public genre (lyric drama) to a private one (applied, domestic arts). The trajectory that I recount in chapters one and two show both the adaptability of

Wagner’s original theory and the various versions to which Kandinsky was exposed in the years leading up to 1909. The Gesamtkunstwerk that Kandinsky attempted to create in the home, I contend, was informed both by his reading of Wagner and by his secondhand knowledge of late- nineteenth-century “Wagnerisms”—particularly, the Nabis, whose total artworks involved the

production of applied, decorative art to the environment of the home.46 They believed that coordinated interior spaces could rise above social distinctions and enable an experience of oneness with the surrounding environment, which to them represented a utopia.47 This is akin to

Wagner’s original social utopia he hope to achieve through the synthesis of artistic media.

This chapter presents a close analysis of the decorative program that Kandinsky implemented in the house at Murnau, showing that through a combination of wall painting, furniture design, and the installation of art objects Kandinsky attempted to create a domestic

Gesamtkunstwerk. Scholars tend to regard the productions within the home, mostly the staircase

Kandinsky decorated and the examples of hinterglasmalerei (reverse glass painting) he and

Münter created, collected, and hung in the house simply as precursors to his later, fully abstract paintings. Such an interpretation of the house is not incorrect—Kandinsky does develop motifs in the house that inform his abstract paintings. However, in privileging painting over applied art production, this view misses the significance of the Gesamtkunstwerk as both a theoretical model for Kandinsky and as a goal in itself for him at this crucial stage in his career. As I show, Kandinsky and Münter fully decorated the interior of their home (eventually extending into the garden) with rhythmic ornamentation that visually unites the entire interior to create a total, harmonious whole.

Through these designs, the couple made their live/work space into a type of utopia, an ideal community that closely paralleled Wagner’s original theory.

Murnau provided Kandinsky a relaxing environment that allowed him to indulge in a pastoral, idyllic lifestyle that he craved, thus he was able to experiment with creating a

46Though Kandinsky was not actively engaged in the Nabis group, he was aware of them due to his participation in the Salon d’Automne in Paris – where they actively participated. He and Münter lived in Sevres near Paris and became interested in Henri Matisse and the Fauves, and by extension, the Nabis. Annegret Hoberg, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter: Letters and Reminiscences 1902-1904 (Prestel: Munich, 2005), 10.

47 Kuenzli The Nabis and Intimate Modernism, 164.

Gesamtkunstwerk at the home.48 In 1908 the Russian artist couple Marianne von Werefkin and

Alexey von Jawlensky invited Kandinsky and Münter, then both romantic and artistic partners, to

come to Murnau. After a summer vacationing, Kandinsky and Münter travelled back to Munich to

live but remained attracted to Murnau. In the fall of 1909, Münter bought a cottage in Murnau and

the two settled in the Bavarian village.49 They resided there on and off for four years and this

period provided one of the most important, creative periods in both artists’ careers. They set about

furnishing the house, tending the garden, painting the furniture—sometimes with simple traditional

motifs—and decorating the walls and tables with religious folk art and regional craft.

The concept of unity is first introduced through the outside of the home [fig. 1], painted

white with blue shutters and yellow detailing. Although Kandinsky and Münter did not themselves

paint the outside of the home, the brightly colored house would have stood out to Kandinsky

because of his strong belief in the power of color. In his groundbreaking book, Concerning the

Spiritual in Art [1910], published while he and Münter worked on the house, Kandinsky argued colors provide corresponding spiritual vibrations within the viewer.50 He believed that white

served as a symbol of a world where color no longer exists, a more pure society that is too far

48 As early as the mid-1850s, Murnau became recognized as a vacation location. It was close enough to Munich that it was a day trip away, but removed one from the hustle and bustle of city life. The peasant, nostalgic lifestyle attracted visitors and Murnau quickly became recognized as historicized kitsch. One study argued that Murnau was a resting place for the severely depressed in the nineteenth century due to its picturesque scenes and poetic lifestyle; at the time of their relocation to Murnau, Kandinsky was battling depression. He struggled with leaving his family and wife in Russia and attempting to create a new life in Germany with Münter. Whether they specifically long-term vacationed in Murnau to appease Kandinsky’s undocumented depression is not known. Hanns Hippius. New Results in Depression Research (Munich: Springer-Verlag, 1986), 4.

