Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction Tate Modern, London. 22 June-1 October 2006 (ED) http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2006/Jan-Jun06/kandinsky.htm There are many ways of approaching Wassily Kandinsky's work: enjoyment of his vibrant colour use, appreciation of the often intricate designs and forms on his painted surfaces or the realisation that his images aim at expressing a wider spirituality with the artist seeking to mark his place within a greater cosmological frame. The last of these approaches is daunting enough for any visitor to this exhibition to grasp, but whichever approach the visitor takes there should also be an acknowledgement that Kandinsky is one of the greatest composers of music in a visual medium. That Kandinsky can be thought of as a composer without having written a single musical note is something of a paradox, yet it is not one that Kandinsky himself might have overly worried about and, I suggest, neither should we. He viewed music as “the ultimate teacher” in all the arts. The line of composers who have drawn their inspiration from the visual arts is a long one, as is also the case vice versa. Kandinsky though remains a special case, being one of the few artists to think of colour and geometric form in musical terminology, which he eloquently expressed in a series of seminal texts. Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky's decision to paint was largely formed in 1896 following two important encounters: seeing one of Monet's "Haystack" paintings, which made him realise the importance of colour within form, and hearing Wagner's "Lohengrin". His ‘Reminiscences’ (1913) record that: "The violins, the deep tone of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw before me all my colours in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me." Works such as "Song - 'Chant de la Volga'" (1906) or one of his Munich-based works, a painting of the famous Ludwigskirche (1908) bear reference to his growing interest in the musicality of painting through the use and distribution of colour-as-notes, often in brilliant jewel-like sequences, to suggest differing 'voices' at work - possessing warmth, coolness or an inherent dynamic range when seen against one another.
Murnau - Mountain Landscape with Church (1910) These works reflect in part his Russian roots. A noticeable shift occurred with the many scenes he painted from 1909 of the Bavarian town Murnau, a favourite destination with his painter wife Gabriele Münter. He remains firmly allied to representing the concrete and recognisable, but his painting technique developed to express the wider ideas that concerned him. Colour, though always integral to form, was becoming representative of a greater yearning of the aspirations of man. Pictorial elements such as the vaulting rider on horseback (representing yearning) recur throughout his oeuvre of this period. Many of the works we have from 1910-1911 are studies for larger works that did not survive the allied bombing of the world wars, yet these studies are often remarkably complete in terms of both colour and composition, beginning to indicate a personal belief and sense of place within a wider spiritual cosmos that carries some potency about it. Few of his large-scale canvases express this as clearly as "The Last Judgement" (1910). That at around this time he also produced the Tate Gallery's "Cossacks", which he recorded proudly as "the first modern abstract painting in a London collection" and the image of a horse entitled "Lyrically", depicting the rhythm and flow of movement, shows the holding of several disparate concerns in close proximity: the fruit of a man with many layers to his being.