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text.
Every work of art is the child of its age
Read Oscar Wilde's famous attack on this proposal in
"The Decay of Lying."
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the Greek methods in sculpture
Kandinsky is referring to (and here attacking as soulless)
realistic art that fits the mimetic theory of art. Mimesis
(Greek for "imitation") is a representation based on visual
or some other likeness. Mimetic theory holds that all art,
even music and literature, imitates reality. Mimetic theory
was the dominant theory of Western aesthetics from
antiquity until roughly the 19th century, when it was
challenged by expression theory.
For more on mimetic theory, click
here.
For examples of Greek sculpture, click
here.
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The Primitives
|
The Empress Theodora and Her Attendants,
apse mosaic,
church of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 547 A.D.
This image was chosen by M. Sadler to illustrate
primitivism in his edition of Kandinsky. |
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Corot's twilight landscapes
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Schumann is Robert
Schumann (1810-1856), the composer.
For more information, click
here.
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Tolstoi is Count
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), the Russian
author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and many
other novels and short stories. For a selection of his
writings, click
here.
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Weber
is the German composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826). Der
Freischutz ("the free guardian") is an opera based on
ghost stories. Musically, it draws on German folk songs. It was widely
popular in Germany and helped support the movement toward German
nationalism. For more information, click
here.
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Sienkiewicz
is the Polish novelist Henry Sienkiewicz (1846-1916). He emigrated to to the United States in 1876.
Best known for the novel Quo Vadis?, he was very popular and was
widely translated. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.
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Moses descends from the mountain
1: When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him, "Up, make us
gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."
2: And Aaron said to them, "Take off the rings of gold which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me."
3: So all the people took off the rings of gold which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.
4: And he received the gold at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made a molten calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought
you up out of the land of Egypt!"
5: When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD."
6: And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
7: And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves;
8: they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it,
and said, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'"
9: And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people;
10: now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great nation."
11: But Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of
Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
12: Why should the Egyptians say, `With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn
from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
13: Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, `I will multiply your descendants as the
stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.'"
14: And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.
15: And Moses turned, and went down from the mountain with the two tables of the testimony in his hands, tables that were written on both sides; on the one side
and on the other were they written.
16: And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
17: When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, "There is a noise of war in the camp."
18: But he said, "It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear."
19: And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tables out of his hands and broke them at
the foot of the mountain.
(The Holy Bible, Book of Exodus, Chapter 32, Revised Standard
translation)
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To such nations belong
the Indians As
the next sentence makes clear, Kandinsky means inhabitants of India, not
Native Americans. He apparently learned about the teachings of Sufism (a
mystical branch of Islam) from his very close friend, the Russian
composer Thomas von
Hartmann (or de Hartmann). de Hartmann contributed an article, ‘On
Anarchy in Music,’ to Kandinky's publication Der Blaue Reiter
(The Blue Rider). In 1916, de Hartmann gave up most of his worldly goods
to become a follower of the mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Where
most Islamic sects are suspicious of music, Sufis regard music and dance
as prime vehicles for manipulating the "inner" person into a
spiritual trance state. To learn
more about Sufism, click
here.
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Mme. Blavatsky is Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891)
usually known as Madame Blavatsky, one of the co-founders
of the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875.
Her followers regard her as one of history's most powerful
psychics. (click here or
here)
Her opponents regard her as a complete fraud. (click
here)
Those without a strong opinion will recognize her as one of
the founders of the New Age movement. Kandinsky
began to study the teachings of Theosophy in 1904, when he purchased Rudolf
Steiner's Theosophie. In 1907-8, while living in Berlin,
Kandinsky attended Steiner's public lectures on the subject. Steiner
illustrated his lectures with chalk drawings on a blackboard, and these
drawings may have influenced Kandinsky.
|
Steiner, Speech and Drama, 1924 |
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Nietzsche is
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German
philosopher. As a critic of traditional ethics as well and of all
doctrines postulating a spiritual life beyond this earthly one,
Nietzsche would seem to Kandinsky to be attacking morality
itself.
