Copyright by Lynn Edward Boland 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Lynn Edward Boland certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: A Culture of Dissonance: Wassily Kandinsky, Atonality, and Abstraction Committee: ____________________________________ Linda D. Henderson, Supervisor ____________________________________ Elliott M. Antokoletz ____________________________________ John R. Clarke ____________________________________ Ann M. Reynolds ____________________________________ Richard A. Shiff A Culture of Dissonance: Wassily Kandinsky, Atonality, and Abstraction by Lynn Edward Boland, A.B.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2014 To my wife, Katherine, and our sons, Lute and Atley. A Culture of Dissonance: Wassily Kandinsky, Atonality, and Abstraction by Lynn Edward Boland, Ph.D. Supervisor: Linda D. Henderson Wassily Kandinsky's interest in music as a source for abstraction in painting has often been noted in the scholarship on his art. However, no studies have sufficiently explained how the artist employed musical strategies, especially as he was developing his abstract style in the first decade of the twentieth century. Kandinsky's looked primarily to Arnold Schoenberg's new musical idioms and theories, and he was deeply inspired by highly dissonant music, but his ideas were set within a much broader context that further suggested and encouraged the expressive and transformative power of dissonance. By the late nineteenth century, extended passages of dissonance were common in musical compositions. At the same time, the concept of dissonance as a positive force was suggested in a wide range of late nineteenth-century literature, including the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, occult authors, popular texts on physics and experimental psychology, as well as within music and art theory. Close readings of Kandinsky's theoretical texts and selected works of art provide insights into how he might have understood and employed these concepts in his formation of an abstract style. Kandinsky's paintings Impression III (Concert) of 1911 and Composition VII of 1913 are the primary artistic foci of this study, along with his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art and the anthology Der Blaue Reiter, which he co-edited. v This dissertation seeks to restore the concept of musical dissonance and its application in the visual arts to its historical context for Kandinsky. This facilitates more informed formal analyses of Schoenberg's music and Kandinsky's paintings, which, in turn, suggest strategies of atonal musical composition applied to abstract painting. Additionally, this dissertation establishes an artistic context of visual dissonance that goes beyond Kandinsky, including artistic movements in France and Russia, allowing additional comparisons and a consideration of the larger impact of these ideas. vi Table of Contents List of Figures......................................................................................................................x Chapter 1 Introduction Constructing Dissonance.........................................................................................1 Dissonance in Music................................................................................................8 Literature Overview...............................................................................................15 Introductory Summary: Art, Music, Abstraction and Dissonance.........................22 Chapter 2 Aesthetic Philosophies and an Artistic Background of Dissonance Schopenhauer's Will, Grundbaß, and ideas about Dissonance..............................24 Nietzsche and the Dissonant Dionysian.................................................................28 Dissonance in Late Nineteenth-Century Painting and the Works of Maeterlinck................................................................................................30 Dissonance in Early Twentieth-Century Painting..................................................41 Chapter 3 Kandinsky's Artistic Theories ca. 1911 Background............................................................................................................54 1900–1911..................................................................................................56 1911–1912..................................................................................................58 Über das Geistige in der Kunst..................................................................59 "Innere Notwendigkeit"..............................................................................63 “Die Seele in Vibration” ...........................................................................68 "Die Grundbaß in der Malerei"..................................................................73 Synaesthesia and Color-Music................................................................77 Kandinsky's Musicology in Concerning the Spiritual in Art .............................83 Chapter 4 The Science of Dissonance: Acoustics, Ether Physics, and Experimental Psychology Defining Dissonance Scientifically........................................................................90 Hermann von Helmholtz's Theories of Consonance and Dissonance...................91 Helmholtz's Acoustical Studies.................................................................91 Helmholtz on Perception...........................................................................98 The Luminiferous Ether...........................................................................103 The Electron Theory of Matter................................................................107 vii Helmholtz on Perception and Relationships between Color and Sound..110 Studies of Perception in Early Experimental Psychology...................................112 Wilhelm Wundt and the Perception of Dissonance.................................112 Theodor Lipps's "Psychic-excitations"....................................................118 Max Meyer's Argument for Tonal Expansion and a Comparison of Theories........................................................................................124 Kandinsky's Vibrational Theories Reconsidered.................................................127 Chapter 5 The Spirit of Dissonance: Theosophy, the Occult, and Occult-Oriented Science Overview: Science and Occultism......................................................................131 Nineteenth-Century Background: Vibratory Models of Harmony......................134 "Mesmeric Revelations"..........................................................................134 Reichenbach's Od...................................................................................136 Fechner's Psychophysics..........................................................................139 Occult-Oriented Science and Spiritual Health at the Turn of the Century..........143 Zöllner's Schopenhauerian Notions of Harmony.....................................144 Crookes's Corresponding Vibrations.......................................................146 Flammarion's Vibrations Inconnues........................................................150 Rochas's "Oreilles Intelligentes" and "Dissonance . de Plus Grande Nombres".....................................................................................151 Gessmann's Disharonische Töne.............................................................159 Baraduc's "Vibrations Désharmonique"..................................................160 Vibrational Models and Dissonance in Theosophical Literature.........................165 "The Spiritual Revolution"......................................................................166 Specialized Sense-Organs and Astral Syncopation.................................168 Infinite Melodies and Astral Sight...........................................................171 Thought-Forms and Beyond....................................................................173 Leadbeater's Octaves of Astral Color......................................................178 Kandinsky, vis-a-vs the Scientific and Occult in Concerning the Spiritual........182 Chapter 6 Kandinsky's Impression III (Konzert) and Kandinsky's and Schoenberg's Initial Encounter..................................................................................................................190 The Painting.........................................................................................................191 Kandinsky and Schoenberg: Initial Exchanges....................................................196 Impression III (Concert) Reconsidered................................................................206 Interlude: The Background of Scholarship on Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Dissonance in Painting.............................................................................209 Concluding Thoughts on Kandinsky's Initial Studies in Dissonance and Impression III (Concert) .........................................................................220 viii Chapter 7 Dissonance in Der Blaue Reiter Overview of the Publication................................................................................222 Schoenberg's "The Relationship to the Text" ......................................................224 Musical Scores in Der Blaue Reiter.....................................................................226