Posted on 06/19/2006 7:27:51 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
A new exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky's work shows how the artist used his synaesthesia - the capacity to see sound and hear colour - to create the world's first truly abstract paintings.
Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky is widely credited with making the world's first truly abstract paintings, but his artistic ambition went even further. He wanted to evoke sound through sight and create the painterly equivalent of a symphony that would stimulate not just the eyes but the ears as well. A new exhibition at Tate Modern, Kandinsky: Path to Abstraction, shows not only how he removed all recognisable subjects and objects from Western art around 1911, but how he achieved a new pictorial form of music.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
It looks like a square of black Naugahyde.
"The black canvass reminds me of Russian history from 1917 up to the present times."
Oddly enough, you're not far off, there. Malevich, the painter of the "Black Square," was a Russian artist, and was deeply influenced by the Revolution.
Google him, and you'll see what I mean.
If it does not impair his ability to interact with the world in the same way that "normal" people can, it would by definition be harmless. I mean who cares if he hears violins at the same time he sees a traffic light change colors, so long as he knows green means go and red means stop and yellow means go a little faster.
He paints just like my granddaughter!
Why? Because your lines would be to straigh. The dough's in the fine details. The outer edge of the black square, on the right side, also has a couple of white flecks. That's worth a hundred grand right there.
Schizophrenia.
Looks like bagpipes being played badly to me.
One might expect some standardization out of these people, like virtually everybody agrees what red and green is. But is there any? For example I think E minor is purple, B minor a darker purple, and D major a light bluish grey, but I never experienced such a literal effect either.
Personally, I like the Boy with a Knapsack painting. This is one in which you see the title and say "ah ha," but not one in which you would guess the title first. But I can't find a picture of it online.
But I knew you'd like the red square. Note that all the edges are not square. It's the small subtleties that give it a sense of lightness, floating, like flying in early planes (which he did in the 1910s).
One of the more robotic ones; I think they say a lot about the USSR in the thirties.
That reminds me of an episode of the Howard Stern tv show that I saw some years ago. There were a few copies of Jackson Pollock's artwork in the studio. Stern proceeded to make his own work of abstract art. When all the pieces were shown to Robin, she wasn't sure which was done by Howard.
I got a pretty quick handle on what 'modern art', once you get past all the sophistry and BS, is really all about.
If they talk that is a sign. If you talk back that is a sign to others.
These days you don't dare use Naugahyde or PETA will come down on yo' a$$.
"When all the pieces were shown to Robin, she wasn't sure which was done by Howard.
"
And, so? If anyone who is familiar with Pollock's art saw them, he'd be able to tell in an instant. That Robin couldn't tell the difference is irrelevant.
Yes, Malevich has done a White on White. The funny thing is that there isn't a decent facsimile to post here from online images. The background is a wee bit warm and pinkish, so it seems to come forward, and the square itself, titled some 30 degrees, is cooler white and seems to sink back.
There are many subtleties in his work, and I do like it, but I don't find it as intriguing on a second look as that of Kandinsky, which is richer to me and in which I can usually find more to see each time. You have to remember, they were pioneering these absolute abstractions almost 100 years ago.
Yes, they would be fairly easy to duplicate now. But did you think of this before WWI, when women still wore long skirts with bustles, before telephones were common place and just after the Wright brothers took off for the first time?
Because you need to BS more about your work. The problem with postmodernism is that most of the good BS has been taken by previous generations. You'll need to come up with some unique line of BS about your work.
One of my goals on FR, and in life, is to get people to learn more about the ideas behind abstraction. Unfortunately, it is not as easy to understand as realism. That's why these ideas in this article were interesting to me. No realistic painter has tried to do what Kandinsky is attempting.
If you, or anyone else, is interested in a series of "classes" on the development of modernism in art, check out my homepage. I have done up many for FR and they are all clickable there. Maybe you can glean a few tidbits that will help you understand some aspects of modernism.
THAT piece makes my brain do flip flops....
"It makes far more sense to me now. The entire 'Modern Art' and abstract created by an individual who was probably clinically insane, or at the least unbalanced to the point of hallucinations."
The historian Paul Johnson has written about this; I wish I had an article he wrote about it on hand. If I remember right, the transition from the masters of the Renaissance age to modern art has been deliberate each step along the way, with the art becoming more abstract and trending nonsensical. It began by some artists as a way to protest/undermine state sponsored traditionalist art, thus opening doors and to getting their work seen.
I would bet that these kinds of people glom onto the Kandinskys of their times, as the avant guard elite don't have the talent to make successive breakthroughs themselves.
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