SOURCE: "Kandinsky's Vision," in The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian Art: A Study of 'On the Spiritual in Art', edited by John E. Bowlt and Rose-Carol Washton Long, and translated by John Bowlt, Oriental Research Partners, 1980, pp. 43-61.

The publication of Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art in 1912¹ can be considered one of the catalytic forces which helped trigger an increasing number of experiments with abstraction before World War I. Although the idea of painting in an abstract style was not new, after On the Spiritual in Art reached the public, a number of artists such as Kupka, Mondrian, Delaunay, Picabia, Larionov, and Goncharova began to exhibit works which contained few if any remnants of imagistic references in their colorful surfaces. A direct connection between Kandinsky and each of these artists cannot always be substantiated, but by 1912 critics across Europe had begun to view Kandinsky's paintings and essays as an example of one of the most radical trends in contemporary art.

In Russia, soon after a version of On the Spiritual in Art was read to the All-Russian Congress of Artists late in 1911, one critic called Kandinsky "the preacher of the newest art" and concluded that he had renounced "all content" in his search "for new forms of expression—not borrowed from nature."² In his adopted country—Germany—to which he had moved in 1896, Kandinsky was called the "representative of a new idealism."³ He was not only recognized for his paintings and writings, but for his work with Franz Marc in formulating the anthology, the Blaue Reiter,⁴ which brought together examples of folk and primitive art with reproductions of the most recent developments in French, German, and Russian painting. In France, critics such as Guillaume Apollinaire reviewed his paintings,⁵ and painters such as Robert Delaunay corresponded with him.⁶ Kandinsky's reputation also extended into England. Painters such as Edward Wadsworth, writing in 1914 about Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art, proclaimed: "He writes of art. . . in its relation to the universe and the soul of man. He writes . . . as an artist to whom form and colour are as much the vital and integral parts of the cosmic organization as they are his means of expression."⁷

The messianic tone of On the Spiritual in Art appealed to a number of artists across Europe, and Kandinsky's belief that an abstract style of painting had great potential for the forceful expression of cosmic ideas helped to take the concept of abstraction out of the realm of decorative design. Since he equated representationalism with materialistic values, it followed that abstraction offered a way to express more powerfully the transcendental values of a spiritual vision. In On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky attempted to resolve the dilemma of how to effectively communicate a vision of man's spirituality while avoiding both materialistic representation on the one hand and decorative ornament on the other.

To understand the vision that moved Kandinsky to develop a new style of painting, it is necessary to examine the sources of his philosophical and aesthetic beliefs. The roots of Kandinsky's concept of abstraction lie within the international Symbolist movement, which first gained prominence as a literary force in France in the 1880s. The Symbolist emphasis on creating a new aesthetic which would be suggestive of the "higher realities"—the "cosmic order"—rather than descriptive of the mundane, physical world affected all of the arts as it spread from France into Germany and then into Russia. It remained the dominant aesthetic throughout Europe until a few years before World War I. Many of those involved with Symbolism were also involved with mysticism, occultism, and the numerous revivals of esoteric religions such as Rosicrucianism and Theosophy.⁸ Occult ideas often reinforced Symbolist contentions. Both emphasized that the truths of the higher worlds were not easily understandable and could best be communicated by indirect and vague means.

Like many artists associated with the Symbolist movement, particularly those in Russia, Kandinsky viewed the artist as an elite figure who had a responsibility to transmit cosmic ideas to the ordinary individual. His belief in a forthcoming utopia underlay his commitment to an abstract style of painting. Kandinsky interpreted his age as one dominated by a struggle between the forces of good, or "the spiritual," and the forces of evil, or materialism. Even before On the Spiritual in Art was published, he expressed his anxiety about the state of the world in an article which he sent to a Russian periodical: "Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view; for many, many people it is a time of terrible, inescapable vacuum, a time of enormous questions; but for a few people it is a time of presentiment or of precognition of the path to Truth."⁹ Since he felt that abstraction had the least connection with the materialistic strivings of the world, he believed that abstract paintings might help to awaken the individual to the spiritual values necessary to bring about a Utopian epoch.

Kandinsky ended On the Spiritual in Art with the optimistic statement that the type of painting he envisioned would advance "the reconstruction already begun, of the new spiritual realm . . . the epoch of great spirituality." 10 Kandinsky obviously believed that painting could be a powerful instrument for social change. He felt that painting had a specific purpose—to "serve the development and refinement of the human soul."¹¹ He added that "no other power"¹² could replace the power of art in assisting with this goal. Art, he explained, was "one of the most powerful agents of the spiritual life," a "complicated but definite movement forward and upward."¹³ He called the artist a "prophet"¹⁴ and an "invisible Moses."¹⁵ Both Kandinsky and Marc spoke of the role that the artist would play in the "coming spiritual religion."¹⁶ Both believed that a revolution in the arts could directly effect a change in the spiritual climate. But what influenced them to hope for a new age?