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Maeterlinck is Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949, Belgian author and
winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Literature. His official Nobel Prize biography remarks that "Lack
of action, fatalism, mysticism, and the constant presence of death characterize the works of Maeterlinck's early
period." La Princesse Maleine is the title character in
Maeterlinck's first great success, a dramatic fantasy
published in 1889.
To learn more, click
here.
To read one of his short stories, click
here.
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Kubin
|
The Road to
Hell, 1900
Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), Austrian.
He was a friend of Paul Klee and Franz Marc
and member of the New Association of Young
Artists and of the Blue Rider. His work is often
compared to that of Edvard Munch. |
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SERRES CHAUDES (1889) is a
collection of poems by Maurice Maeterlinck (see above). Translated, the
title is Ardent Talons.
Here is the
title poem:
O hothouse in the midst of the woods!
With your doors for ever closed!
And all the things under your dome!
With their counterparts in my soul!
The thoughts of a hungry princess;
The weariness of a sailor in the desert;
A brass band playing under the windows of incurables.
Seek the warmest corners!
Such, a woman fainting on a harvest day.
Postillions are in the courtyard of the hospital;
While in the distance passes an attendant, once an elk-stalker,
Look closely, by moonlight! Oh! How out of place is everything
here!
Such, a mad woman before the justices;
A man-of-war under full sail on a canal;
Night-birds perching on lilies;
A noontide death-knell (there, under those bell-glasses!);
A station for the sick in the open fields;
The smell of ether during a day of sunshine.
Ah, God! Ah, God! when shall we have
The rain and the snow and the wind in the hothouses!
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Poe is American poet and author
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 -49). Famous for such stories as "The Pit and
the Pendulum" (1842) and the poem "The Raven" (1845,)
here is one of his shorter poems:
A DREAM
(1827)
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed--
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream-- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar--
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?
For more information about Poe, click
here.
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Debussy is French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918).
For more information, click
here.
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Much theory and practice
Kandinsky made these notes about color
theory in 1913.
For more information, click
here.
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Scriabin is Alexander N. Scriabin (1872 - 1915), the Russian
composer. Like Kandinsky, he embraced Theosophy. Like Kandinsky, he promoted synesthesia of visual and auditory sensations. In other
words, he promoted the idea that a range of sounds could be translated into color patterns, and vice versa.
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As Kandinsky notes,
Scriabin made a chart matching pitches with colors.
Scriabin held that each mode corresponded to a particular shade of colour, and each
modulation to a nuance of this shade. Changes from the major into the minor could
therefore be underlined by strong contrasts, on a visual as well as a chromatic level.
This was one of the most important aspects of Scriabin's research into new areas of
expression. His imagination had been stimulated by theosophical reading, and he
dreamed of lighting up the whole of the concert hall to fit the music which was being
played at the time. But in practice the performances of Prometheus which took place
at the Carnegie Hall, New York, and the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, did not live up to his
ambitions. The projection depended entirely on a small screen which was placed
behind the orchestra, and they made very little impression on the audience.
-- Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art 1968, pages 157-8
Kandinsky was probably a synesthete,
that is, a person with “coloured hearing." Such a person
experiences colors when listening to a particular sound. There is debate
about the number of synesthetes in the adult population, with high
estimates of 20% and low estimates of only 1 in 25.000 people. There is
also debate about whether Scriabin was a true synesthete or merely
someone interested in synesthesia.
Different synesthetes experience the condition in different ways, which
may be why Scriabin and composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov disagreed on
their assignments of colors to specific musical pitches (Oxford Companion to Music,
1938)
| Pitch
C
C#
D
D#
E
F
F#
G
G#
A
A#
B |
Scriabin
Red
Violet
Bright yellow
Steel gray
Bluish white
Red
Bright Blue
Orange-Rose
Purple-Violet
Green
Steel Gray
Bluish white |
Rimsky-Korsakov
White
Dusky
Yellow
Bluish Gray
Sapphire Blue
Green
Grayish Green
Brownish Gold
Grayish Violet
Rosy
-- No response --
Dark Blue |
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Mallarme is the French
symbolist poet, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98.) For more information, click
here.