49 Münter actually purchased the house with help from her brother. She and Kandinsky found the cottage during their first summer in Murnau with Jawlensky and Werefkin.

50 Kandinsky argues that each color has a specific purpose and meaning in works of art. He argued that color provides a physical reaction in the viewer and through combinations of colors, the viewer could experience a heightened psychic response. Wassily Kandinsky Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Dover Publications, Inc.; New York, 1910), 24.

above mankind’s conception of it.51 Blue to Kandinsky represented the most profound, pure

meaning in art.52 He began writing Concerning the Spiritual in Art while he resided at the home

in Murnau; therefore, the house was integral in formulating his ideas represented in the book. The

home served as the ideal setting to experiment and implement a Gesamtkunstwerk.

Diverse Collections: Creating Unity and Totality

Kandinsky and Münter’s collection and exhibition of various art forms and styles

demonstrated their desire to combine disparate styles in a unified setting; this is reminiscent of

Wagner’s original conception of different media coming together to create a total work of art.53

Kandinsky took the synthesis of varying art forms and interpreted that by collecting different art

mediums and exhibiting them in his home. There is a wooden, painted armoire in his bedroom

where he displayed folk and primitive art objects he accumulated throughout his travels [fig. 13].

The objects are from his native Russia, Munich, or from local Bavaria, and range in size, color,

and medium: a small dancing figurine, a ceramic model of a painted dog, three-dimensional

models of Saints, a miniature puppet stage, and a figurine of a small man in front of a piano.54

Peg Weiss argues that Kandinsky’s collecting habits are a continuation of his earlier ethnographic studies; however, we may also regard his collection as evidence to surround himself

51 Ibid., 39.

52 Ibid., 36.

53 Wagner believed that art forms “..each attain the capacity to be and do the very thing which, of their own and inmost essences, they long to do and be. Each, where her own capacity ends, can be absorbed in the other…proving her own purity, freedom, and independence as that which she is.” Koss, Modernism after Wagner: xii.

54 The objects are currently displayed like this because it is similar to how Kandinsky and Münter installed them. Museum curators used photographs and paintings by Münter to validate the current layout of the house.

with various art mediums that he viewed equal to visual artistic practices.55 Like the combination

of the three different art forms in the original Gesamtkunstwerk, Kandinsky merged three- dimensional objects with painted plates and figurines together in the armoire. There are numerous wooden and ceramic objects: a wooden musician wearing traditional Bavarian clothing, two ceramic doves, a large saint, and a three-dimensional crucifixion scene. The juxtaposition between secular and non-secular objects are reminiscent of the heterogeneous objects encourages a feeling of totality and harmony that work together to produce a universal effect with no hierarchy.

Likewise, these objects demonstrate national styles, similar to the indigenous style discussed in chapter two, and by arranging them in combination, Kandinsky regards them as equals.

Kandinsky and Münter’s decision to experiment with hinterglasmalerei, a craft tradition that oscillated between an over-produced kitsch object with an authentic, Bavarian tradition, spoke to their desire to make the craft practice authentic. Reverse-glass paintings (or hinterglasmalerei) had existed in the market town since the mid-eighteenth-century. Artists created works for churches or family homes and then marketed them as a traditional folk craft. The tradition stayed within families, further emphasizing its authentic reputation.56 The majority of these

hinterglasmalerei are religious scenes or landscape scenes that served as studies for Kandinsky

and Münter’s larger oil works.57 Some of Kandinsky and Münter’s hinterglasmalerei are from

prominent glass painters in Murnau, most notably Heinrich Rambold. Rambold was a well-known

55 Weiss, Kandinsky and Old Russia: 65.

56 Helena Waddy Lepovitz, “Gateway to the Mountains: Tourism and Positive Deindustrialization in the Bavarian Alps” German History 7, (1989): 294.

