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Der Blaue Reiter. Wassily Kandinsky Franz Marc. Der Blaue Reiter. In1909 a group of Munich-based artists announced their common aim of “organising art exhibitions in Germany and abroad, and of reinforcing their effect by lectures, publications and similar means.”
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Der Blaue Reiter Wassily Kandinsky Franz Marc
Der Blaue Reiter • In1909 a group of Munich-based artists announced their common aim of “organising art exhibitions in Germany and abroad, and of reinforcing their effect by lectures, publications and similar means.” • They were known as Die Neue Kunstlervereinigung München (New Artists’ Alliance, Munich) or NKVM. Founding members included Alexij von Jawlensky, Alexander Kanoldt, Adolf Erbsloh, Marianne Werefkin, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter. • The NKVM hosted three major shows. The first featured the founding members, the second included French and Russian artists (including Picasso, Braque, Derain, Vlaminck, and two future Blaue Reiter artists Macke and Marc). • There came a rift in the NKVM when in their third show they rejected an art work by Kandinsky because of the jury deemed it too large for the show. Many members argued that it should be admitted, but in the end it was not. • Kandinsky left the NKVM and in 1911 they held their first exhibition (members included Kandinsky, Marc, and Munter). Interestingly, Die Brucke artists had left the New Artists Session in Berlin around the same time.
Der Blaue Reiter - What’s with the name? • Some argue that the name was taken from a Kandinsky work done in 1905 titled Blue Horseman. The horse rider had been inspired by Russian folk tales. • On the first Blaue Reiter Almanac is an image of St. George atop a horse slaying a dragon in the forground. It is thought that St. George was used as a symbol of the artists spiritual role of rescuing innocence from the ravages of materialism. • The horse rider was an allusion to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Der Blaue Reiter artists, especially under the influence of Theosophy, saw an apocalypse as the only way that a new, non-materialistic epoch will be reached. This was in reaction to the decadent bourgeois culture that was corrupted because of industrial change and exploitation. • Lastly, the horse was seen to be a potent symbol of elemental forces by both Kandinsky and Marc.
Der Blaue Reiter and philosophical influences. Theosophy - Drawing from philosophical and religious backgrounds (Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism), it was established by the Russian Madame Blavatsky in 1875. They believed in the idea of universal brotherhood; the idea that colour and form can enrich the soul; that people have colour auras (‘thought forms’) that change colour according to people’s mood; that an apocalypse will bring about a final spiritual world; and that the 21st century will be a time of paradise on earth. Psychology - Synaesthesia: a belief that some people have the ability to see colours when they hear a particular sound/music. Kandinsky wrote, “Various attempts to exploit this power of colour and apply it to different nervous disorders…red light has an enlivening and stimulating affect.” Freud: his theories on automatic drawing, or to create from the unconscious rather than conscious part of the mind as a way of tapping into a universal understanding.
Der Blaue Reiter and philosophical influences. Darwinism - Der Blaue Reiter artists like Kandinsky and Marc used animals as symbols in their works at they saw them as existing in balance with nature…this aligned well with their interest in spirituality. Kandinsky used the horse as a symbol of power and passion whereas Marc used animals to represent truth, purity, and beauty. The Apocalypse - For Kandinsky, this was going to bring about a necessary change and bring forth a new, non-material world. Many had seen science as something that was advancing too quickly and bringing too many changes and creating a corrupt and unbalanced world. Kandinsky wrote, “The collapse of the atom was equated…with the collapse of the whole world.” Many artists and liberal thinkers believed that the world was soon to collapse on itself. Such people included Kandinsky, Neitzsche, and Wagner. Der Blaue Reiter saw their task as prophesising this apocalypse.
In 1896 (30) he gave up his successful careeer as a lawyer (Phd) and economist to become a painter. He moved to Munich to study art. One of few expressionists in Germany whose work was based on a comprehensive and well founded theory. In 1912 he wrote one of Art’s most influential texts ‘On the Spiritual in Art’. His style changed and grew from Art Nouveau (Jugendstil), Russian symbolist, Fauvism, Post-Impressionism and eventually abstraction. By 1909 his works, while still containing ciphers (abbreviated symbols of natural objects), his use of colour becomes much more expressive and non-representational. Works take on unconventional titles and start with Impression, Improvisation, or Composition. 1911 an important year, it is thought that this was the year that he painted his first true abstract oil painting. 1913 space or movement is created by weight, the advancing or receding, of colour. 1914 is forced to leave Germany, though he returns in 1922 to teach at the Bauhaus. Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944)
Kandinsky’s early work (1896-1908) A Divisionist technique, using unmixed colours in juxtaposition (similar to Pointalism, some scholars will refer to this application of paint as Tesserae). Not strictly systematic. His themes are mingled with his rural Russian background and its fairy tales. The style alludes to Russian folk art with the use of bright colours against a dark background. Art Nouveau influence can be seen. Landscapes based more on psychological symbolism than on-site studies of nature. Short vivid brushstrokes give a vibrant, luminous quality.