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Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951)
is the Viennese composer who emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1934,
becoming an American citizen in 1941. He is most famous for devising the
12-note serial method of musical composition. For more information, click
here.
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Rosetti ... Burne-Jones, with their followers
|
La Ghirlandata,
Dante Gabriel
Rosetti
(1828-1882)
|
|
The Briar Wood
Edward
Burne-Jones (1850-1900) Kandinsky
says that the highly detailed paintings of
Rossetti, Burne-Jones and the other Pre-Raphaelites
(see below) attempt to present the "inner" by way of the
"outer."
|
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The pre-Raphaelites
Founded in 1848 by the English
painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt,
the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" was originally a secret
society that rejected the artistic ideals that governed art since the
Renaissance. Once the "secret" was out, the Pre-Raphaelites
were generally attacked for both their artistic style and their choice
of subject matter. (Charles Dickens was a critic of their work.) One of
their few defenders was art critic John Ruskin. Their name comes from
their decision to explore artistic methods that dominated Western art
prior to the time of Raphael (see below). Their paintings are
characterized by a creed of truth to nature, realized through slavish
attention to realistic detail and painted from models and other real
objects. They also rejected the dominant rules of composition taught in
the major art academies. Their subject matter was dominated by religious
themes and love. The "Brotherhood" was short-lived and
officially disbanded in 1850, but the painters associated with the
movement had long careers.
For more information, click
here and here.
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Bocklin is Arnold Böcklin (1826-1901)
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Segantini
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Pure artistic composition or the "abstract idea"
|
Kandinsky's move to
PURELY abstract painting was inspired by a single chance event in
1908, which he described in the way:
"It was the hour when dusk draws in. I returned home with my
painting box having finished a study, still dreamy and absorbed in
the work I had completed, and suddenly saw an indescribably
beautiful picture, pervaded by an inner glow. At first, I stopped
short and then quickly approached this mysterious picture, on
which I could discern only forms and colors and whose content was
incomprehensible. At once, I discovered the key to the puzzle: it
was a picture I had painted, standing on its side against a wall.
The next day, I tried to re-create the impression of the picture
from the previous evening by daylight. I only half succeeded,
however; even on its side, I constantly recognized objects and the
fine bloom of dusk was missing. Now I could see clearly that
objects harmed my pictures." --Reminiscences (1913)
Yet it was not until 1910 that
Kandinsky completed his fist purely abstract work, a watercolor,
and It was not until 1911 that he completed a "purely
artistic" oil painting. |
|
Kandinsky, "First Abstract
Watercolor"
1910? 1911? Pencil, watercolor and India ink, 49.6 x 64.8 cm.
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris |
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Raphael's "Holy Family"
|
Click on the image to enlarge it.
Canigiani Holy Family. c.1507. Oil on panel.
Munich, Germany.
Raphael or RAFFAELLO SANZIO (1483-1520) |
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LEITMOTIVEN
The German singular term is LEITMOTIF,
which literally means a "leading motif" or theme. It is the
musical technique of using a clearly defined musical theme to symbolize a person, object,
or idea. Frequently employed in the operas of Wagner, an established
leitmotif is reintroduced with thematic variation at appropriate points
in the narrative. (For a more contemporary example, think of the use of
distinct musical themes for different characters in the Star Wars
films.)
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sky-blue for symbolic figures
|
Unknown, illuminator; Greek-language New Testament,
Getty Museum,
Byzantine, Constantinople, Turkey, 1133
The "mortal" has a faint halo (gold against the gold
background) but the hand of the "spiritual being" emerges from
a blue halo. |
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Cubism
Cubism appeared between about 1908 and 1912,
simultaneously developing through a close collaboration
between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their most
immediate influence was the work of Paul
Cezanne.
Cubism attempted to capture the essence of objects by
simultaneously representing each object from multiple
points of view. The movement itself was not very
widespread, but its spirit of experimentation inspired
other painters to try even more radical approaches to
perspective and representation.
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