A reading of the 1912 German editions of On the Spiritual in Art suggests that Kandinsky's belief in a coming Utopian epoch was influenced in part by Theosophical ideas. In these 1912 editions, Kandinsky described. Theosophy as "one of the most important spiritual movements"¹⁷ of his time and as a strong force in the "spiritual atmosphere, which offered redemption to many despairing hearts enveloped in gloom and darkness."¹⁸ Although Kandinsky never called himself a Theosophist he was sympathetic toward the Theosophical search for universal hidden truths. He included in On the Spiritual in Art the conclusion from one of the books written by the founder of the Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky, which proclaimed: "Earth will be a heaven in the twenty-first century in comparison with what it is at present." 19 In this German edition, Kandinsky also praised Rudolf Steiner,²⁰ the head of the German Theosophical Society, which was based in Munich. Steiner's physical presence during this period, his belief that artistic experiences were the strongest stimulants for the development of an understanding of the spiritual, plus his own artistic activities, undoubtedly contributed to Kandinsky's interest in this Theosophist. Moreover, Kandinsky, who often compared himself and his friends to the early Christians for trying to raise "the weakest to spiritual battle,"²¹ and who frequently referred to his love for the Russian church, must have been attracted by Steiner's interpretation that Christianity incorporated the wisdom of all previous religions and cults and consequently offered the richest source for advancing the destiny of mankind. While Blavatsky emphasized the importance of Hinduism and Buddhism, Steiner used The Revelation to John as the major framework to express his belief in the inevitability of catastrophe before the emergence of a new epoch.

By 1908, several of Kandinsky's friends in Germany had become involved with Steiner. Maria Strakosch-Geisler, one of Kandinsky's earliest students, heard one of Steiner's lecture cycles in Berlin in March, 1908 and was very much impressed.²² A schoolmate of Strakosch-Geisler, Emy Dresler, who exhibited with Kandinsky's Neue Künstlervereinigung in the winter of 1909-10, also had become involved with Steiner in 1908. She worked directly with the German Theosophist, painting stage scenery for several of his plays²³ which were performed in Munich from 1910 to 1913. Alexej Jawlensky and his companion Marianne von Werefkin, two of the Russian-German members of the Neue Künstlervereinigung who lived with Kandinsky in Murnau during the summers of 1909 and 1910, also seem to have had contact with Steiner. Von Werefkin, who was more deeply involved with Theosophical ideas, is reported to have transmitted Steiner's concepts directly to Kandinsky.²⁴ In the next few years, Kandinsky, his mistress Gabriele Münter, and their friends studied the writings of Steiner. Kandinsky and Münter owned a number of books and articles by Steiner, which they annotated.²⁵

At the time when Kandinsky seemed to have become aware of Steiner, the German Theosophist was predicting that a period of regeneration was ahead. He felt that the time had arrived when the secret knowledge of Theosophy could be communicated to a larger audience than the limited circle of the initiated. Steiner's focus on The Apocalypse as the significant document for modern times coincided with an idea many Russians thought of as peculiarly Russian. And his subsequent mention of Russia as a future leader of the world seemed to be a repetition of the centuries-old Russian belief that Russia itself would be the "Third Rome." Steiner had begun to emphasize that Russia would play a crucial role in bringing East and West together to create a universal brotherhood of man. It was this attitude that attracted the Russian Symbolist poet Andrei Belyi to Steiner. He saw Steiner's apocalyptic prophecies as a continuation of his own views and of those of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev. In a letter of 1912 to his friend and fellow poet Alexander Blok, Belyi wrote: "From the autumn of 1911, Steiner had begun to say the most amazing things about Russia, her future, the spirit of the people, and about Vladimir Soloviev. (In Russia he saw a great and singular future.)"²⁶ Belyi explained in the same letter that Steiner's ideas were particularly attractive to a number of his associates. "From 1910, Steiner entered into a special and rare contact with all of us. Some threw themselves at Steiner blindly like Ellis. Others not so blindly followed after him like Voloshina. A third group made a furtive pilgrimage to him [referring here to himself]."²⁷ Kandinsky would not have been unaware of the great interest in Steiner and in Theosophy among his Russian compatriots. Several months after making a trip to Russia in the fall of 1910, he wrote to his friend Franz Marc to say that the anthology they were working on had to include some mention of Theosophy and of the religious tendencies in Russia: "We will include some reports on the Russian religious movement in which all classes participate. For this I have engaged my former colleague Professor Bulgakov (Moscow, political economist, one of the greatest experts of religious life). Theosophy, must be mentioned briefly and powerfully (statistically, if possible). . . . "²⁸

Despite Kandinsky's praise of Steiner and his interest in Theosophy, the Russian edition of On the Spiritual in Art, published in 1914, omits any direct references to either Blavatsky or Steiner. However, the 1914 edition, which was based on the 1911 reading at the All-Russian Congress, contains comments made by others after the reading which indicate that some reference to Theosophy may have been made during the reading after all. For example, a comment by Prince S. M. Volkonsky is quoted to the effect that he had been "won over by Kandinsky" because of the painter's Theosophical views. Volkonsky is reported to have remarked about Kandinsky's ideas: "In any case, when the theosophical principle is linked to something close to me, i.e., art, I'm always won over."²⁹ Why the references were left out in the Russian 1914 publication of the reading (if, of course, they had really been made) are not clear. It is possible that Kandinsky sent to the Congress an abridged version of On the Spiritual in Art, which eliminated most references to non-Russian sources so that his material would be more acceptable. But it is also possible that the transcription was abbreviated or altered in 1914. At that point, the omission of Steiner's name might have been due to the factionalization of the Theosophical movement in Germany and the disillusionment with Steiner in Russia. A war-time censor may also have been responsible for the elimination of German sounding names such as Steiner.