Claude Monet Haystacks Kandinsky was deeply impressed with Monet’s haystacks. In was around 1905 that he went to a French Impressionist exhibition in Moscow. Kandinsky wrote: “The catalogue told me that it was a haystack: I couldn’t tell it from looking. Not being able to to tell it upset me. I also considered that the artist had no right to paint so indistinctly…I had the dull sensation that the subject was missing. And was amazed and confused to realize that the picture did not merely fascin ate but impressed itself indelibly on my memory.”
Wassily Kandinsky - Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula. 1908. Oil on cardboard. 68.8 x 49 cm.
Wasily Kandinsky, Blue Mountain, 1908–09. Oil on canvas, 41x38 inches.
Kandinsky work -1908-1909. Silhouetted flatness of form. Influence of Fauves as during this period Kandinsky had travelled to Paris and met Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck as well as Picasso and Braque. He was impressed by the Fauves arbitrary use of colour and the Expression that they captured in their work. Often sharp contrast of light and dark and warm and cold. Alternations between different coloured dabs and blobs of paint give the paintings a restless quality.
Kandinsky’s Metamorphosis - 1909-1911 In Germany, Kandinsky developed his idea of the correspondence between a work of Art and the viewer, and called it “Klang” (sound or resonance). In his book Spirituality in Art he wrote: “Colour is the power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with the strings. The Artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations of the soul.”
Metamorphosis: 1909-1911. In this period of artistic development, he began to divide his paintings into 3 categories: Impressions: which still show some representational elements. Improvisations: which convey spontaneous emotion reactions. Compositions: which are ultimate works of art, created only after a long period of preparations and preliminaries.
Mountain, 1909 Blue Mountain, 1908–09 Looking at these two works what stylistic features have changed? List three similarities and three differences.
Wassily Kandinsky. Picture with an Archer. 1909. Oil on canvas, 175 x 144 cm .
Church of St. Ursula, 1908 Picture with an Archer. 1909 Looking at these two works what stylistic features have changed? List three similarities and three differences.
Wassily Kandinsky -Improvisation 6 (African), 1909. Oil on canvas. 109 x99 cm.
Wassily Kandinsky, Two Riders and Reclining Figure, 1909-10.
Improvisation 71910, Oil on canvas, 131 x 97 cm.
Kandinsky’s work -1909-1910. Landscape is still the basis of the subject matter though elements are only hinted at –as if they are a mere pretext for a colourful play of glowing contrasts. Shapes are reduced. Loose thick areas of colour are spread broadly and generously. Non-Naturalistic.
Wassily Kandinsky Picasso Matisse Cubism had demonstrated a means to be liberated from traditional representation of form. Had seen that colour didn’t have to signify objects. ….has its own spiritual significance.
Synaesthesia (K.) Had a neurological disorder known as synaesthesia. Defined as sensory stimulation that is perceived by a separate sense. Kandinsky exhibited the most common form known as ‘coloured hearing’. This means that he could hear music when he saw colours; each colour has its musical equivalent. Each indiv. Would hear different musical tones on seeing different colours. Example: When he saw the colour yellow in which he reported hearing the sound of a shrill trumpet. He wrote of this in his theoretical texts. He stated that when you see a bright colour you do not associate deep bass sound with it, and likewise upon seeing a dark colour a high treble sound.
Kandinsky, "First Abstract Watercolour"1910. Pencil, watercolour and India ink, 49.6 x 64.8 cm.
Breakthrough to the abstract: 1910/11-1913 “The lopsided painting”, scholars are in debate as to whether this is the first true abstract art work. Brings in connections between art and music where he saw music’s free chords and harmonic tones as an analogy for abstract art. Early abstract forms still bound in some way to nature ie. weren’t just shapes and colour for their own sake.
Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911. Oil on canvas, 120x141cm.
The black outlines still suggest the figurative, but there is absolutely no connection between them and the vibrant field of colour which they frame. Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911. Oil on canvas, 120x141cm.
Wassily Kandinsky - Lyrical. 1911. Oil on canvas. 94 x 130 cm.
