|
Introduction
Lissa Tyler Renaud
Editor, "Kandinsky Anew" series
When the topic of discussion is Kandinsky, it is usually the art
historian's voice we hear, or the more or less informed enthusiast.
But we don't usually hear Kandinsky's poetry discussed by poets,
or his plays discussed by playwrights. By the same token, we rarely
hear Kandinsky's paintings talked about by a painter—and a
painter who can write—and that is what we have here with painter
-poet David Wiley.
Wiley's path to understanding a painting is informed by deep
knowledge of art theory and art history. And yet, he writes here
about looking at Kandinsky's works: "It didn't help to stare at the
paintings and try to analyze them. What they were telling me had
little to do with analysis." What a pleasure it is, then, to listen in on
a painter's inquiry and insights into the circle in Kandinsky's
paintings, and to follow along with his delightful, intuitive thought
process.
It certainly takes a deeply intuitive person to connect Kandinsky,
circles, and—well, I will not give away the punchline to Wiley's
story. But in the spirit of his own associative process, his story
suggests to me a story that was hidden until not that long ago: In
1914, when WWI began, Kandinsky was ejected from Germany as
an enemy alien after a longtime residency there. He returned to
Russia. In 1917, the 50-year-old Kandinsky married the 17-year
-old Nina Andreyevskaya, and they had a son later that
year—Vsevolod, or "Lodya." But like countless children during the
Civil War in Russia, their child did not survive the
malnourishment and diseases that were rampant; he died in 1920,
just shy of three years old.
The Kandinskys, themselves enduring enormous privations,
buried the child there in Moscow. They left for Berlin not long
after, with an agreement never to mention their child abroad.
Their colleagues in Germany never knew that the Kandinskys'
disappearances were for trips to visit their child's grave. Indeed,
scholars also never knew of, or never mentioned, the child. As a
result, when I began formally to study Kandinsky in the early
1980s, this important part of Kandinsky's life in wartime Russia
was invisible, and could not offer the poignant, personal context
for his artworks after 1920.
Even with the information available now—with the Iron Curtain
open, and Nina gone—the death of Kandinsky's son doesn't seem
to figure in discussion of his paintings. I wonder if the death of
that child plays a role, in a mysterious way, in David Wiley's
intuitions.
Considering Kandinsky's Circles:
A Painter's Adventure of the Mind
by David Wiley
There is often a good deal of serendipity involved in adventures of
the mind. When a series of mental events leading to a possibly
meaningful conclusion occurs, it is not unusual for this conclusion
to be dependent upon something unintended and unforeseen, just
as the "accident" that happens in a painting may point the artist in
a new and more fruitful direction. It was Aristotle's notion that
genius is the rapid perception of the relationships between things.
Although it seems incomplete, I have always liked this definition
of genius. The practice of art is certainly a process of finding the
relationships between things, physical and abstract, and using
these relationships in a significant and moving way. The challenge
for the artist is to harmonize and compose the parts.
During a trip to New York City, I spent a few hours in the
Guggenheim, mostly looking at the exhibition of Kandinsky
paintings from his Paris period. As I gazed rapturously at these
paintings, some of which I had never seen, my thoughts turned to
earlier Kandinsky paintings. As I looked at the paintings, trying to
regard them without prejudgment of any kind, they began to
speak to me, they began trying to tell me something that I didn't
understand and needed to understand. It was a fairly urgent
message, it seemed to me, but one I simply could not decipher.
Plato's saying that all knowledge is but remembrance came to
mind. It was something I knew somewhere in my being, and I was
trying to drag it up through the smoke and mirrors and chaos of
the subconscious. It didn't help to stare at the paintings and try to
analyze them. What they were telling me had little to do with
analysis. The more I tried to figure out what the voice was saying,
the fainter it became.
 |
Kandinsky, "Circles Within a Circle," 1923
Kandinsky, "Accent on Rose," 1926
As we left New York the next day, I was still scouring my mind for
an answer. It was annoying, like forgetting a familiar word or
name. Shortly after we arrived in California I met up with my
niece Gabey, who was nine months pregnant, and I remarked to
her that she reminded me a little of Kandinsky, with her
semispherical belly. This observation did not produce an answer
to the question that had been nagging me persistently, but, as it
turned out, the sight of Gabey's belly was a stepping stone, a
station along the way in my mental treasure hunt.
Two days later, as I was sitting in my studio thinking about
Kandinsky again and trying in some way to resolve the matter that
had been tormenting me for four days, my thoughts turned to
another one of my favorite painters, Alexei Jawlensky, who, along
with Kandinsky, Klee, and Feininger, was one of "The Blue Four."
Then my thoughts went back eight years to my miraculous
discovery of a large exhibition of Jawlensky paintings in a small
museum at the edge of a little medieval town on the Danube,
about eighty miles from Vienna. My companion and I had taken a
river excursion boat from a place called Krebs to the town at the
end of the line. Here my memory failed me, not in the Platonic
view, but in the normal, human sense. Determined to get the
answer to this question, at least, I found my Vienna guidebook and
turned to the page where there was a graphic of that stretch of the
Danube we had covered. I scanned the irregular line of the river,
stopping at some of the historic sites along its banks, the castle
where Richard Lion Heart had been imprisoned, and so on. Just
before coming to Melk, the town where we had serendipitously
found the Jawlensky exhibit, the town whose name I had forgotten
, my eye stopped at another ancient place along the river, the
village of Willendorf, just above Melk. Here a wealth of Neolithic
artifacts has been uncovered, including the famous Venus of
Willendorf, a 24,000 year old limestone sculpture of a rotund,
pregnant woman. I reflected that the Neolithic artists painted and
sculpted according to what they understood was important. And
one of the things that was very important to them was fertility. In
the guide book there was a tiny drawing of the Venus, and as soon
as I focused on it the proverbial light above my head turned on. All
the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, as they say. What
Kandinsky's paintings had been trying to tell me was that they
were about fertility. Cosmic fertility no less.
 |
"Venus of Willendorf"
It wasn't just the circles, which of course may represent many
things, nor was it that the sphere is the most potent and
fundamental of all symbols; it was the way Kandinsky's circles and
triangles and swirls and trapezoids and trapeziums all intermingle
in a three dimensional way, creating an impression of cosmic
intercourse. Geometric or not, Kandinsky's highly symphonic
compositions are bursting with energy and life.
Kandinsky, "Around the Circle," 1940
The urgency of the message, I believe, had to do with the fact that
I am a painter, and of late my work has been going in a
Kandinskyish direction, for reasons unknown. This little
adventure of the mind, resulting in the eventual apprehension of
"cosmic fertility," has given me a welcome concept to work with,
the kind of concept that involves the simple, the obvious, the
mysterious, and the complex.
As a coda to this business, perhaps a theatrical production could
be created based on the story. It could have Neolithic people
making art and other things, cosmic scenes and events, triangles of
every possible kind, and all known shades of color, each one
making a sound of its own and emitting a fragrance different from
all others.
Kandinsky, stage set for "The Gnomes,"
Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, 1928
|