But Kandinsky's connection of a new style in painting to the evolution of a new world order is evident in any edition of On the Spiritual in Art He warned that the character of the age could no more be interpreted with direct representationalism than it could be reflected in precise geometric forms or ornamental design. He advised artists to strengthen their spirit "through exercise"³⁰ so that their experiments would not lead merely to "the beauty of color and form."³¹ He insisted that the artist "have something to say"³² and that forms serve an end beyond themselves. Although Kandinsky believed that ultimately a truly universal work with the strongest of spiritual vibrations would come from an abstract art,³³ he did not believe at this time that he or other artists should work completely with "purely emancipated color and form combinations."³⁴ He explained: "If we begin to sever our connection with 'nature' today, to force our way through to freedom and to confine ourselves exclusively to the combination of pure colors and independent forms, we would create works similar to geometric ornament, which, coarsely stated, would seem like a necktie or a carpet. The beauty of color and form, despite the assertion of purist aesthetes and naturalists in search of beauty for beauty's sake, is not an adequate goal for art. Because of our rudimentary development in painting, we are still little able to acquire inner experience from purely emancipated color and form combinations."³⁵

Kandinsky's great fear that his work would be considered decorative and ornamental may stem in part from his close contact at the turn of century with a German variant of Symbolism, the arts and crafts movement, frequently referred to as the Jugendstil. Recent studies have pointed to the influence that the theoreticans of the Jugendstil had on Kandinsky's concept of abstraction.³⁶ Indeed, shortly after Kandinsky arrived in Munich in 1896 he became acquainted with a number of Jugendstil artists, particularly those interested in developing an abstracted ornamental design as the basis for a new style. Kandinsky was friendly with one of the founding fathers of the Munich Jugendstil, Hermann Obrist, who prophesied that forms derived from ornamental and decorative design could be applied to painting. But Münter commented that Obrist's designs were "always more decorative, in their intention, than Kandinsky's abstraction," and thus had less influence on him than one would imagine.³⁷

In On the Spiritual in Art, perhaps in tribute to what he had learned from the Jugendstil artists, Kandinsky indicated that decorative designs were not lifeless, that they could even cause "vibrations" of the "soul."³⁸ However, he pointed out that repetitive patterns of decorative design were rarely effective because few people in this age were capable of deciphering the "inner worth" of decorative design.³⁹ He may, indeed, have been referring to Jugendstil designs for tapestries and rugs when he stated he did not want his paintings to resemble "geometric ornament, which, coarsely stated, would seem like a necktie or a carpet."

Kandinsky's attack on geometric ornamental form may also have been in reaction to the analysis of abstract forms delineated by the German art historian Wilhelm Worringer in his book, Abstraction and Empathy, which was published in 1908. Worringer, who had himself been influenced by Jugendstil theories of the emotive power of line, stressed that abstraction represented man's transcendental impulse, while naturalism, which he connected with empathy, seemed to belong to a culture that was more at ease with itself and not in turmoil. Kandinsky most likely agreed with Worringer in general. Both he and Marc were interested in Worringer's writings and thought of asking Worringer to write an essay for a proposed second edition of the Blaue Reiter almanac.⁴⁰ However, Kandinsky might very well have been disturbed by Worringer's description of geometric abstraction as "lifeless," and may have felt, as a result, that his own development of abstraction had to be based on something other than geometric forms, or the flat rhythmic designs of the Jugendstil. But what would that be?

When Kandinsky proposed an alternative to geometric patterning in On the Spiritual in Art, he stated: "It is not obvious (geometrical) constructions that will be richest in possibilities for expression, but hidden ones, emerging unnoticed from the canvas and meant less for the eye than for the soul."⁴¹ Kandinsky urged artists to lead the spectator into the abstract sphere step by step, balancing abstract forms with barely perceptible signs. He suggested that objects could be transformed into these hidden signs and could become an additional means of causing a vibration. On the Spiritual in Art contains an extensive discussion of how the object could have an evocative power similar to that of pure color and form. Kandinsky explained that a combination of veiling the object with ambiguous shapes and colors and also stripping the object into a skeletonlike outline or construction would create a "new possibility of leitmotivs for form composition."⁴² Consequently, his paintings from this period are filled with hidden images. In his autobiography, dated June 1913, Kandinsky used the term gegenstandslos (objectless) to refer to some of his works, and he defined that term as meaning forms deriving mostly or exclusively "'from within the artist'"⁴³ as contrasted to forms derived from nature. But even at that point, he indicated that there was a tenuous separation between those of his works which he considered abstract and those which he felt to be only partially abstract. In this same autobiography, he warned the artist about the dangers of completely abandoning imagery: " . . . the removal of an object in art makes very great demands on the inner experience of the purely painterly form, that therefore an evolution of the observer in this direction is absolutely necessary and can in no way be lacking."⁴⁴ In all the editions—German, Russian, and English—of On the Spiritual in Art published before World War I, Kandinsky insisted: "Today the artist cannot confine himself to completely abstract forms. They are still too indefinite for him. To confine oneself exclusively to the indefinite means depriving oneself of possibilities, of excluding the purely human element. This weakens one's means of expression."⁴⁵

To exclude the human and to weaken expression were antithetical to Kandinsky's aim. Since he believed his painting could be a major weapon in the creation of a new Utopian realm, he felt he needed the additional stimuli of hidden imagery to communicate his Utopian visions. Kandinsky maintained in On the Spiritual in Art that the object, color and form each had its own psychic effects, its own spiritual possibilities. He stressed that if the object were used effectively, it could have extraordinary power in a painting. Rather than depict the object naturalistically, Kandinsky proposed to hide its physical aspects through the process of "veiling and "stripping."⁴⁶ The process of veiling involved placing the object where it would not be expected or blurring its outline with unrelated colors. The process of stripping involved simplifying the object to a partial outline. The union of these two methods produced what Kandinsky called the versteckte Konstruction (the hidden construction).⁴⁷ Kandinsky relied on these basic structural devices until he left Germany in 1914. Through the "hidden construction," Kandinsky hoped to avoid the materialism of representational art while still involving the spectator by providing familiar key motifs. Kandinsky felt the "hidden image" would lead the spectator to take part in the creation of the work almost as if he were taking part in a mystic ritual. By forcing the spectator to decipher mysterious ambiguous images, he would involve him in the process of replacing confusion with understanding. Kandinsky equated such participation in the creation of art with the creation of the world.⁴⁸