Cossacks 1910-11 • Is this work devoid of anything representational? • The title of the work suggests that he is remembering the events of the 1905 Russian Revolution in which the Cossacks were involved. • The view is expected to read the painting in three levels: • To see the chaos of colour and lines to represent the chaos of the Revolution • To begin to see the forms created by colours and lines (eg. the hats of the Cossack soldiers, their lances, the castle sitting atop the hill) • To begin to understand the meaning of the work as it was his hope that the viewers would be drawn into a conversation with the painting while they try to decipher is.
On the left, violent motion is expressed through the profusion of sharp, jagged and entangled lines. On the right, all is calm, with sweeping forms and colour harmonies. Cossacks (1910-11) is considered to be the preparatory study work for this art work. The dividing lines are actually two lances held by red-hatted Cossacks. Next to them, a third, white-bearded Cossack leans on his violet sword. They stand before a blue mountain crowned by a castle. In the lower left, two boats are depicted. Above them, two mounted Cossacks are joined in battle, brandishing violet sabers. On the lower right, two lovers recline, while above them two robed figures observe from the hillside. Kandinsky has reduced representation to pictographic signs in order to obtain the flexibility to express a higher, more cosmic vision. Composition IV, 1911, Oil on canvas, 159 x 250 cm
Kandinsky, Composition V (The last judgement), 1911, Oil on Canvas, 200x300cm.
Later in 1911, Kandinsky produced Composition V, a much more abstract work. Several angels blowing trumpets are included in the upper portion of the canvas. The strong black line crossing from right to left can be felt as a representation of the blowing of the trumpets. Above this line, the towers of a walled-in city are visible. Below the line, the thin application of paint produces a luminescence that affects our perception of space in that portion of the canvas. The whiteness conveys a sense of infinity through the lack of volume and perspective. Out of this void, the viewer can sense the rising of the dead.
Kandinsky felt that each colour had an inherent character defined by its relationship to its opposing colour. For instance -plus/minus, warm/cool, active/passive, female/male and believed that these characteristics, on an intuitive level and in certain combinations, could communicate an emotion or idea to the spectator. Kandinsky’s colour principles: Yellow: Warm, Convulsive, irritating. Blue: Tranquil, Severe, Cold. Red: Hot, Passionate, Virile. Green: Static, Neutral, Passive. White: A silence pregnant with sound. Black: Silence of death. Kandinsky’s Colour Theory.
Kandinsky’s Colour Theory. Yellow Orange Green Black White Violet Red Blue
Kandinsky, Improvisation 26 (Oars), 1912, Oil on Canvas, 97x107cm
Kandinsky, Picture with a Black Arch, 1912. Oil on canvas, 188x196 cm.
Made up of 3 areas of shapes pressing against each other. Bottom right corner shape leads to Vermillion at centre, opposite a blue shape that has dark lines with light greens, whites and orange. Black Arch shape gives weight to the image. Binds them together. Black Arch appears as an eruption of energy, violent struggle. Red=1side. Blue the other. Theme of conflict and struggle. Kandinsky, Picture with a Black Arch, 1912. Oil on canvas, 188x196 cm.
Conflict An aim to capture the turmoil of inner life as captured in the conflict of the Music of Mozart or Wagner. -evident in the contrast of the red and Blue in Black Arch. Colour, line and free flowing form to make up a dramatic visual language which expresses the antagonism between matter and spirit. Translates the entire sceptical mood of pre WW1 Europe into an abstract but accessible range of symbols.
Kandinsky, Picture with white border, 1913. Oil on canvas, 140x200cm
Washed out blue figure in middle = fighting figure. White line = lance directed at a dragon in lower left. Kandinsky, Picture with white border, 1913.
Kandinsky saw three centres to this Composition: First) The eye is drawn to the pink and white vortex in the left centre. Second) The multiple lines representing torrential rain carry the focus to the right section, where a darker centre of discordant forms and stronger rain lines adds to the tumult. Third) The eye slides to the lower centre, where a blue form outlined in black cowers below the torrents of rain and crashing waves. In this work, Kandinsky has pushed further beyond representation to the very limits of abstraction.
Composition VII is the pinnacle of Kandinsky's pre-World War One artistic achievement. Its creation involved over thirty preparatory drawings, watercolours and oil studies. Through all of the preparatory works and in the final painting itself, the central motif (an oval form intersected by an irregular rectangle) is maintained. This oval seems almost the eye of a compositional hurricane, surrounded by swirling masses of colour and form. In Composition VII's final form, Kandinsky has obliterated almost all pictorial representation. Art scholars, through Kandinsky's writings and study of the less abstract preparatory works, have determined that Composition VII combines the themes of The Resurrection, The Last Judgment, The Deluge and The Garden of Love in an operatic outburst of pure painting. Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913, Oil on Canvas, 200x300cm.