57 The tradition of extending the painting to the frame connotes an extension into the domestic sphere. This further relates to the general concept of Gesamtkunstwerk – an all-encompassing environment. It also forces the work to become more engaged with ‘the public’ because it no longer resides within the frame. Helmut Friedel and Annegret Hoberg, The Munter House in Murnau (Munich: Prestel, 2000):, 37.

glass painter that befriended Münter and instructed her on the technique. As Obler notes, both

Kandinsky and Münter recognized the tension between authenticity and ‘kitsch’ in folk art. By

exhibiting this established Murnau practice, they attempted to connect themselves to the

surrounding culture; by extension, the two could unite their own personal artistic paths with a folk

art that was deemed lesser in the grand hierarchy of fine art.

Kandinsky and Münter also exhibited reverse-glass paintings upstairs in Münter’s bedroom

[fig 14]; displaying the works in Münter’s bedroom promotes the notion of totality because various

rooms are connected through the practice of glass paintings. Kandinsky shows the glass paintings

in the living room and in a bedroom, aesthetically synthesizing the two. Broadly speaking, the

reverse-glass paintings are aesthetically similar to Jugendstil works through color use and

composition, and Kandinsky’s earlier fairy-tale paintings that construct a Russian aesthetic sensibility because of the overtly Russian iconography. Most of these paintings were made by

Münter or Rambold; stylistically, they are flat (do not provide a great sense of perspective or dimension) and brightly colored, and, on the whole depict religious subjects. This stylistic choice of simplicity circles back to Wagner’s idea of purifying artistic practices in order to create a total work of art.

Utopian Iconographic Imagery

The utopian theme that Kandinsky used on the furniture he painted for the house also

related directly to the theme of the Gesamtkunstwerk; it is the aesthetic treatment of these pieces

that universalizes the disparate rooms and objects that is connected to Wagner’s utopianism of the

Gesamtkunstwerk. As discussed in the previous chapters, Wagner’s original goal for the

Gesamtkunstwerk was social cohesion, achieving utopia through artistic synthesis.

One example of using utopian imagery to suggest a universal aesthetic environment is on

the headboard of a bed Kandinsky painted. There is a figure wearing blue and orange clothing with a green headdress. Scholars have argued that the image depicts Saint George, likely because the latter relates to the theoretical program of Der Blaue Reiter, the group with which Kandinsky was associated during this period. However, the figure portrayed here is not seated on a white horse, one of the primary iconographic identifiers associated with that saint. The colors Kandinsky painted the saint match the combination of colors on the walls and decorative design along the ceiling edge (that will be discussed in the next section); by connecting a depiction of a saint with formal aesthetic principles such as color, Kandinsky created an equalized environment with the unifying factor of color.

The dresser [fig. 15] provides, in my opinion, another clear example of utilizing the house as a Gesamtkunstwerk to achieve a utopian future through iconography and decorative motifs.

Similar to the painted furniture that became popular at Abramtsevo through the pages of Mir iskusstva, Kandinsky decorated functional objects with pastoral scenes to suggest nostalgia for an indigenous style, one that was regarded as idyllic. This is just one example where Kandinsky

merged the decorative scheme with a utilitarian object which fully united the home. The dresser is

painted white, referencing his underlying significance of the color white (tying it one of the main

colors on the house’s exterior). It features identifiable imagery on the front; dogs and flower pots

on the top drawer, two riders (male and female) on the middle, and a castle on a mountain on the

bottom drawer. The top drawer has two dogs on either end, who sit beside vases decorated with

flower pots. Essentially symmetrical, the dogs stare toward their left, facing the windows in the

room. The dogs at the top could suggest fidelity or faithfulness, traits that are regarded as pure and

authentic. The middle drawer has two figures on horseback, one male and behind him is a woman

(denoted by her side-saddled position), who stare toward their left. The bottom drawer shows a

castle, flanked by snow-capped mountains to the right and what appears to be a wooded forest to

the left with a crescent moon in the sky; the combination of this imagery evokes a sense of a poetic

landscape or time.

