| Artist: | Kandinsky, Wassily |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Composition VIII | |
| Date of Work: | 1923 | |
| Nationality: | Russian | |
| Context: | Hard-Edge Geometric Abstraction | |
| Movement: | The German Bauhaus | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: Kandinsky had long ago done away with subject matter, but not with content, which for him is played out in the formal dynamics and expressive possibilities of pure color, shape, line, and space. During his Bauhaus years (1922-1933), we see his style shift from pre-war, painterly free forms to a new post-war style characterized by a geometric hard-edge that up to this point had been alien to his art. What carries over, however, is his interest in an abstraction that is spiritually-driven, though now as a member of the Bauhaus community he too is thinking of ways to apply abstraction to real-world problems of design. Hence, the book that he writes after "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (1912) reflects the Bauhaus interest in design in its very title, "From Point to Line to Plane" (1926). Here he attempts to combine the emotional with the mechanical, the intuitive with the rational, the mystical with the engineered. What particularly fascinates him during the Bauhaus period is the circle: "Why does the circle fascinate me? It is (1) the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally, (2) a precise but inexhaustible variable, (3) simultaneously stable and unstable, (4) simultaneously loud and soft, (5) a single tension that carries countless tenstions within it. The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. . . . Of the three primary forms (triangle, square, circle), it points most clearly to the fourth dimension." He spoke of his "strong feeling for the inner force of the circle and its countless variations: I love the circle today as I formerly loved the horse--perhaps even more, since I find more inner potentialities in the circle which is why it has taken the horse's place." The "Blue Rider" gives way to the mysterious potenialities of the circle in the Bauhaus years. Style: adopts a geometric hard-edge and bounded areas of color, previously missing from his earlier, pre-WWI style of boundless space, intuitive lines, and bleeding colors. But here the circles still "bleed" with a mysterious color aura and the image's inner drama still comes from the pictorial dynamics rather than a subject matter. Though forms may be bounded by a hard-edge, space itself still seems infinite and now even his vocabulary of forms seems boundless and all-inclusive: the organic, squiggly line meets the hard-edge; the free form, biomorphic meets the geometric. And kandinsky is still listening to the "inner sound of color" (synaesthesia). Context: from 1922 until 1933, when the Bauhaus was closed down by Hitler, Kandinsky taught as part of this progressive school's esteemed faculty. Part of the utopian, postwar celebration of a machine aesthetic, the Bauhaus slogan was: "Art and Technology - A New Unity." But the curriculum of the Bauhaus was well-rounded and interdisciplinary: they studied everything from crafts to architecture, sculpture, painting, stage design, typography, music, dance, and eastern philosophies and religions. For the members of the Bauhaus, there was "no essential difference between the artist and craftsman," and technology and spiritual growth were not only compatible, but co-dependent. Teachers were expected to exercise creative flexibility outside their "expertise." Students worked alongside their instructors according to a collaborative group model rather than the traditional academic hierarchy of the "expert" handing down information to the lowly students who dare not question authority. Taking on real-world commissions in design problems, the school became self-sustaining, teaching through creative problem-solving and collaboration. Their art was socially oriented rather than art for art's sake. Kandinsky was a part of this positive, communal approach to the problems of the industrial machine age, offering his own theories on abstraction in his teaching and his book, "From Point to Line to Plane" (1926). Like the Russian Constructivists, who influenced Bauhaus thinking, the faculty of the school wanted to explore possible real-world applications of abstraction. Their utopian machine aesthetic undoubtedly influenced Kandinsky, just as his spiritually-driven abstraction influenced their faith in a transcendent new art for a new modern age. | ||