Kandinsky looked to the Symbolist aesthetic for a theoretical basis for hiding and veiling the imagery in his paintings. The Symbolist interpretation of language, which had spread from France to Germany and then to Russia, emphasized that words could create a strong emotional impact if their literal meanings were disguised. Kandinsky's acceptance of synesthesia—the interrelationship of the arts—allowed him to transfer a theory formulated for poetry and drama to painting; it allowed him to believe that he could give to the visual object the evocative power the Symbolist poets and dramatists gave to words.

Although the Symbolist interpretation of language found coherent expression in many individuals, the Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck is the only Symbolist to be discussed at length in On the Spiritual in Art. In the Russian edition (where specific references to other artists are fewer than in the German version), Kandinsky praised Maeterlinck as "one of the first fighters, one of the first sincere composers of modern art."⁴⁹ In the German editions, Kandinsky referred specifically to three of Maeterlinck's plays and to one essay, and he applauded a Russian production of one of Maeterlinck's plays for the imaginative quality of its set designs, noting that the designers had used the simplest of backdrops to involve the spectator.⁵⁰ Kandinsky may have considered Maeterlinck as representative of the many diverse elements of Symbolism, especially since Maeterlinck was admired by a wide variety of intellectuals—from German Theosophists such as Steiner to Russian Symbolists such as Viacheslav Ivanov.⁵¹ Excerpts from his plays and numerous articles about him appeared in many literary magazines devoted to Symbolism published during the first decade of the twentieth century. Kandinsky referred to Maeterlinck's use of words in the essay, "Whither the 'New' Art," published in Russia early in 1911. In this essay, he praised Maeterlinck for listening to the "inner sounds" of words.⁵² In On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky devoted considerable space to an analysis of Maeterlinck's use of words to manipulate moods "artistically." Kandinsky stressed that Maeterlinck removed the external reference from words by constant repetition and by dislocation from the narrative. Kandinsky translated Maeterlinck's suggestions for the dematerialization of words into his own proposal for the dematerialization of objects, writing: "Just as each spoken word (tree, sky, man) has an inner vibration, so does each represented object."⁵³

Kandinsky not only wrote about objects in the same fashion that the Symbolists wrote about words, he also wrote about color as being equivalent to music and line as being equivalent to dance. Kandinsky's acceptance of the concept of synesthesia led him to believe that his paintings might stimulate multiple sensory responses in the viewer. His belief that his paintings contained multiple stimuli (form, color, line, images) lay behind his conviction that an abstract style could eventually have enormous evocative potential for communicating the spiritual. Kandinsky not only believed that one means of stimulating the senses would cause the other senses to respond, he also believed that one stimulus might be substituted for another to achieve a similar effect. He felt that sensory equivalents could be scientifically measured; he believed, for example, that exact equivalents could be found for individual musical notes within the color spectrum.⁵⁴ Once a system of identifying these equivalents was developed, Kandinsky felt equivalents could be combined or contrasted to intensify reactions. Unlike many Symbolists and those experimentors among his contemporaries like Skriabin who attempted to parallel a color with a sound—Kandinsky felt a stronger expression of his ideas could be achieved if the various arts were used to produce contrasting effects rather than corresponding ones. For Kandinsky, the use of repetitious or corresponding stimuli⁵⁵ was a nineteenth-century device and could not be as directly reflective of the conflict and disharmony which he felt were characteristic of his age.

Kandinsky's advocacy of contrasting stimuli was related to his conviction that a powerful work of art must reflect the characteristic tone of its time. For Kandinsky, "storm and tempest . . . broken chains . . . antithesis and contradictions,"⁵⁶ were the prime characteristics of his age. several contemporary composers—two Russians and one Austrian—Thomas von Hartmann, Nikolai Kulbin, and Arnold Schönberg, were exploring this same principle. In essays especially written for the Blaue Reiter almanac, these men associated dissonance in music with a more forceful means of expression. Schönberg for example explored principles of relating one medium to another, in this instance the problem of composing music for a text. The Austrian composer, who set a poem of Maeterlinck's to music for the almanac, called parallelism between text and music "the most banal of conceptions."⁵⁷ He even went so far as to equate the "external conformity of music to text" with the kind of "imitation of nature" that resulted from "the copying of a model."⁵⁸ He explained that the effect could be "more profound" if a "delicate thought" were expressed by a "fast and vigorous theme."⁵⁹ Kulbin, who had read Kandinsky's major essay to the All-Russian Congress, focused in his piece in the almanac on an exploration of new intervals in music, such as the use of quarter-tones and eighth-tones, and the incorporation of vibrations, which he called "close combinations" and characterized as providing excitable tones.⁶⁰ A variant of Kulbin's essay, "Free Music" appeared earlier in a collection entitled Studio of the Impressionists published in 1910, where he presented the idea that both harmony and dissonance were "the basic phenomena of the universe" and the "basis of art." He proclaimed that "complete harmony is death," and added that "discord" was the principle which excited and aroused mankind. ⁶¹ Kandinsky echoed these ideas when he wrote: "Our harmony rests primarily on the principle of antithesis."⁶²

