A modernist reading of the History of Art would suggest that artists during the early twentieth century were, as a collective, aiming towards producing a pure or abstract art, devoid of any social or political meaning and exiting simply for arts sake. Robert Delaunay (1885- 1941) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866- 1944) represent two artists heralded as canonical in this strive to abstraction and a pure aesthetic by the modernist view. In The Twentieth Century Art Book, Delaunay’s work, especially his use of colour, is described as simply having had a huge ‘impact on the development of abstract art’ (Barnes, et al., 1999) . To reduce Delaunay’s complex ideas of colour theory and his reasons for employing them in his work to such, is to inhibit the understanding of his art practice. Similarly, in The Twentieth Century Art Book, the description of Kandinsky’s work is only considered in terms of its aesthetic content, hailing him as ‘one of the founders of pure abstract art’. Robert Delaunay’s The Cardiff Team[1] and Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VII[2] both painted in the year 1913 will be used to demonstrate that whilst the aesthetic appearance of two art works may be similar and indeed may appear to aim toward the same stylistic consequences of abstraction, the views held by the artists are starkly different.
Whilst the key imagery in Delaunay’s The Cardiff Team is recognisable, the overall style does lean towards abstraction. The motifs are disguised within a grid of coloured blocks, showing Delaunay’s influence from a range of other artistic sources, particularly analytical Cubism(Chipp, 1958) . Delaunay was inspired to create this piece ‘from a newspaper photograph of a Cardiff- Paris rugby match’ (National Galleries of Scotland, 2010) as it references popular culture but also the speed of modernity he was influenced to achieve in his paintings by the Futurist movement (Duchting, Robert and Sonia Delaunay; The Triumph of Colour, 1994) . Delaunay also references other symbols of the modern world erupting into society in the early twentieth century; an advert for an aircraft construction company, Paris’s famous Ferris wheel, an aeroplane and the Eiffel Tower, which the artist considered to be the ‘archetypal symbol of modernity’ (National Galleries of Scotland, 2010) . It could be said then, that the reason for Delaunay’s apparent lean to abstraction is to show the integration of elements of the modern society. By literally fragmenting the recognisable motifs and intercepting them with each other, Delaunay achieves a representation of the integration of people with the new modern world and the excitement which it causes.
It is largely through the artists colour theory however, that his views on this new modernity become fully comprehendible. The movement Orphism was so named by famous French poet Guillaume Apollinaire to describe the work of Delaunay, which he saw as a synthesis of ‘colour, light, music and poetry’ (Duchting, Robert and Sonia Delaunay; The Triumph of Colour, 1994) . It was indeed in the relationship between colour and light that Delaunay’s colour theory was based in, as he believed them to have a certain cosmic energy. He was obsessed with the circular haloes of light produced by prisms and went on to compose the non figurative series of Circular Forms, for the brief period from 1912- 1914. In the ‘densely interwoven, complexly modulated colour structures’ (Spate, 1997, p. 92) he painted, Delaunay broke apart the colour spectrum to place contrasting colours adjacent to each other which produced a ‘movement of colours’ (Delaunay, Letter to Wassily Kandinsky, 1912) and a ‘rhythmic simultaneity’ (Delaunay, Light, 1912) ; essentially Delaunay created movement and dynamic energy in these ‘pure paintings’, through the contrasting colours within them.
Far from being a leap into the realms of pure art however, it would seem that Delaunay, in this period, worked purely on his colour theory, so that it could be applied to his later works to evoke certain meanings. The fact that he returned to imagery at all serves as evidence that Delaunay’s primary aim was not pure art. As he was aware from his involvement in Symbolism the art work could act as a medium of conveying a message to the audience. Importantly, this was best achieved if figuration was used, as ‘the spectator’s conventional expectation is that objects, however disguised, serve as the vehicle of meaning’ (Kuspit, 1975, p. 113) ; Delaunay wished to return to imagery to promote meaning and give a socio-political message.
