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Kandinsky: the Path to Abstraction Teachers' Pack

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Kandinsky: the Path to Abstraction Teachers' Pack Wassily Kandinsky Cossacks (detail) 1910–11 Tate © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2006 KANDINSKY THE PATH TO ABSTRACTION 22 JUNE – 1 OCTOBER 2006 Information and activity pack for teachers Introduction This teachers’ pack accompanies Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction 1908–1922 at Tate Modern. It focuses on three key works by Kandinsky, providing information, discussion points and classroom activities about each one. A theoretical and historical context for Kandinsky’s abstraction is illustrated with 4 further works. The pack has been designed to both support a visit to the exhibition and to link with work you are doing in the classroom. For more Becks-Malorny, Ulrike (2003) Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944 The Journey to Abstraction, Taschen information Behr, Shulamith (1999) Movements in Modern Art: Expressionism, Tate Gallery Publishing Dube, Wolf-Dieter (1998) The Expressionists, Thames and Hudson Harrison, Charles and Frascina, and Perry, Gill (eds.) (1993) Modern Art Practices and Debates: Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, Yale University Press in association with The Open University Press Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul (eds.) (1995) Art Theory – 1900–1990 – An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing (for excerpts from Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning The Spiritual in Art) Lankheit, Klaus (2006) Documentary Edition of The Blaue Reiter Almanac, Tate Publishing Robinson, Michael (2006) Kandinsky, Flame Tree Publishing www.tate.org.uk/collection (This pack links to work by Luc Tuymans, Dan Flavin and Tomoko Takahashi. Further information about their work, and details of its location on display at Tate Modern, can be found on the Tate website.) QCA Viewpoints A sense of place schemes Shared view of work Objects and viewpoints Life events Personal places, public spaces @ Tate 2006. All rights reserved Written by Dr Jackie Steven Designed by Martin Parker at www.silbercow.co.uk www.tate.org.uk Theory and History: Inner Necessity ‘Our starting-point is the belief that the artist is constantly engaged in collecting experiences in an inner world, in addition to the impressions he receives from the external world, from nature. The search for artistic forms in which to express the mutual interpenetration of these two kinds of experience, for forms which must be free of every kind of irrelevancy in order to express nothing but the essentials... this seems to us to be a watchword which is uniting more and more artists at this present time.’ KANDINSKY, Statement as president of The New Artists Association of Munich Wassily Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866, and he trained in law, economics and ethnography. However, by the age of 30, he had abandoned law and was working as the director of a print shop, making reproductions of artworks. In 1896 he turned down a university teaching post and decided to give more serious attention to his love of painting. He moved to Munich, with is wife Anya, to pursue a career as an artist. Munich was a magnet for artists at the time. The visual arts had featured prominently in the cultural life of the city for many years, a result of the patronage of the Catholic Church and the Bavarian monarchy, who sponsored the first public museums in Germany. There were also highly rated teaching institutions, workshops for painters and spaces for exhibition. The Glaspalast (built to emulate London’s Crystal Palace) was a venue for popular quadrennial salons that exhibited international art. By the time Kandinsky arrived in Munich, the Munich Secession had been founded, exhibiting a wide range of progressive art such as Impressionism and Symbolism. The Secession group played a central role in the development of Jugendstil, which was a German equivalent to Art Nouveau. The fluid lines and highly decorative embellishments of Jugendstil were a significant departure from the naturalistic detail of nineteenth-century realism. As a student in the painting classes of Franz von Stuck, who had co- founded the Munich Secession, Kandinsky made contact with artists and performers, founding and then becoming leader of the Phalanx group, in 1901, through which he organised exhibitions, exhibited his own work and began teaching. His poster design for the first Phalanx exhibition is in the Jugendstil style, and it depicts ornamental soldiers as an advancing (or ‘avant-garde’) force, lances raised against traditional art. With this poster, Kandinsky entered the avant-garde of the Munich art world. His contribution to the European avant-garde, through exhibitions, publications and as an organiser, would prove immense. The key concept explored through Kandindky’s commitment to the avant- garde was that art should grow out of ‘inner necessity’ and not depend