Kandinsky felt he expressed the "antithesis and contradictions" of his age through the contrasting colors he used in his paintings, the ambiguous and hidden imagery, and the spatial dislocations. He advised using colors, such as juxtapositions of red and blue, which for centuries had been considered "dissonant." He warned against the use of flat ornamental forms because they would produce, he felt, works which were merely decorative, and in no way reflective of the disharmony and anxiety of his age. Although he felt that the tendency to step away from traditional spatial concepts was a beginning in the movement away from naturalism and materialism, he also felt that the emphasis on the flat plane of the canvas reinforced its material effect. In the German edition, he expanded the section discussing the use of antithesis in painting. He wrote that the use of "the thinness or thickness of a line, or further the placing of the form on the surface, the crossing of one form through the other" could help to create an "ideal plane" which could suggest "three-dimensional space."⁶³

Kandinsky's concept of antithesis and contradiction not only provides us with clues as to his use of strong color and to his interest in creating spatial effects but also it provides us with clues as to the meaning of the hidden imagery in the painting. His emphasis on his age as one of struggle, fraught with turmoil helps to explain why he chose imagery of storms, battles, floods, and Last Judgments in many of his paintings from 1910 through 1913. Many of these paintings have religious themes; a number have specific biblical titles such as Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Deluge, and Last Judgment.⁶⁴ Others have titles such as Paradise or Garden of Love which relate to his Utopian vision of the "new spiritual realm," which he felt would emerge after the '"terrible struggle .. . going on in the spiritual atmosphere'."⁶⁵ Although after 1913 Kandinsky's oils do not have biblical titles and the imagery is much more diffuse, the eschatological nature of the imagery is usually still identifiable through one or more key images that are clearer than the others.⁶⁶ To give these images broad appeal, Kandinsky frequently based them on popular or folk depictions of Christian myths, many from The Revelation to John. He took as a starting point the stylized motifs found in folk art—Russian lubki, "Gothic" fifteenth-century woodcuts, and Bavarian glass paintings—but he then transformed these motifs by veiling and stripping them to hide the images.⁶⁷ In this way, he dematerialized the object and created a sense of mystery which not only mirrored the chaos of his age but also suggested the struggle involved in trying to understand hidden truths. If his paintings were too easily understood they would not be suitable equivalents for the intimation of the higher world.

Kandinsky emphasized the struggle involved in the attempt to reach a new "spiritual epoch." His paintings and writings were meant to reflect this struggle. He referred to his work as both "a child of its time" and "the mother of our emotions."⁶⁸ Consequently, he placed keys or clues to his intentions in his paintings and his writings. On the Spiritual in Art contains a number of verbal images which not only correspond to motifs in Kandinsky's paintings but also help to illuminate the themes which preoccupied him before World War I. For example, in his 1912 essay he described the anxiety and fear of his age as similar to the "sense of insecurity" of those at sea when the shore begins to disappear from view, "dark clouds gather, and the winds raise the water into black mountains."⁶⁹ In a number of paintings such as Improvisation 7 or Composition VI a boat in a storm-tossed sea can be found. In Improvisation 7 which was subtitled "Storm,"⁷⁰ several boats with prows sticking above high waves can be identified, especially when this oil of 1910 is examined next to its preparatory sketch and study.

Kandinsky characterized the dark forces threatening the spiritual life as a "great dead black spot"⁷¹ in his major essay. He directly translated this verbal metaphor into a visual one in an oil of 1912, which he titled Black Spot. In the center of the painting is a large irregular shaped black oval. To its left is a blue-black oval-shaped cloud which arches over a mountain and the domed towers of a tiny walled city. This motif is most clearly visible in the lower left of an ink study for the oil. Kandinsky used the motif of the walled city in a number of his paintings, including the cover design for the German edition of On the Spiritual in Art. In the German edition, Kandinsky wrote a lengthy description of the walled city: "Humanity . . . actually lives in a spiritual city, where suddenly such powers are at work, which the architects and the mathematicians of the spiritual did not expect. Here is a piece of the thick wall which has fallen as a house of cards. There a colossal tower lies in ruins, which once reached to the skies, built out of many-pointed but 'immortal' spiritual shafts. The old forgotten spirits rise up from them. The artfully constructed sun shows spots and darkens, and where is the surrogate in the struggle against darkness?"⁷²

The cover of the German edition is an appropriate testament to the prophetic message implicit in the above quotation. Although the motifs on the cover are very simplified and "abstracted"—reduced to skeleton outline, they are purposively retained to reinforce Kandinsky's vision. When the cover itself is compared to the center of a sketch called Sound of Trumpets, a preparatory work for a glass painting of the Last Judgment,⁷³ the black lines on the cover can be seen to represent a mountain topped by a walled city with bent tower in front of which a horse with rider leaps. Kandinsky has placed his troubled "spiritual city" on the cover of his major essay and specifically depicted it high on a mountain as the spiritual city is so often depicted in Russian folk renditions.

