S. (1950): Attente de Dieu. La Colombe, Paris.
Источники цитирования в изданиях на русском языке
Кандинский, В. В. (2008): Избранные труды по теории искусства: В 2-х т. / Под ред. Н. Б. Автономовой, Д. В. Сарабьянова, В. С. Турчина. М.: Гилея.
Кожев, А. В. Конкретная (объективная) живопись Кандинского. Человек. 1997, №6.
Флоренский, П. А. (1990): Столп и утверждение истины. М.: Правда.
Флоренский, П. А. (1993): Храмовое действо как синтез искусств. Иконостас. Избранные труды по искусству. Спб.: Мифрил.
EMILY CHRISTENSEN37
«AMBIVALENT» IMAGES: WASSILY KANDINSKY’S ABSTRACT-ORIENTALIST PAINTINGS38
Abstract
In the years 1909—1911, Wassily Kandinsky sought to change art – but not simply for the sake of it. He wanted to create art capable of generating a spiritual epiphany in his viewers. To achieve this he strove for both a suitable formal element (abstraction of forms) and spiritual content. It was essential to Kandinsky that the paintings be recognised by his viewers as spiritual. Orientalist subject matter offered him this opportunity. This paper proposes that in a group of five paintings completed during this important period of transition, Kandinsky turned for inspiration to his personal experience of «the Orient’: photographs and sketches from his trip to Tunisia in 1904—1905 and two exhibitions in Munich in 1909 and 1910. Kandinsky quickly discovered that it was not only the spiritual associations that helped him achieve his objective; the visual material from his trip to Tunisia presented an approach to the dissolution of form. Bodies were veiled and hooded; architecture appeared reduced to flat planes and geometrical shapes. Content and form combined to propel him towards abstraction in a manner not available with any other thematic subject. Postcolonial studies of Orientalist art suggest that it typically involved the implicit or explicit support of an imperial agenda: the domination of «the Orient’ by «the West’. This interpretation oversimplifies what Kandinsky did with his abstract-Orientalist paintings. Kandinsky’s paintings engaged with Orientalist themes, but they were not conventional Orientalist works. Analysis reveals that he rejected as many dominant power structures as he accepted. This complex interplay of acceptance and rejection, or what Homi Bhabha expressed in terms of conflicting desire and derision led to the creation of quintessentially «ambivalent’ images.
Introduction
Starting in 1909, Wassily Kandinsky transformed art: he formulated the concept of abstract art and then experimented until he was able to paint it. Abstraction was arguably the most influential innovation in art of the twentieth century, and Kandinsky is seen as one of its founders.39 For Kandinsky, however, abstraction of form was not an end in itself: in his book On the Spiritual in Art he explained that «art is […] a power that has a purpose and must serve the development and refinement of the human soul.»40 He believed this could be achieved through abstraction, but only if it conveyed spiritual significance. This study proposes an entirely new understanding of Kandinsky’s art in these critical years: his formal and thematic dependence on «Oriental» themes.
This study will examine a group of five paintings to reveal how content and form combined in these works in a manner uniquely suited to propel Kandinsky towards a new type of art. These paintings, which I will refer to as «abstract-Orientalist» paintings, have never previously been examined as a distinct group through the lens of postcolonialism. There are more paintings from this period with Orientalist references, but unfortunately space dictates a narrow focus in the present article.41 Kandinsky assigned these paintings titles that include the words «African», «Arabs» and «Oriental».42 Today we understand the three terms above to mean different things with distinct geographic, political and historical connotations; for Kandinsky, however, and for his contemporaries, these terms were interchangeable and related not to specific geographies, but rather to a culturally constructed idea.43 Kandinsky’s manipulation of this idea in his early abstract art forms the subject of this study.
Kandinsky’s artistic objectives during these years centred around the desire to produce «spiritual» art. His book On the Spiritual in Art, written in 1909 but not published until 1911, was his major intellectual contribution in the period under examination here.44 In his book, he articulated the view that art is ’spiritual bread for the spiritual awakening now beginning’ and believed it could lead viewers, and ultimately society as a whole, to a «spiritual turning point».45 The intellectual landscape that Kandinsky inhabited was in the throes of responding to Nietzsche’s proposition, «God is dead!», which Kandinsky cited in his book.46 Raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition, Kandinsky was never an atheist, but like other cosmopolitan intellectuals across Russia and Europe, he was looking for a new solution to what J.J. Clarke has described as:
a pervasive cultural disquietude, an uneasy awareness of fault lines running deep into the strata of European cultural life, down through levels of politics, religion, and philosophy, giving rise to a sense of some fundamental breakdown at the heart of the West’s intellectual, spiritual and moral being.47
Kandinsky’s drive to produce «spiritual art needs to be understood in this context. And, like many of his predecessors and contemporaries, Kandinsky believed that «the West» that he inhabited was materialistic and spiritually corrupt. Like them, he turned to «the Orient’ to fill the spiritual void.48
Although Russian, Kandinsky lived in Germany during the period under examination here and had done since 1896. This paper does not seek to deny his Russianness, nor his feelings about Moscow which he described on several occasions in spiritual terms. Nevertheless, Kandinsky was raised in a multilingual, metropolitan household, grew up in rapidly modernising Russian cities, and spent his formative artistic years in Munich, studying the European artistic tradition. This paper proposes that when Kandinsky referred to «the West», he was referring to the modern, increasingly homogenous metropolises across Europe, extending into Russia, and his view of «the Orient» was framed in opposition to this construction of «the West».49
A key element of Kandinsky’s understanding of «the Orient’ was a three-month
The Russian version of the article will be published in the next issue of the article. –
Rose-Carole Washton Long,
Wassily Kandinsky, «On the Spiritual in Art’, in
See, for example, Emily Christensen, «The Tunisian Sources of Wassily Kandinsky’s «Improvisation on Mahogany’»,
Kandinsky assigned titles to his paintings in German until the year 1916, and recorded the titles in his Handlists, the hand-written lists of his paintings. See Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin,
Edward W. Said,
Kandinsky also wrote several smaller articles and edited and contributed to
Kandinsky, «On the Spiritual in Art’, p. 138. «The Spiritual Turning Point’ is the title of Chapter 3 in «On the Spiritual in Art’.
Friedrich Nietzsche,
J.J. Clarke,
See discussion in Clarke, pp. 16—34.
In addition, studies show that while there is some evidence that Russian academics were more willing to challenge the notion that «the Orient’ was a homogenous whole, this was primarily within St Petersburg University; meanwhile the general public perceptions and stereotypes paralleled those in Germany. Vera Tolz,