The riding couple on the second drawer has been a common motif for Kandinsky since the

early twentieth century when he began creating his fairy-tale images in Munich. Riding Couple,

1906 [fig. 16] provides a precedent for his couple imagery. Inspired from poems by the Symbolist

poet Maurice Maeterlinck—who believed that the greatness and beauty of poetry could only be

achieved by creating “a new bond between the visible and the invisible, between the temporal and

the eternal”- the painting is more dazzling, mosaic-esque, and fantastical than the dresser image.58

Maeterlinck advocated for symbolic resonance in images which clearly resonated with Kandinsky.

Kandinsky’s use of iconographic imagery in his decorative scheme mirrors the hidden, evocative,

symbolism that Maeterlinck praised. This influential connection implies Kandinsky translated the

theories of a successful literary poet and playwright in visual imagery, further uniting various art

forms to create a Gesamtkunstwerk.

Kandinsky appears to have simplified the motifs from Riding Couple to showcase the harmonious visual language on the dresser. An affinity to Maeterlinck combined with the

Jugendstil and craft and decorative preference of design, suggests Kandinsky utilized a variety of avant-garde movements to suggest utopia. Rose Carol Washton Long, a scholar of the iconography in Kandinsky’s works, suggests that Kandinsky employed the riding couple motif to symbolize the revival of the soul, his eternal search for gender equalization, his hatred of materialism, and his

58 Hans K. Roethel, ed. Kandinsky (Hundson Hills Press, Inc.; New York, 1977), 62.

version of foreseeable utopia.59 Kandinsky used decorative (flattened composition and organic

flowing lines recall the decorative aesthetic of Jugendstil artists) designs to denote the couple;

therefore, if Washton’s argument is true, Kandinsky equated the decorative as part of the utopian

future.60

Kandinsky employed idyllic imagery with a decorative aesthetic in Münter’s room upstairs

that merges the rooms to create a unified artwork, or Gesamtkunstwerk. Upstairs in Münter’s room,

Kandinsky has painted an tranquil image of a woman in a harmonious landscape [fig. 17] suggesting purity in Arcadia; he evokes here classical motifs that Wagner himself believed to be the purest form of art, as discussed in chapter one. There is a woman and her dog in a garden

outside a home that looks similar to the Murnau cottage because of the architectural structure and overall color scheme of the building. This female figure is very familiar to others in Kandinsky’s early fairy-tale paintings made while he lived in Munich, especially a woman in Motley Life [Fig.

18]. In the painted bookcase image, the female figure smells a rose, while a fountain works beside

her and a tree frames her into an intimate enclosure. The girl in Motley Life wears peasant clothing

that is reminiscent of the woman on the bookcase. They also are both shown in three-quarter stance,

with their left cheek facing the viewer. Both embody an aesthetic affinity for Russian imagery (as

discussed in the previous chapter) is also represents utopian imagery because it suggests a pastoral,

peaceful scene.

Another source of imagery that suggests harmony and unity is the famous painted staircase

at the home [Fig. 19]. Aesthetically, the painted staircase evokes a Jugendstil style and the Nabis’

59 Rose Carol Washton-Long, “Kandinsky’s Vision of Utopia as a Garden of Love” Art Journal 43 (1983): 50.

60 The castle on the bottom drawer suggests the alleged utopia Kandinsky’s riders are headed toward. It is not surprising that the castle is Russian-influenced, as Kandinsky can never fully sever his native heritage.

practice of home decoration. Painted with a stencil that Kandinsky created, the stairwell is brightly

colored and features five ascending riders surrounded by arabesque decoration that covers the

entire railing poles. The flowing, organic patterns behind the riders are reminiscent of Jugendstil

embroideries, like Hermann Obrist’s [Fig 2]. The rider motif can be seen in multiple interpretations: a leading figure in battle, a brave soldier, protective, or a guide for lost travelers.