Although the cover does not contain direct references to the angels of Judgment Day which are clearly apparent in Sound of Trumpets, it seems to contain a reference to the white horse described in The Revelation to John. The white shape of the horse motif on the cover is particularly striking, due to the contrasting dark wall behind it. By choosing a single white horse, Kandinsky may be referring to the white horse who appears when the heavens open at the end of The Revelation to John rather than to the four horsemen of doom described at the beginning of The Revelation. In so doing, Kandinsky may have wished to emphasize the regenerative aspects of The Apocalypse which the Christian Theosophist Rudolf Steiner was also doing at this time.⁷⁴ Kandinsky equated the horse and rider to the artist and his talent and believed that the artist was to lead the way to the future.⁷⁵ He also believed that "a new creation" would arise from the destruction of the old.⁷⁶ The horse and rider on the cover of On the Spiritual in Art may have dual implications. After all, Kandinsky explained in his autobiography of 1913 that his major essay of 1912 was conceived for the explicit purpose of awakening the "capacity, absolutely necessary in the future, for infinite experiences orf the spiritual."⁷⁷

One of the ironies of Kandinsky's vision of abstraction in On the Spiritual in Art was its possible contribution to the development of a geometric type of abstraction. A chart called "Elementary Life of the Primary Color and its Dependence on the Simplest Locale," which contained a yellow triangle, a blue circle, and a red square on a white and black ground, appeared in color only in the 1914 Russian transcription of On the Spiritual in Art. These geometric illustrations may have been an inspiration to Russian artists such as Malevich⁷⁸ as an example of how to channel the spiritual into the abstract, and they may have been another factor which helped to consolidate the development of geometric abstract painting in Russia in 1915. Interestingly, after Kandinsky returned to Russia in 1916, his style began to lose its soft flowing shapes and began to change toward harder edges, flatter planes, and less painterly qualities.

After World War II, two new English discussions of On the Spiritual in Art published in the United States made many of Kandinsky's ideas available to a generation of American painters, including those who were to become known as Abstract Expressionists. As painters like Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell began to move away from the geometric abstraction of the thirties and forties, they looked again at Kandinsky's pre-World War I ideas on color symbolism, movement and rhythm. Although their paintings are larger, more spontaneous, and more gestural than Kandinsky's they continue the painterly and expressive tradition emphasized in On the Spiritual in Art

NOTES

¹ By the end of 1912, R. Piper had published three editions of Über das Geistige in der Kunst in Munich. The first edition went to press in mid-December, 1911, and the second edition was published in April, 1912; a third edition appeared in the Fall of that year. In this essay, reference will be to the seventh edition (Bern-Bümpliz: Bentelli, 1963), hereafter UGK, which follows the second edition of 1912. Throughout their book the Editors have retained the word "spiritual" as the closest counterpart to the German geistige and the Russian dukhovnyi. Although the word geistige can also denote "intellectual," "of the intellect," the content of Kandinsky's text and his use of the Russian word dukhovnyi (which does not pertain to the notion of "intellect") indicate that "spiritual" is the most suitable rendition in this context. In the Editors' essays quotations appear from both the German and the Russian editions of On the Spiritual in Art. Consequently, there are some divergences in translation, depending on the original language being used.

² N. R., "Khudozhestvennye vesti s zapada: Germaniia," Apollon (St. Petersburg), 3, No. 9 (1912), 56.

³ Wilhelm Hausenstein, "Für Kandinsky," Der Sturm (Berlin), 3, No. 150-51 (1913), 277.

⁴Der Blaue Reiter was also published by R. Piper Verlag in 1912; a second edition of the almanac with a new preface was printed in 1914. Reference in this text will be to the reprinted documentary edition, hereafter DBR, ed. Klaus Lankheit (Munich: R. Piper, 1965).

⁵ See, for example, his 25 March 1912 review of the Salon des Indépendants, first published in L'Intransigeant; reprinted in Apollinaire on Art, Essays and Reviews, 1902-1918, ed. LeRoy C. Breunig, trans. S. Suleiman (New York: The Viking Press, 1972), p. 214.

⁶ See letters from Delaunay to Kandinsky, 1912, in R. Delaunay, Du Cubisme à l'art abstrait, ed. P. Francastel (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957), pp. 178-79.

⁷ Edward Wadsworth [Introduction to excerpts from UGK], Blast (London), No. 1, 20 June 1914, p. 119.

⁸ For a general background explicating this relationship, see Alain Mercier, Les Sources Esotériques et Occultes de la Poésie Symboliste (1870-1914), 2 vols. (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1969, 1974). Also see John Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1959), p. 36.

⁹ Kandinsky, "Kuda idet 'novoe' iskusstvo," Odesskie novosti (Odessa) 9 Feb. 1911, p. 3.

¹⁰ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 143.

¹¹Ibid., p. 134.

¹²Ibid.

¹³Ibid., p. 26.

¹⁴Ibid., p. 44.

¹⁵Ibid., p. 33.

¹⁶ Franz Marc, "Die 'Wilden' Deutschlands," DBR, p. 31.

¹⁷ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 42.

¹⁸Ibid., p. 43. For references to the literature on Kandinsky and Theosophy, see R.-C. Washton Long, "Kandinsky and Abstraction: The Role of the Hidden Imaged Artforum (New York), 10, No. 10 (June 1972), 49, notes 10, 18.

¹⁹ H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, 1st pub. 1889, as cited in UGK, p. 43. Kandinsky spelled her name "Blawatzky" and referred to the 1907 German edition published by Max Altmann in Leipzig. For centuries the word "theosophist" had been used as a synonym for those interested in uncovering "secret doctrines" and uniting or illuminating all religions. But by the time of the publication of The Key to Theosophy, the term "Theosophist" began to be specifically applied to those who followed Blavatsky's attempt to blend the hidden secrets of Eastern and Western religions and to explore such esoteric or occult practices as seances and mesmerism. By 1889 a number of branches of Blavatsky's Theosophical movement had been established across Europe and they united to form the International Theosophical Society.

