Wassily Kandinsky’s "Concrete Art"
Wassily Kandinsky’s “Concrete Art,” pp.673-76
Kandinsky’s writing (manifesto, albeit a mild, thoughtful one) is terribly brief, but terribly rich of fascinating ideas. While it is entitled “Concrete Art,” these few pages don’t spend much time talking about that per se—by “concrete art,” Kandinsky (surprisingly) means abstract and nonfigurative art. He references that they created controversy (675-6), that this seemed over, but his point is that it is not yet a dead area of art. That is about all that he says specifically about “concrete art,” so what is this manifesto about? The “manifesto” part surely seems to be to continue making “concrete art,” but what he spends most of the few pages talking about is how we feel this type of art. Literally! Whereas Malevich and Suprematism invoked “pure feeling” through a cold, geometric presentation, Kandinsky explores feeling itself … the activity and description of human sensory feeling of, especially, painting and music.
He begins with explanations about the similarities and differences between all the arts—notably his rather provocative first lines: “All the arts derive from the same and unique root. Consequently, all the arts are identical. But the mysterious and precious fact is that the ‘fruits’ produced by the same trunk are different” (673). As he says, this thought is, at first glance, so very “simple.” All the arts—be it painting, screenprinting, photography, sewing, music, dance, sculpture, poetry, etc.—have a common origin, hence, they are all the same, they are “art.” He doesn’t go into this origin (others may say “creativity,” or “imagination,” or the “work of the genius,” or “social dissent,” or “biological need to express oneself,” etc.) because his main concern is to show how what seems to differentiate the arts (the means … e.g., music expresses itself by sound, dance by movement, painting by paint, etc.) is not actually all that full of differences.
The different arts (their fruits) may use different means (pigment, sound, thread, etc.) to make their works, but he shows that these different means all must be “measured,” these are “limits” and that “These ‘limits’ are the preconditions of ‘balance’ and hence of composition” (673). So—what do all the arts share: composition.
Sure, some arts ‘compose’ in the sense of ‘guide’ the audience more forcefully than others … music has greater means to lead the listener by his or her ear through the piece than a painting, where an artist can force a bit of focus compositionally, but then, really, the viewer’s eye will dwell where it wishes. But, he says, these differences are over emphasized. In fact, he argues, the similarity between all the arts is remarkable.
This similarity pushes Kandinsky to talk about “associations” ... what we today call synesthesia ...
He describes these “associations” (as he calls this synesthesia) first through hearing color and seeing sound. Some of his examples:
Further, he plumbs the psychological depths of these associations by looking into the other senses. He poetically delineates how we can describe a piece of music as cold or a painting as frigid, and that this is not mere word play, but that we sensorially receive the impression of the music or painting the exact same way as we receive the sensation of cold! Likewise, “warm tones” and “warm sounds” make you feel warm … in the full sensory, bodily way, not just as metaphor. And, the great line:
“Forgive me, but painting and music are able to make you (rather rarely, however) sick to the stomach” (674).
This is not an “as if” feeling. He is being literal. (cf., Adorno’s true listening, not regressive.) Kandinsky is pushing a radical, new fully embodied way of engaging/feeling art. When a song is silky (674), it is not as if it were like silk, but that the song itself is received through your senses the way your body would receive the feeling from touching a silk dress. When a painting is savory (675), you taste it.
“These are the five known senses of man. Do not deceive yourself; do not think that you ‘receive’ painting by the eye alone. No, unknown to you, you receive it by your five senses. Do you think that it could be otherwise” (675)?
