In addition, Kandinsky and Münter between them took more than one hundred and eighty photographs of their surroundings.51 This Tunisian material is important for two reasons: it shows that Kandinsky had already engaged with conventional Orientalist themes; and it provided a visual resource for his subsequent abstract-Orientalist works.
The Abstract-Orientalist Paintings
The most literal representation of Tunisia in Kandinsky’s abstract-Orientalist paintings occurs in Arabs I (Cemetery) (Fig. 1) of 1909. It is among his earliest paintings to experiment with abstracted forms in a context other than landscapes. Dominated by bright, warm yellows and contrasting, cool blues, the painting provides direct references to Kandinsky’s trip to Tunisia, and evidence of his reliance on the artistic outputs from that trip. Roger Benjamin has identified two specific photographs which Kandinsky has «amalgamated’ in order to produce this image: Tunisian Village (Fig. 2), which provides the background of the wall with arch and doorways, the steps down, and the twisted, pollarded tree; and Ottoman Cemetery, Tunisia (Fig. 3), which provides the rows of turban graves.52 The four partially-abstracted figures appear to be loosely based on sketches and photographs from the trip. The two seated figures wrapped in burnous cloaks, one at the far left and one at the far right of the canvas, appear in multiple gouache paintings from the trip.
Two other paintings from 1909 show Kandinsky developing his Orientalist theme by reference to Tunisia while introducing increasingly abstract forms. He described this practice as follows:
I dissolved objects to a greater or lesser extent within the same picture, so that they might not all be recognised at once and so that these emotional overtones might thus be experienced gradually by the spectator, one after another.53
Improvisation 6 (Africans) (Fig. 4), shows two turbaned figures in the foreground, in front of a white building with a green dome and a series of abstracted shapes delineated either by black lines or by contrasting blocks of colour. The building resembles the Tombs of the Beys, in Kandinsky’s painting Tunis Street (Tombs of the Beys) (Fig. 5), with its blank white walls and green tiled, domed roof. The Pencil sketch for Improvisation 6 (Africans) (Fig. 6) bears an even closer resemblance (although reversed) to the Tombs of the Beys, showing not only the dome, but also the small turret in the corner, which Kandinsky subsequently omitted from the oil painting. The turbaned figures, meanwhile, recall those from his Pencil sketches of figures in costume and Pencil sketches of male and female figures (Figs. 7 and 8) and photographs including of Courtyard of the Dar El Bey Mosque with traditionally dressed visitors (Fig. 9).
A closely related painting is Orientals (Fig. 10) of 1909. The figure on the left with dark brown skin, small feathered hat (known as a cechia) and loose white trousers that become tight around the lower legs is identifiable from a photograph taken by the artists in Tunisia, namely the right-hand figure in Three dark-skinned men in elegant clothes in front of a café (Fig. 11). The composition suggests people sitting in a cafe, a common theme in Orientalist art and popular photography, and a subject Kandinsky painted in Tunisia, in his work Moorish Café.54
Arabs II and Arabs III (with Pitcher) both from 1911 show Kandinsky conflating his visual references to Tunisia with Persian and possibly Syrian influences in broad stereotypes of Orientalism. Before discussing these paintings individually, it is important to note that by naming the pair Arabs II and Arabs III (with Pitcher), Kandinsky made a deliberate link back to the first of his abstract-Orientalist paintings: Arabs I (Cemetery). Stylistically the three are dramatically different; the titular link suggests that his intention was to link the paintings by theme. The titles prepare the viewer to search out, even in the most dissolved forms, conventional images of «the Arab’, and, by implication, to make the association between Orientalist themes and spirituality. In Arabs II55, the composition is centred around a group of galloping blue horses ridden by the abstracted forms of men in flowing white burnouses. Of the figures in the lower right corner, the red ones are barely discernible other than by the turbans on the backs of their heads, while the small figure pointing to the riders clearly has dark skin and a red cechia hat reminiscent of the left-hand figure in Orientals.
In Arabs III (with Pitcher) (Fig. 12), only the title allows the identification of the almost entirely dissolved shapes in the upper left and right of the painting as riders on galloping or rearing horses ridden by men in white burnouses and wearing turbans. The reclining woman and the pitcher are, by contrast, easily identifiable. The reclining woman with her exotic veil and chin in her hand does not appear in sketches or photographs from the trip to Tunisia. It seems most likely that she was introduced as a visual cue to the Orientalist theme of the painting, particularly given that the «Oriental’ horsemen are almost entirely dissolved into abstract shapes. The presence of a reclining woman in Orientalist art is one with which Kandinsky and his viewers would have been familiar from innumerable Odalisques painted since the eighteenth century, all erotic fantasies based on assumptions around the availability of sexual encounters in «the Orient’.56
Ambivalence and Postcolonial Theory
Before proceeding further with an analysis of these paintings, it is necessary to address the treatment of postcolonial theory and its related terminology used in this study. The decades-long debate around «Orientalism’ has been highly charged. The term itself is burdened with a multiplicity of meanings, and will be largely avoided in this paper in favour of the adjective «Orientalist’ (in relation to art or themes) which is used here to reference an affinity with a genre of painting produced mainly in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries featuring largely imaginary scenes of people and places outside of Europe, often in the Middle East and Northern Africa. The term «Orientalism’ will be used sparingly to reference the postcolonial debate around the meaning of «the West’s’ engagement with «the Orient’. Other than the brief outline below, this paper does not purport to reproduce a history of the debate, but rather extends some of its most important ideas to an analysis of Kandinsky’s abstract-Orientalist paintings.
Postcolonial interpretations of Orientalism began with the publication in 1978 of Edward Said’s book Orientalism. Said criticised the Orientalism practiced by «the West’ on «the Orient’ and analysed it in terms of Foucauldian discourse and the relationship between truth and power. For Said, the study of «the Orient’ is not and never was a neutral academic exercise in pursuit of truth.57 On the contrary, he argued that Orientalism is a manifestation of the power relationship that underlies the broader «Western’ imperial project, and as such it says more about the moral and political concerns of «the West’ than it does about any «Oriental’ reality.58 The proliferation of inverted commas in the preceding sentences reflects the sensitivity which surrounds these terms in the wake of the debate.59 For the purpose of this study, inverted commas will be used for these essentialised terms to represent the way in which they were used by Kandinsky (and others) in the period.
While Said’s work did not engage significantly with painting, his arguments were systematically applied to nineteenth century French Orientalist painting by Linda Nochlin in her article, «The Imaginary Orient’.
See the discussion on authorship of the photographs in Roger Benjamin with Cristina Ashjian,
Benjamin with Ashjian, pp. 93—94.
Wassily Kandinsky, «Cologne Lecture’, in
See discussion in Benjamin with Ashjian, pp. 30—31.
Unfortunately, this painting is owned by a private collection and the author was unable to obtain permission to reproduce this image. A reproduction of the image can be found in the artist’s catalogue raisonné. Roethel and Benjamin, p. 360.
Christine Peltre, «Et les Femmes?», in
See Foucault’s statement that «truth is a thing of this world. […] Each society has its regime of truth, its «general politics» of truth.» Michel Foucault, «Truth and Power’ in Paul Rabinow, ed.,
Said, pp. 11—12.
Not the least of which was Said’s use of the term «the West’ in his criticism of how «the West’ essentialises «the Orient’, which has itself drawn criticism for essentialising «the West’. See for example, John M. MacKenzie,