²⁰ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 42. Kandinsky specifically cited Steiner's book Theosophie and his articles for the Theosophical journal Lucifer-Gnosis. Because of increasing differences with the International Theosophical Society, Steiner founded his own group, which he called Anthroposophical, in the Winter of 1912-13; see R. Steiner, The Story of My Life (London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1928), p. 300.

²¹ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 107.

²² Alexander Strakosch, Lebenswege mit Rudolf Steiner (Strasbourg: P. H. Heitz, 1947), pp. 22-24.

²³Der Blaue Reiter, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus München, collection catalogue l, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1966), p. 12.

²⁴ Clemens Weiler, Alexej Jawlensky (Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1969), pp. 68, 70-73. Weiler has based his Statements upon his readings of Von Werefkin's unpublished notebooks and diaries. For a discussion of other Russians living in Germany and their interest in Steiner, see R. C. Williams, "Concerning the German Spiritual in Russian Art: Vasilii Kandinskii," Journal of European Studies (London) 1, No. 4 (1971), 325ff.

²⁵ Kandinsky's notebooks are located in the archives of the Städtische Galerie, Munich. S. Ringbom in The Sounding Cosmos (Äbo: Äbo Akademi, 1970), pp. 62-64, discusses some of the annotations in the Theosophical books owned by Kandinsky. For reminiscences by Kandinsky's friends on Kandinsky's and their own interest in Theosophy, see R.-C. Washton, "Vasily Kandinsky 1909-1913: Painting and Theory," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1968, p. 139 ff.

²⁶ Letter from Andrei Belyi [pseudonym of Boris Bugaev] to Aleksandr Blok, 1/14 May 1912, in Aleksandr Blok-Andrei Belyi. Perepiska (Munich: Fink, 1969), p. 295. Samuel D. Cioran, in The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyi (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), discusses the influence of Steiner and Theosophy oh Belyi's work; see p. 161 ff.

²⁷ Letter from Belyi to Blok, 1/14 May 1912, loc. cit. Ellis is the pseudonym of a Symbolist poet and critic L. L. Kobylinsky. Voloshina, wife of the Symbolist poet and painter, later wrote a book in Germany about her experiences with Steiner; see M. Woloschin, Die Grüne Schlange (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1956).

²⁸ Letter from Kandinsky to Marc, 1 Sept. 1911, as partly cited in Lankheit introduction, DBR, p. 261. Theosophy, however, was not discussed in the almanac.

²⁹ See "O dukhovnom v iskusstve," Trudy Vserossiiskago sezda khudozhnikov v Petrograde, dekabr 1911-ianvar 1912gg. (Petrograd: Golike and Vilborg, 1914), I, 74. See also Editors' Preface.

³⁰ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 86.

³¹Ibid., p. 16.

³²Ibid., p. 135.

³³Ibid., p. 75.

³⁴Ibid., p. 115.

³⁵Ibid.

³⁶ peg weiss, "Kandinsky and the 'Jugendstil' Arts and Crafts Movement," The Burlington Magazine (London), 117, No. 866 (May 1975), 270-79; also Weiss, "Wassily Kandinsky, The Formative Munich Years (1896-1914)—From Jugendstil to Abstraction," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 1973.

³⁷ Edouard Roditi, "Interview with Gabriële Münter," Arts (New York), 34, No. 4 (Jan. 1960), 38.

³⁸ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 115.

³⁹Ibid., pp. 116-17.

⁴⁰ For a discussion of Kandinsky's and Marc's interest in Worringer, see K. Lankheit, "A History of the Almanac," DBR, pp. 261-62, 272, 277.

⁴¹ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 129.

⁴²Ibid., p. 78.

⁴³ Kandinsky, "Rückblicke," Kandinsky: 1901-1913 (Berlin: Der Sturm, [1913]), p. XXV. The word gegenstandslos has frequently been mistranslated as "non-objective," following the curious usage of that German word by Hilla Rebay in the first catalogue of the Guggenheim collection for the exhibition in 1936 at the Gibbs Memorial Art Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina. Rebay, who had come to the United States in 1926 from Germany and had helped Solomon R. Guggenheim assemble his famous collection, now the basis of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, had attempted, not only in the 1936 catalogue but in others that followed, to divide abstract painting in general and Kandinsky's paintings in particular into evolutionary stages of partly abstract-"objective abstraction"-and abstract-"non-objective"; see Kandinsky (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1945), p. 15. In several letters to Rebay, particularly one from 16 December 1936, Kandinsky made references to her distinctions, indicating that some paintings in the Guggenheim collection such as Black Lines could be called paintings which did not utilize objects, or as she called them, "non-objective", (letters from Kandinsky to Rebay are now in the Rebay archive at the Guggenheim Museum). But the letters contain many indications of Kandinsky's dislike of this term; he primarily referred to his works as abstract. In an article entitled "Abstrakte Malerei" written for the Kronick van Hedendaagse Kunst en Kultuur in 1935, Kandinsky had commented on the negative connotations of the German term gegenstandslose Kunst: "Die Negationsteile dieser Worte ('non' und 'los') sind nicht geschicht: sie streichen den 'Gegenstand' und stellen nichts an seine Stelle. Schon seit längerer Zeit versuchte man (was auch ich noch vor dem Krieg tat), das 'abstract' durch 'absolute' zu ersetzen." This article is reprinted in Kandinsky, Essays über Kunst und Künstler, ed. Max Bill, 2nd ed. (Bern-Bümpliz: Benteli, 1963), p. 182.

⁴⁴ Kandinsky, "Rückblicke," loc. cit., p. XXXVI.

⁴⁵ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 71; also see the reprint of the 1914 English translation now entitled Concerning the Spiritual in Art (New York: Dover, 1977), p. 30.