Kandinsky’s writing (manifesto, albeit a mild, thoughtful one) is terribly brief, but terribly rich of fascinating ideas. While it is entitled “Concrete Art,” these few pages don’t spend much time talking about that per se—by “concrete art,” Kandinsky (surprisingly) means abstract and nonfigurative art. He references that they created controversy (675-6), that this seemed over, but his point is that it is not yet a dead area of art. That is about all that he says specifically about “concrete art,” so what is this manifesto about? The “manifesto” part surely seems to be to continue making “concrete art,” but what he spends most of the few pages talking about is how we feel this type of art. Literally! Whereas Malevich and Suprematism invoked “pure feeling” through a cold, geometric presentation, Kandinsky explores feeling itself … the activity and description of human sensory feeling of, especially, painting and music.
He begins with explanations about the similarities and differences between all the arts—notably his rather provocative first lines: “All the arts derive from the same and unique root. Consequently, all the arts are identical. But the mysterious and precious fact is that the ‘fruits’ produced by the same trunk are different” (673). As he says, this thought is, at first glance, so very “simple.” All the arts—be it painting, screenprinting, photography, sewing, music, dance, sculpture, poetry, etc.—have a common origin, hence, they are all the same, they are “art.” He doesn’t go into this origin (others may say “creativity,” or “imagination,” or the “work of the genius,” or “social dissent,” or “biological need to express oneself,” etc.) because his main concern is to show how what seems to differentiate the arts (the means … e.g., music expresses itself by sound, dance by movement, painting by paint, etc.) is not actually all that full of differences.
The different arts (their fruits) may use different means (pigment, sound, thread, etc.) to make their works, but he shows that these different means all must be “measured,” these are “limits” and that “These ‘limits’ are the preconditions of ‘balance’ and hence of composition” (673). So—what do all the arts share: composition.
Sure, some arts ‘compose’ in the sense of ‘guide’ the audience more forcefully than others … music has greater means to lead the listener by his or her ear through the piece than a painting, where an artist can force a bit of focus compositionally, but then, really, the viewer’s eye will dwell where it wishes. But, he says, these differences are over emphasized. In fact, he argues, the similarity between all the arts is remarkable.
This similarity pushes Kandinsky to talk about “associations” ... what we today call synesthesia ...
- (from the ancient Greek syn-, together, and aisthesis, sensation), wherein one sensory input (e.g., sound) makes us experience a different sensation (e.g., color)--most commonly, this is when we talk about the experience of “hearing color,” but we could also talk about “tasting smells,” “feeling noise,” etc. Cognitive science, neuroscience, etc., are rife with studies about this phenomena, but always reduce the experience down to damage in the brain, neuron movement, flawed organs, etc.
- Kandinsky, in contrast, is no reductionist—he is an artist-theoretician who considers this cross-sensory experience to be both mystical and mundane. That is, it is mystical in the sense of being a radical, freeing, transformative way of engaging art, at the same time as it being mundane in the sense that we are all capable of this way of engagement, not just those undergoing some sort of neurological haywire!
He describes these “associations” (as he calls this synesthesia) first through hearing color and seeing sound. Some of his examples:
- Yellow provokes an ascension of spirit, a transcendence and hearkens the trumpet;
- Blue provokes the opposite, a descent into spirit and sounds like the cello;
- Green is balance and hearkens the violin; Red is the strength of drum beats (674).
Further, he plumbs the psychological depths of these associations by looking into the other senses. He poetically delineates how we can describe a piece of music as cold or a painting as frigid, and that this is not mere word play, but that we sensorially receive the impression of the music or painting the exact same way as we receive the sensation of cold! Likewise, “warm tones” and “warm sounds” make you feel warm … in the full sensory, bodily way, not just as metaphor. And, the great line:
“Forgive me, but painting and music are able to make you (rather rarely, however) sick to the stomach” (674).
This is not an “as if” feeling. He is being literal. (cf., Adorno’s true listening, not regressive.) Kandinsky is pushing a radical, new fully embodied way of engaging/feeling art. When a song is silky (674), it is not as if it were like silk, but that the song itself is received through your senses the way your body would receive the feeling from touching a silk dress. When a painting is savory (675), you taste it.