One could interpret the rider as an emblem for Kandinsky’s desire to pursue the boundaries of artistic practice—a common way that the rider motif is interpreted in regards to Der Blaue Reiter.

Painting around the entire rail indicates completion and totality. Kandinsky’s artistic practice is quite literally ‘coming full circle.’ I believe Kandinsky employed this motif on the stairwell to continue the decorative design theme throughout the home, reinforce the visual totality, and to physically lead the viewer upstairs. The rider on the staircase mimics the continuous decoration that pervades the rest of the home.

Unifying Ornamental decoration

It is in the ornamental decoration that Kandinsky showcases his combination of artistic

sources, especially those mentioned in the previous two chapters: the Jugendstil movement, and

the Nabis. The overall flowing, organic nature of the designs is also suggestive of the Jugendstil

aesthetic. As mentioned in chapter one, the three basic stylistic principles of Jugendstil were the

primacy of the dynamic, flowing line, the flatness or appraisal of two dimensional qualities, and

the profuseness of ornament.61 The unified use of rhythm, line, and color is reminiscent of the

Nabis’s utilization of Gesamtkunstwerk. Kandinsky does all of the above in the continuous artistic

decoration: it produced a harmonizing, pervasive effect through the decorative, organic

61 Frisch, “Music and Jugendstil” 145.

ornamentation that evokes a main component of Gesamtkunstwerk – synthesis. As discussed in the previous chapters, synthesis for the model of Gesamtkunstwerk meant that various forms of the arts could work together, not against each other, to provide a powerful, authentic artistic response in the viewer. He synthesized visual representation with musicality due to the rhythmic lines in the design; he also incorporated a plethora of artistic influences, across nationalities, to create the undulating, total harmonious effect. Kandinsky’s desk, ornamental design below the crown molding in multiple rooms, and painted furniture in Münter’s bedroom all utilize decorative embellishments to create totality in the Murnau home.

The ornamental decoration on Kandinsky’s desk [Fig. 20] suggests the desire to equalize the decorative scheme to the realm of fine art. If he decorated the desk where he painted ‘fine artworks,’ one can infer he viewed the decorative on par with fine art production.62 He later articulated the relationship between the decorative and fine art in Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

When discussing the theory behind art (essentially explaining his abstract compositions,)

Kandinsky claimed that “…it must not be thought that pure decoration is lifeless” and “…it is possible that towards the close of our already dying epoch a new decorative art will develop...”63

From these statements, Kandinsky saw the possibilities the decorative held; in a Wagnerian way, it was his artwork of the future.

Upon first sight, the desk is ornamental with arabesque objects that infer flowers but are exaggerated in length, color, and basic structure. However, on the third drawer it appears that

Kandinsky has included curtains that are pulled back and tied [Fig. 21]. The curtains, reminiscent

62 The home displays Kandinsky’s old palette and brushes on the desk suggesting it was his workspace. No easels remain at the home and there is no current research that argues Kandinsky painted elsewhere besides his desk. There are landscape paintings that depict the view from his window, therefore, scholars believe he painted at the desk.

63 Kandinsky Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 47.

of those employed in theatrical productions, evoke the themes of theater and spectatorship. Not

only does this relate to Wagner - who viewed lyrical drama as the purest form of art - but it circles

back to the Nabis’ influence on Kandinsky. The Nabis participated in stage production designs,

using the ‘musical’ style of painting on public productions. If the imagery on the desk suggests a

blending of the decorative with theater, then Kandinsky attempted to relate art forms in a

collective, utopian fashion.64 This unification of the decorative with theater production suggests

Kandinsky combined different artistic practices to enforce aesthetic unity.

Another way that Kandinsky used decorative embellishment to evoke a sense of unity and

totality was with the ornamental design below the crown molding in the living room [Fig. 22].

Kandinsky constructed stencils to create the designs; the designs vary from room to room but are

similar in stylistic simplicity.65 The design frames the entire room and introduces a visual motif of

continuous ornamental design that permeates throughout the entire home. The sustained visual

motif creates a rhythmic environment that suggests totality throughout the house.