on external impressions for guidance. Rather, the ‘inner voice’ of the artist would provide the authority in deciding upon ‘essentials’ in art. Kandinsky’s reason for believing in the importance of this reorganisation of priorities from naturalism to what was ultimately to from the first abstract art, was his belief that art served a spiritual role. On The Spiritual In Art, his most important and influential essay, describes not only the artistic means to serve this purpose, but the purpose itself, observing that culture had become dominated by materialistic thinking, and that humankind’s spiritual potential was under threat. On The Spiritual In Art was first published in 1911, and together with Franz Marc, Kandinsky made plans for the compilation of an almanac of articles by painters and musicians to be printed along side reproductions of folk art, art from Asia and Africa, art by children, ethnographic artefacts and illustrations of artwork by painters such as Van Gogh, Cézanne and Rousseau. This was ultimately published as the Blue Rider Almanac, an attempt to push the existing limits of artistic expression by juxtaposing diverse cultural sources, and through a new spiritual language in art. As editors of the Blue Rider Almanac, Kandinsky and Marc also organised exhibitions, becoming the nucleus of the avant-garde art group called the Blue Rider. Kandinsky later gave an account of how the title came about for the Blue Rider Almanac, stating that it was simply because both he and Marc loved blue, and that Marc loved horses, and he riders. But there was more than this to the motif of a blue rider. The rider often appears in Kandinsky’s woodcuts and paintings in various guises, such as a romantic fairytale figure, mediaeval knight, messenger or herald. Lyrically (1911) features a horse and Lyrically 1911 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2006 4 Sketch for Composition II 1910 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2006 rider, and the free, dynamic treatment of the subject shows his familiarity with the calligraphic style of Asian art and his skill with the medium. The fluidity of this print, gives the image an appropriate dynamism as the rider rushes forward. It is a symbol of change, of conflict, and of engagement. Sketch for Composition II (1910) shows the motif of the rider on a white horse leaping from left to right. Just below and to the right, a white rider rears up on a purple/blue horse, amid what is ostensibly a landscape. The recognisable elements of this painting, such as the scene and the figures, no longer serve illustrative purposes, but have sprung from the inner necessity of Kandinsky’s imagination. Kandinsky made many preparatory sketches for the cover of the Blue Rider Almanac, and finally chose to produce a print referring to St George, the dragon-vanquishing Patron Saint of Russia. In On The Spiritual In Art Kandinsky described blue as a spiritual colour, and the Blue Rider Almanac is a symbol of the avant-garde’s battle with the traditional limits of artistic expression, while it also represents the battle between spiritual values and the materialism of contemporary life. Sociology was developing as a new discipline at the time, with theorists such as Georg Simmel analysing Germany’s recent transition from a rural to an urban society. Urban centres appeared to be entirely governed by industrial production and material consumption. Germany’s first department store was built in 1896, but slums emerged at the same time. The rate of change was startling. Mystical philosophies and religions, which questioned the validity of the ‘outer world’ and promoted a search for hidden truths, were fashionable. Kandinsky’s conviction that abstract art had a role to play in developing humankind’s capacity for spiritual experience was buoyed by 5 the sociological and mystical issues of his time. Composition VI 1913 State Hermitage, St Petersburg © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2006 Composition VI 1913 ‘In general, colour is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key.’ KANDINSKY While still living in Russia, Kandinsky found an important connection between colour and music. Kandinsky is believed to have had synaesthia, a condition that makes people perceive colour not only as a visual property of objects, but with sounds of different qualities and intensities. As he looked out over the rooftops of Moscow, he felt that what was profound about the scene before him could not be represented in graphic and realistic detail although he had a desire to capture the scene on canvas. In Kandinsky’s words: ‘The sun dissolves the whole of Moscow into a single spot, which, like a wild tuba, set all of one’s soul vibrating... To paint this hour, I thought, must be for an artist the most impossible, the greatest joy.’ It was sometime later, at a musical performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin, that Kandinsky believed his sunset hour had been realised in art, in all of its emotional intensity.
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