In the 1923 version of The Cardiff Team[3] it can be seen how Delaunay employs his dynamic circles of colour and principles of his pure painting to his figurative work. By breaking down the image of the Cardiff rugby team into their dynamic colours, he promotes not only their speed and athleticism, but flattens the image of the human figures, forcing them into the same picture space as the symbols of modernity. Humanism is rejected in this piece in order to promote modernity and modern philosophy, such as ‘Bergson’s intensive, almost poetic, attempt to penetrate the core of non-conceptual consciousness’ (Spate, 1997, p. 87) . Delaunay does not only see modernity as an exhilarating age of the machine, but as a magical, almost spiritual force. The use of the term ‘Astra’ is not only an aeroplane construction company , but also means ‘the stars’, which is where, it seems Delaunay wants to take the viewer as their eyes ride the Ferris wheel and fly off in the aeroplane, fully immersing themselves in the twentieth century.
Composition VII ‘must be considered Kandinsky’s masterpiece. Without doubt it is the acme of his artistic achievements’ (Roethel, 1979, p. 104) . It was within his composition series, produced between 1910 and 1939 (Dabrowski, 1995, p. 6) that Kandinsky created this unique pictorial experience. Within this series he is hailed by modernist art critics as having moved away from solid figurative representations to a purely optical art based on colour and form alone. As with the work of Delaunay, it must be accepted that the work in question did indeed lean toward abstraction in terms of its aesthetic approach. It must be questioned however, whether Kandinsky used abstraction to achieve a decorative, ‘pure art’ or if it could be said that his work does in fact illustrate his socio-political viewpoint.
Kandinsky’s main aim in his artistic practice was to override the conscious engagement of the viewer in his work. The gesamtkunstwerk; a synthesis of all the arts to create a total art work, was a popular idea introduced by the compositions of Richard Wagner (1830- 1883). Kandinsky was very interested in these ideas as well as the synthesis of colour in which he believed that coulr could be heard, much as music could. Using art to effect the senses was largely inspired in Kandinsky however by the spiritual Theosophist Association practising throughout Europe in the early twentieth century. This movement was concerned with the contention that the arts could directly affect the human soul and allow people to escape the imminent apocalypse, which would be caused by the materialism of modernity. Abstraction was an important step towards aiding the renewal of human souls, to Kandinsky, as it had the potential for ‘communicating his messianic vision of a coming utopian epoch’ (Long, 1975, p. 217) . He believed that if the imagery in his work was unrecognisable to the audience, but did exist within his work, then it would be read by the soul. This was seconded by the Theosophists who maintained that ‘truths of the higher worlds were not easily understandable and could best be communicated by indirect and vague means’ (ibid).
The veiled imagery is then, rife in Kandinsky’s work and particularly in Composition VII, which was carefully abstracted and made to conceal imagery in an intricate process of around thirty preparatory pieces. The imagery concerned is mostly biblical, taken from the Book of Revelations, which the Theosophists saw as parallel with the battle of materialism and spirituality in modernity.
Kandinsky believed colour to be a ‘power which directly influences the soul’ (Kandinsky, 1912) and so used a complex colour theory to further promote the philosophical principles of his work. He explains this principle in an elaborate metaphor, which implies that the soul is the piano, played by colour, again affirming the importance of allowing his paintings to be heard as music and entirely affect the audience. Within his complex ideas the light colours of yellows and whites leap from the canvas and approach the viewer, whilst the cold, dark blues and blacks retract into themselves. The spectrum of colours between these two extremes include static, restful green and active, mature red. The use of these colours in Composition VII must be discussed in terms of the veiled imagery in order to fully comprehend the message Kandinsky aimed to feed to the soul of the beholder.