In Kandinsky’s room he employed a geometric design that differed from the catenary style of the decoration on his desk. Similar to this geometric style of decoration is the design along the border in Münter’s bedroom. Although the design is structured more geometric than the organic, flowing design in other rooms, the geometric design present in Kandinsky’s and Münter’s bedrooms is reminiscent to imagery in Kandinsky’s fairy-tale paintings. Supplying varying designs

64 Wagner favored lyric drama because of its origins in classical Greece, which he regarded as the pinnacle of artistic expression. He believed that “the highest imaginable work of art, the drama” demonstrated the grandeur of the antique city. The tragic dramas proved that the ancient Greeks were the most true to nature and therefore, closest to achieving a utopian society. Wolfgang Domling. “Reuniting the Arts: Notes on the History of an Idea” 19th Century Music 18, no. 1 (1994): 7.

65 It has been suggested that the design was created with a stencil that later influenced Kandinsky’s staircase painting because both used a stencil.

throughout the home but all maintaining similar aspects (monochromatic, simple, placement below

the crown molding) envelops the viewer into a harmonious aesthetic response.

While it ultimately related to the rest of the decorative scheme within the home, Münter’s

bedroom was an example of how Kandinsky employed decoration to heighten the visual harmony.

In the corner is Münter’s toilette [fig. 23], which Kandinsky painted to match her chair [fig. 24] and a small side table [fig. 25] in the opposing corner. All are red and have ornamental designs that mimic the rhythmic lines that permeate the entire home near the ceiling. As symmetrical as the designs look on the furniture in Münter’s bedroom, they were not created with a stencil like the molding decoration or staircase. This dichotomy of stencil production and free-hand

representation may relate to Kandinsky’s applied art practice and how he interpreted that field as

equal to fine art.66

As I have argued, the home presented Kandinsky’s personal interpretation of the

Gesamtkunstwerk model that Wagner conceived of in the early nineteenth century. Although I

have mainly discussed the interior, it is also important to briefly discuss the garden outside the

home, which Kandinsky and Münter meticulously tended. They shaped the natural landscape into

a symmetrical design that welcomed guests into the home. The avid attention shown to the garden is analogous to the meticulous decoration within the home. The garden essentially served as the most public aspect of this Gesamtkunstwerk, as it was visible to all passersby.

The home in Murnau represents Kandinsky’s implementation of a Gesamtkunstwerk in

which he synthesized the models of various artistic movements he encountered prior to his arrival

in 1909. Through the collection of diverse objects, Kandinsky articulated the synthesis of varying

66 The applied art field was viewed as less important than the realm of fine art; the reception of the applied arts was consistent with the decorative in this period.

art mediums to suggest unity. Another key component of the Gesamtkunstwerk model regarding unity is the desire to reach utopia through harmonious artistic relationships, which he expressed through imagery to suggest utopia. The imagery parallels the decorative embellishments that

Kandinsky employed throughout the home because it increases the concept of totality.

Kandinsky and Münter ended their relationship on the onset of World War I; Kandinsky returned to Russia and Münter remained in Germany. They met one more time in 1914 in

Switzerland; Kandinsky left many of his early works with Münter in Munich and at the cottage in

Murnau. Münter later met and married the art historian Johannes Eichenberg, who helped to catalogue her and Kandinsky’s work from this period. Later, it was Eichenberg who believed the home would be beneficial to preserve in order to study the Blue Rider group, Kandinsky’s venture into abstraction, and Gabriele Münter’s position in this evolution. Sometime after Kandinsky left,

Münter created a mural on the wall opposing Kandinsky’s bed [fig. 26]. I believe this female nude, represented Münter’s break with Kandinsky’s ideal of a total work of art at the home. Because the figure does not fit into the rest of the home iconographically, visually, or thematically, its addition suggests that Münter decided to disrupt the Gesamtkunstwerk that Kandinsky had created.

