Choosing a famous artist’s “masterwork” can be a daunting task. To mark a centenary celebration of the Russian abstract painter Vassily Kandinsky, one group of curators has cast their vote. They chose his 1913 canvas “Harmony of Silence: Painting with White Border” as, perhaps, his superlative work of art.
Kandinsky has become a hot topic again.
This winter marks the 100th year since he published his influential book, On the Spiritual in Art, considered a central document for modern art and the rise of abstract painting.
Over the summer, the “white border” painting has been a centerpiece of a cooperative exhibit by curators at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Guggenheim (the main repository of Kandinsky’s works in the U.S.) owns the piece, while the Phillips featured it in an elaborate summer exhibit.
For many, the “white border” painting stands for Kandinsky’s final transition from painting objects to painting pure abstractions, in which color and line could do and say everything. In Kandinsky lore, he had his revelation about the superiority of abstraction on one particular day: he saw one of his colorful landscapes on its side, and noticed that it looked better sideways (thus, turning objects into abstractions).
However, it is believed that the “white border” painting marked his significant shift in practice to pure abstraction.
As an intellectual, Kandinsky began first with theory. He was an adherent of Theosophy, a metaphysical philosophy that described a spiritual universe in which distinct human emotions, meanings, and dispositions were revealed in specific colors and shapes. He explained this in On the Spiritual in Art, which is a defense of abstract art and a call for artists to play a somewhat messianic role of guiding humanity with that “truth.” Before this, Kandinsky had been a professor of law in Russia. His self-assurance as a teacher had simply been transferred to his new calling in art, which he did not take up until he was 30.
Kandinsky moved to Munich in 1896 to be an artist. It was during his wide travels over the next many years that the “white border” painting emerged. He had returned to Moscow in 1912 to “sow the seeds of freedom among the artists.” While there, he was impressed anew by Russian folk traditions. On return to Munich, he tried to incorporate two images in particular into a new painting: the three-horse sleigh, or “troika,” and the religious image of St. George the dragon slayer.
This project, however, produced a bit of turmoil. He did several pencil sketches and an oil sketch to try to resolve his ideas for a perfect abstract painting, but he was stuck for five months. Then, “It suddenly dawned on me what was missing—the white edge.” He put in the swishy white border and named the painting after it.
The visual effect of every Kandinsky painting stands on its own merit. Nearly all of his paintings, however—especially his earliest ones called “Compositions”—have stories behind them. In the “white border” painting, Kandinsky points out that the long white line at the center of the painting is St. George’s sword. The curling objects in the upper left are the sleigh. He explains that the border color “white” stands for “harmony of silence … pregnant with possibilities,” and adds that some shapes in the composition are “melancholy” and some colors show an “inner boiling.” Kandinsky himself says he was guided by an “inner sensation” and “inner voice” to complete the 1913 canvas.
This is all very subjective, of course, and has prompted not a few critics to put the overly mystical Kandinsky at arm’s length. Still, we turn to artists such as this Russian wunderkind when the question of inner subjectivity is related to abstract art. The curators for the Phillips exhibit (which ends this weekend) bring the painting down to earth as well: by x-rays, they found that Kandinsky painted over another partly finished painting by his mistress. This was also the start of Kandinsky using borders in more of his compositions.
Despite his prolific output as a painter, Kandinsky’s greatest influence came through his teaching and organizing (he formed several short-lived art movements, such as the Blue Rider), and by his theoretical writings, typified by On the Spiritual in Art (published in late 1911, but dated 1912). In that work, he gave abstract painters the world over a rationale for their calling: he said an “inner necessity” drives them to paint feelings in colors and forms.
The other great abstract innovator of his time was the Dutchman Piet Mondrian. Also a Theosophist, Mondrian believed that the straight line was the highest form of “pure” abstraction, contrary to Kandinsky’s more swirling, organic and amorphous shapes (though Kandinsky later became more geometrical). Hence, Mondrian believed that Picasso’s line-oriented Cubism was more “abstract” than Kandinsky’s style.
As can be seen, the precise origins of abstract art in the early 1900s continue to be debated. The approaching Kandinsky centenary will stir that pot once again. Either way, it is a good season for anyone to look through the art books or Web sites to pick their candidate as the true Kandinsky “masterwork.” The choice is surely subjective.
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