“These are the five known senses of man. Do not deceive yourself; do not think that you ‘receive’ painting by the eye alone. No, unknown to you, you receive it by your five senses. Do you think that it could be otherwise” (675)?
There are two further and fascinating points that Kandinsky mentions, briefly, before moving to what sounds most like a manifesto here, his encouragement for more “concrete art” … the two additions points: The Point and The Object.
The Point … (following goes beyond what is in his text to help elucidate it)
The insight about the point is one that utterly swept through the cutting edge, especially French philosophers of art in the late 20th c. So … about a point {literally … like each of these periods or specks above the ‘i’ or ‘j’ …}, what is the big deal?
The Point … (following goes beyond what is in his text to help elucidate it)
The insight about the point is one that utterly swept through the cutting edge, especially French philosophers of art in the late 20th c. So … about a point {literally … like each of these periods or specks above the ‘i’ or ‘j’ …}, what is the big deal?
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As a thought-viewing experiment … find a piece of visual still art … look at its form … reduce its form (what ever it is a picture of) down to shapes (e.g., that arm, which is triangular, the face, which is oval, the thigh, which is rectangular) … now, reduce the shapes down to the lines (e.g., the three lines that make that triangle that makes that arm, etc.) … now, how much further can we reduce the work? Down to the point … reduce down all of those lines to their constituent parts, that is, its points. Now … imagine what you have … you have an inordinate number of points coalescing together to form lines to form planes to form shapes to form representations of objects. |
What you imagined may look like Australian Aboriginal Dot Paintings (More info ~here~ and ~here~) or blow-ups of pixilated art, made famous by Roy Lichtenstein (more info ~here~).
Tommy Mitchell, Walu, 2008
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurulla, Water Dreaming
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Roy Lichtenstein, Explosion, 1965-66, Tate
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Now ... while to hear the name “Kandinsky,” one may think of his beautiful, colorful paintings ... for example, see the end for a slideshow, or two iconic examples here:
Left: Kandinsky, “Autumn Landscape with Boats,” 1908; Right: Kandinsky, “Houses in Murnau on Obermark,” 1908
Kandinsky, “Autumn Landscape with Boats,” 1908
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Kandinsky, “Houses in Murnau on Obermark,” 1908
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But, to understand the importance of ~the point~, we have to think of his Bauhaus period, characterized by works like these:
Left top: Kandinsky, “Angular Swing” [Winkelschwung], 1929; Left bottom: Kandinsky, “Decisive Rose,” 1932; Right: Kandinsky, “Galerie Maeght,” Exhibition Litho.
Kandinsky, “Angular Swing” [Winkelschwung], 1929
Kandinsky, “Decisive Rose,” 1932
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Kandinsky, “Galerie Maeght,” Exhibition Litho.
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During his Bauhaus period, Kandinsky’s bright use of color gave way to washes of color as flat background, and the precision of form and shape crystalized. The most impressive description of Kandinsky’s work in this time is given us by the contemporary French philosopher Michel Henry in his book Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky. Quoting Henry at length to reveal the radical importance of “the point” in Kandinsky’s thought and art, starting with a description of his art in this period:
- “A new dynamism emerges [during his Bauhaus period] with sharply cut out forms whose arrangements establish extraordinary equilibriums, give birth to a play of tensions, openings, and advances confronted with subtle counter-attacks, and are broken apart by some ideal line or an indifferent, self-absorbed and invincible sphere. Force is no less great when it dwells in this atemporal confrontation of arrows, curves, opposed or joined angles and geometrical planes barely tinted with a vague light. Kandinsky said this in a famous remarks: ‘The contact between the acute angle of a triangle and a circle has no less effect than that of God’s finger touching Adam’s in Michelangelo’ …” (Michel Henry, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky, 46-7).