⁴⁶ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 78. The German reads: "Das Kombinieren des Verschleierten und der Blossgelegten wird eine neue Möglichkeit der Leitmotive einer Formenkomposition bilden."

⁴⁷Ibid., p. 129.

⁴⁸ Kandinsky, "Rückblicke," loc. cit., p. XIX.

⁴⁹ Kandinsky, "O dukhovnom v iskusstve," loc. cit., p. 72.

⁵⁰ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 45.

⁵¹ Steiner praised Maeterlinck's work as one of the most "distinguished experiences of the modern soul," in an article, "Maeterlinck, der 'Frei Geist'," first published 21 January 1899, reprinted in Rudolf Steiner, Veröffentlichungen aus dem literarischen Frühwerk, XXIV (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, 1958), pp. 22-24. For an expression of Ivanov's interest in Maeterlinck, see "Predchuvstviia i predvestiia. Novaia organicheskaia epokha i teatr budushchago," Po zvezdam (St. Petersburg: Ory, 1909), p. 204ff. Other members of the Blaue Reiter, in addition to Kandinsky, revealed an interest in Maeterlinck. Schönberg set one of Maeterlinck's poems—"Herrgewächse"—to music for the almanac. August Macke wrote in an essay for the almanac that the works of Maeterlinck and Ibsen could be equated with medieval mystery plays, paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and with Japanese masks; see DBR, pp. 53-54.

⁵² Kandinsky, "Kuda idet 'novoe' iskusstvo," loc. cit., p. 3.

⁵³ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 76.

⁵⁴ One is struck by the number of references Kandinsky made in UGK to color-musical equivalents; see p. 60ff, and p. 114. Among those whose work he cited for relating color and sound were Alexandra Vasilievna Zakharina-Unkovskaia, a St. Petersburg Theosophist, and Henri Rovel, a French writer for the periodical Les Tendances Nouvelles. See J. Bowlt's "Vasilii Kandinsky: The Russian Connection," p. 24, and J. Fineberg, "Kandinsky in Paris, 1906-07," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1975, p. 131 ff.

⁵⁵ See Kandinsky, UGK, p. 126. In an essay in Der Blaue Reiter called "Über Bühnenkomposition," Kandinsky used the term "eine parallele Wiederholung"; DBR, pp. 193, 196.

⁵⁶ Kandinsky, UGK, pp. 108-09.

⁵⁷ Arnold Schönberg, "Das Verhältnis zum Text," DBR, p. 64.

⁵⁸Ibid., p. 75.

⁵⁹Ibid., p. 65.

⁶⁰ N. [Nikolai] Kulbin, "Die freie Musik,".DBR, p. 128.

⁶¹ Kulbin, "Svobodnoe iskusstvo, kak osnova zhizni. Garmoniia i dissonans. (O zhizni, smerti i prochem)," Studiia impressionistov (St. Petersburg: N. I. Butkovskaia, 1910), p. 3. For the English translation, see J. Bowlt, ed. and trans., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934 (New York: The Viking Press, 1976), p. 13.

⁶² Kandinsky, UGK, p. 109.

⁶³Ibid., p. 111.

⁶⁴ Many of the titles of Kandinsky's oils are recorded in Kandinsky's house catalogues, the year by year lists of most of his major paintings. The house lists are in the collection of his widow, Nina, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Other titles can be found in exhibition catalogues from the period before World War I.

⁶⁵ Letter from Kandinsky to Michael Sadler, reprinted in M. Sadler, Modern Art and Revolution (London: Hogarth Press, 1932), pp. 18-19.

⁶⁶ Studies for Kandinsky's oils help to identify the motifs and themes in Kandinsky's paintings. E. Hanfstaengl's Wassily Kandinsky, Zeichnungen und Aquarelle im Lenbachhaus München (Munich: Prestel, 1974), is particularly helpful for the great number of reproductions of studies for oils of the period prior to World War I.

⁶⁷ For a more extensive discussion of Kandinsky's use of folk sources for his paintings with apocalyptic themes, see R.-C. Washton Long, "Kandinsky's Abstract Style: The Veiling of Apocalyptic Folk Imagery," Art Journal, 34, No. 3 (Spring 1975), 217-28.

⁶⁸ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 21.

⁶⁹Ibid., pp. 37-8.

⁷⁰Improvisation 7 was exhibited at the Ausstellung des Sonderbundes West Deutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Dusseldorf, 1910, no. 101, with the title "Sturm." For a discussion of the painting and its studies, see Washton, "Vasily Kandinsky, 1909-1913: Painting and Theory," pp. 82-83.

⁷¹ Kandinsky, UGK, p. 30.

⁷²Ibid., pp. 39-40.

⁷³ See Long, "Kandinsky's Abstract Style: The Veiling of Apocalyptic Folk Imagery," loc. cit., for a fuller discussion of the imagery in Sound of Trumpets.

⁷⁴ See also Long, "Kandinsky and Abstraction: The Role of the Hidden Image," loc. cit., pp. 47-48, for a discussion of the three horsemen in Kandinsky's depiction of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

⁷⁵ Kandinsky, "Rückblicke," loc. cit., p. XVI.

⁷⁶ Kandinsky, "Notizen-Komposition 6," Kandinsky, 1901-1913, p. XXXVIII.

⁷⁷ Kandinsky, "Rückblicke," loc. cit., p. XXVII.

⁷⁸ See J. Bowlt, "The Semaphors of Suprematism: Malevich's Journey into the Non-Objective World," Art News (New York), 72, No. 10 (Dec. 1973), 20ff.