CONCLUSION

Kandinsky’s decorations for the house in Murnau show us how adaptable Wagner’s

Gesamtkunstwerk had become in the sixty years since its first formulation. Although scholars

address Kandinsky’s The Yellow Sound stage production as the artist’s experimentation with

Gesamtkunstwerk concepts, he formulated both the stage composition and decoration within the

home simultaneously beginning in 1909; suggesting his various interpretations and employments

of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. The Yellow Sound represented a solid Wagnerian interpretation of

Gesamtkunstwerk—that is to say, the combination of music, dance, and poetry—however, as this thesis demonstrated, Kandinsky, steeped in various Wagnerian-influenced movements, created a domestic Gesamtkunstwerk with Gabriele Münter in Murnau. In so doing, this thesis shifts our understanding of the connection between Wagner and Kandinsky.

As I demonstrate, Kandinsky became familiar with Wagner’s ideas on the unification of arts through a variety of later mutations and interpretations. The most important shift of Wagner’s original theory was the Arts and Crafts movement, which took the Gesamtkunstwerk from the stage to the home. Later variants of the Gesamtkunstwerk took this interest in the applied or decorative arts in a variety of directions, layering onto it a variety of social, political, and national meanings.

Wagner’s theory was complicated and broad; however, groups recognized certain elements that they capitalized on and interpreted into their own necessities. The house in Murnau served as an experiment for a domestic Gesamtkunstwerk through the materials of decoration and craft production. The decoration of the physical home represents Kandinsky’s understanding and interpretation of the German, French, and Russian interpretation of Wagnerian concepts regarding the unification of the arts. 48

As this thesis has demonstrated, Richard Wagner’s ideas on the unification of the arts took on various connotations and interpretations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe. His original idea on the Gesamtkunstwerk served as the answer to the question surrounding the crisis of modernity and artists looked to his writing for guidance. Wassily

Kandinsky implemented a Gesamtkunstwerk at the home in Murnau through the lens of various avant-garde artistic groups at the time.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Note: Due to copyright restrictions, the illustrations are not reproduced in the online version of this thesis. They are available in the hard copy version that is on file in the Visual Resources Center, Art Department, Katzen Art Center, American University, Washington, D.C.

Figure 1: Murnau House, Murnau Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 2: Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky working in the garden in Murnau, c. 1910-11.

Figure 3: Hermann Obrist, Cyclamen, 1892

Figure 4: Wassily Kandinsky, cover of Der Blaue Reiter Almanac, Woodblock print, 1912

Figure 5: Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de vivre, Oil on canvas, Barnes Foundation, 1905-1906.

Figure 6: Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels: Nursemaids and Children in a Public Park, Oil on panel, Private Collection, 1892.

Figure 7: Elena Polenova, Painted cupboard, 1885

Figure 8: Wassily Kandinsky, Painted cupboard, 1902-1908

Figure 9: Viktor Gartman, Studio at Abramtsevo, 1873

Figure 10: Wassily Kandinsky, Arrival of the Merchants, Tempera on canvas, Miyagi Museum of Art, Japan, 1905

Figure 11: Wassily Kandinsky, Song of the Volga, Tempera on cardboard, Centre Georges Poompidou, Paris, 1906

Figure 12: Wassily Kandinsky, Decorative border, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photography, 1902-1908

Figure 13: Painted armoire, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 14: Above Gabriele Munter’s bed, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 15: Three drawer dresser, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 16: Wassily Kandinsky, Riding Couple, Tempera on canvas, Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1906

Figure 17: Female on bookcase, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 18: Wassily Kandinsky, Motley Life, Tempera on canvas, Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1907

Figure 19: Painted staircase, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 20: Kandinsky’s painted desk, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 21: Detail of Kandinsky’s painted desk, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 22: Ornamental design in living room, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 23: Gabriele Munter’s Toilette, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 24: Gabriele Munter’s chair, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 25: Gabriele Munter’s table, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

Figure 26: Painted mural in Kandinsky’s bedroom, Murnau, Germany, Daley personal photograph

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