‘If we begin at once to break the bonds which bind us to nature and devote ourselves purely to a combination of pure colour and abstract form, we shall produce works which are mere decoration’ (Kandinsky, 1912, p. 45) . Whilst Kandinsky believed in the idea of a pure art in which colour and form alone conveyed a message, he feared that complete abstraction would lose his art its potential to act as a vehicle for his socio-political ideals. Based on his social and religious beliefs, fuelled by the writings of the Theosophist Association, Kandinsky’s imagery in Composition VII is based on the idea of the Apocalypse, with the key themes of Deluge and the Last Judgement featuring (Long, 1975, p. 217) . The image of the boat in the bottom left corner of the picture is a reference to Noah’s Ark, the impending flood and the spiritual reformation of society Kandinsky hopes for. The top right hand corner features an angel with a trumpet[4]; the ‘most characteristic motif of the Last Judgement’ (ibid), the biblical understanding that after death, each person must answer to God. This image persuades the viewers of Kandinsky’s work to rectify their materialistic nature before the Last Judgement. The key images of the ark and the angel can been seen to have been painted in various shades of blue and black to make them seem unobtainable and out of the reach of the observer, against a background of light yellows and oranges which approach them. It is as though Kandinsky is making the irrelevant forms reach out more than the spiritual images, as though denying access to the conscious observer and instead forcing the soul to search for them.
The form of Kandinsky’s Composition VII also stands as evidence that abstraction was not the overarching aim of his career. His early work in Moscow, such as The Singer (1903)[5], shows his interest in peasant communities and the traditional Russian art they practised based around the ancient tradition of the woodblock print, depicting ancient Russian folklore; the Lubok. He had been made aware of the diverse, rural communities outside of Russia’s major cities whilst studying Economics and Law in Moscow, in particular he found Russian Peasant Law ‘fascinating’ (Duchting, Wassily Kandinsky, 1991) . Composition VII if carefully considered can be seen to have many of the features of the Lubok such as the dark outlines of images filled with bright colours that don’t quite match the lines. Looking back to folk art for inspiration led Kandinsky to a style that could ‘provide an alternative to Western art of the academic tradition’ (Long, 1975, p. 219) which he wished to move away from to reject the associated materialism.
By moving to abstraction both Delaunay and Kandinsky were idolised by the modernist branch of art history as having paved the way for a ‘pure’ art, devoid of social content. However, Delaunay made an obvious move back to figurative painting after his abstract series in order to apply his theories of dynamic, simultaneous colour to motifs of popular culture and modernity, ultimately leading to his painting The Cardiff Team which shows how he celebrated his modern environment, believing it could lead to ascension to the stars. In the same way, modernist assumed that Kandinsky was working towards a pure form of art, whilst in actual fact he was driven to create pieces that would communicate, through musical colour and concealed biblical imagery, to the soul of his audience, persuading them of the negative effects of modernity. He was calling out for spirituality to destroy materialism through an apocalypse of modernity and return to primitive, religious values. Essentially, both artists used abstracted imagery to express their colour theory which promoted their hugely divergent views on modernity.
Bibliography
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Long, R. C. (1975). Kandinsky's Abstract Style; The Veiling of Apocalyptic Folk Imagery. The Art Journal , 34 (3), 217- 228.
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National Galleries of Scotland. (2010). Robert Delaunay; L'Équipe de Cardiff [The Cardiff Team]. Retrieved March 14, 2010, from National Galleries of Scotland: http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_az/4:322/result/0/472?initial=D&artistId=3053&artistName=Robert%20Delaunay&submit=1
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Spate, V. (1997). Orphism. In Concepts of Modern Art; From Fauvism to Postmodernism (pp. 85- 96). London: Thames & Hudson.
Images Cited
Image 1- Delaunay, R. (1913) The Cardiff Team. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris.
Image 2- Kandinsky, W. (1913) Composition VII. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Image 3- Delaunay, R. (1923) The Cardiff Team. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
Image 4- Kandinsky, W. (1913) The Last Judgement (a study for Composition VII). Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.
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