Kandinsky and the Compositions - Part II

(This stub is edited with some updated links that work, for those that want to go where the yellow brick road leads!)

It's a repub of a 2005 piece I wrote.

Ok... now that I have found out I am refreshed enough to blog the world for the 4th time in under 24 hours... onwards and upwards... This time the word is...Composition X

WELL... this dates back to 1939. Although started in 1938 sometime when Kandinsky was in Paris... it was a more painstaking effort and perhaps the most vibrant of all. At least definitely my favourite. Obvious isn't it? The predominating BLACK in the background and all those flying lines and curves ... it's like a MARDI GRAS IN SPACE for me! Yes, the work actually was started in 1938. But I was kidding. Wassily started it in Dec 1938 and finished in Jan 1939!

Composition 10 is the last in the series of Compositions. Sometimes am confused whether it is Comp 10 or Comp X - meaning the unnumberable one like the number 'n' in mathematics. Or is it like Mr. X? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Anyway... it is even more remarkable compared to the other Compositions because of its radical departure from fuzziness in some of the other predecessors of this discerning series.
Look at the image. You will understand. There is no hesitation. There is a certain clarity. There is absolute playfulness that had been arrived at through long obsessive hours of discerned and calculated seminal-texture to this theory of the use of color, space, lines, curves and ultimately the canvas (Read with a CAPITAL C!)

Composition X actually belongs to his late works as well. And it not only completes the Compositions series, but also connectes with later works as a link. It is less murky, more relaxed, even cheerful. And it's grammar and idiom are more formalised.Well, in a sense it is a darker painting in that everything is hovering about. Notice in the pix above the bio-morphic formations... the embryonic quality to the image segments. More a picture for joyous study to some biology student and life-science student. Biomorphic... embryonic and cell-shaped structures dominate... inspite the dark and brown-black background.This was to become the unique feature of Kandinsky's work, in retrospective analytical terms, I mean.According to Kandinsky "Black was the least expressive colour"... but on which any colour can express itself.

To quote him "Black was the least expressive colour on which every other colour, even those with the least power of expression can express more strongly, more precisely". The cheerful impression which results from the strong contrast of colours is juxtaposed against (or should I say married with) the foregrounding of more brighter colours. It is very Russian. The concentration of dark hues and scientific touch to any subject. And what of the zoomorphic and biomorphic forms? He recognised the expression of cosmic laws in the general organic nature, the processes of regeneration and new beginnings of life, which he attempted to present in pictorial form... but in his own geometric but abstract style.Composition X is the supreme example and the quintessence of Kandinsky's art.

We will next quickly take comparitive peek at his contemporary and soul-mate Oskar Schlemmer's work. That would lead us to the Bauhaus connection.

Kandinsky and the Compositions - Part I

Ok, here it is... for a long time, I have been threatening both on blog and in real time to put up something on Wassily Kandinsky. There it is finally.

Dear art-unsavvy friends of mine, please bear with this. Seek info in real time if it interests you!

Compositions

Kandinsky created a total of 10 large format pictures all entitled Composition(s). The series is titles Compositions (obvious, idn't it?)

Composition IV - 1911

Composition IV is one of his major works - esp during his transition phase from depictive shapes to abstraction.Kandinsky freed lines off the function as just outlines and created a certain pictorial vocabulary (I love the expression, freeing lines of outline function. True isn't it how warped we are and use lines as just geometric slave-frames!) that really placed equal importance and emphasis on lines and colour.

According to him, a composition is "made up of the contrasts between masses, lines and colours, and only secondarily of objects to which the representation alludes". Several of the elements in Comp. IV such as the mountain, the Cossacks, the rainbow at the back, the twin figures or the gallopping horses in the top left hand section refer to predetermined objects and figures. Of course, abstractionists would readily notice that. Conservative naturalistic and realistic minds would take a while to figure out. But this is Expressionism we are talking. And the Man of the Bauhaus Movement!

The combined effect of primary and secondary motifs (and thematic constructs to go with it), the edgy but deliberate nervous and patchy style of painting, the stark colourfulness and powerful imagination veil the picture's fundamental structural composition.

Look how the vertical axis divides the picture so effortlessly into two halves: the mountains with the motifs depicted on top of them provide almost a third section. For a desultory eye, the 3rd section is almost part of the second. But not really so! A diagonal line adds a certain kinetic - even dynamic - touch to this composition.

Watch out for other compositions. And my links to a Kandinsky web-page in the Links section shortly, comprising jpg reproductions of his works. They are available all over the web. But am compiling them for an avid Wassily enthusiast.