Henry then addresses “the point:” explaining it to be far more than a geometrical entity:
- “As such, it is indivisible and abstract in the sense of an immaterial and ideal entity, which characterizes every geometrical figure taken and conceived in its purity (and not as a natural form). Even understood as an ideal geometrical element, the point nevertheless has an inner sound. Kandinsky attempts to express its tonality in the following terms: ‘the utmost conciseness,’ ‘the greatest reserve,’ and ‘the ultimate and most singular combination of silence and speech’ …” (Ibid., 47).
All form, for Kandinsky, has its own inner sound—like colors had by sounds, flavor of paintings. The sound of the point is best captured by his naming it the combination of silence and speech. Consider a sentence’s point—literally, a period—it marks in symbol, in writing, a pause that exists in speech and thought. It is the silence that separates this thought from another, but, by the nature of its being a separation, it is also what allows the foregoing to have it consummation in being a full thought.
The point, then, is an ideal, it relates to a geometrical element of the smallest divisible part, it points to a pause in speech, it serves symbolically like a letter in writing, and it connects to the real, the sensible, like being the mark of a tool on a surface, like graphite on a piece of paper, paint on a canvas.
In Kandinsky’s Bauhaus period art, he attempts to tear the point from its having become an object of use, quoting Henry:
- “this involves tearing it free from its ordinary practical environment in order to detach it from the role it plays in the sentence. this release occurs in two stages: first, by displacing the point within the proposition so that it occupies an unstable position and allows its true being—its emotion—to be seen in a flash; second, by putting it outside of the lines on a blank surface where at last this extraordinary sensible form, ‘the utmost conciseness,’ will be seen and its deep tone will be heard” (Ibid., 48).
Now … this tearing free of the point from its ordinary context allows its own, true, inner tone to be heard. BUT … at the same time, this new tone is accompanied by its original resonance created by the pre-torn-free point:
- “Its displacement … produces a double effect: the writing-resonance of the point diminishes, while the resonance of its pure form increases. At any rate, these two tonalities have appeared now where there was only one, two modalities of the invisible life within us when there was one single objective form in the world and there still only is one point before us” (Ibid., 48).
So … think back to your thought experiment, above, where you reduced a picture down to dots … what does the dotted picture reveal? This dotted picture sounded doubly: on the one hand, you had a composition of dots, on the other hand, you had a composition of dots … that is, you either saw many, many dots, or you saw the picture (that just happened to be made up of dots)—you saw both the essence of the point, and the original context of the point. And, to be more honest to Kandinsky, you didn’t just see these, you heard the two tonalities together from only one actual image.
- “The radical and now undeniable dissociation of the external and internal elements of painting occurs through the invincible force of essential analysis, if … the external remains numerically one while the internal is duplicated and has become a ‘double sound.’ Once it is established that painting depends and is constructed on the internal element, the evidence for the following critical truth will be given to us: painting, which is this composition, is not a tributary of the visible. It does not receive its laws or principles from the visible, since it depends on what is duplicated and expresses this duplication while the external element has not changed” (Ibid., 48).
The point, when taken out of a lush, colorful line that forms shapes that form figures, resounds with a double tone: what it was in its normal context (a point of which everything is composed, a concise silence, a pause between speech that allows for language itself) along in harmony with its displaced, out of context sound (a reduction down to the purity and isolation of the tone of a period or point itself, free from the other trappings of meaning). This double tone that the point sings in painting tells us that painting itself is not just a reproduction of what is visible. Painting reveals the invisible in the visible. Painting is far, far more than the precise reproduction of shapes that the eye discerns.
Now … the final really fascinating idea in this essay:
The Object:
Kandinsky has said a lot about painting, but not mentioned “the object.” Other writings about paintings talk first about what object it is of. He hasn’t mentioned the object because he was talking about ...
- what is essential in painting: the feel, the sensory given, how we receive it, the inner, spiritual tonality of color, form, point;
- whereas the object is something inevitable about painting—not more valuable or important, just unavoidable: there is a ‘something’ in every painting … But, it is not, for Kandinsky, what is so important about painting.