tore nordenstam explanation and understanding in the history of art

left is a configuration which seems to represent reclining figure. In the centre is a white
figure slightly turned to the left. The identity of the protagonists not quite clear. Maria
Strakosch believes that the figure on the right is Ariel, the figure on the left an elf, and the
central figure Faust. In the present author’s opinion other interpretations are equally
possible. The man in the long robe with its even button could be the magician Faust, who
is seen turning his back against the sun; the white figure could then be Ariel. Or else the
scene may in fact depict the very first lines of Goethe’s Prologue where Faust is still
reclining ‘auf blumigen Rasen’ on the left; he is being roused by an elf while Ariel,
standing on the right, begins his monologue. Which of these explanations is the correct
one is left to the beholder’s judgment; the picture itself seems to be deliberately
ambiguous. 23
This is another illustration of an explanation in the sense of “interpretation”. How easily
the two words are interchanged is nicely illustrated by the following example (another
quotation from Ringbom’s book on Kandinsky):
Example 3.
If we are to accept Maria Strakosch’s statement that The Pointer was inspired by Steiner,
we must find another interpretation which tallies with the genealogy and the preparatory
work. As it happens, such an explanation can indeed be found … 24
Example 4. In the Composition from 1922 (on the front page of this essay)) and in many
other works by Mondrian right up to the Broadway Boogie-Woogie from 1942-43 (Fig.
7), some of the bands do not quite reach the edge of the canvas. Commenting on one of
these paintings, the Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue from 1921 (Fig. 19), Hans L.
C. Jaffé writes as follows:
A third characteristic of this picture, and again one that was to last well beyond the
second half of 1921, is the fact that some lines break off shortly before reaching the edge
23 S. Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos. A Study in the Spiritualism of Kandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract
Painting, Acta Academiae Aboensis, Ser. A, Vol. 38, No. 2, Turku 1970, p. 69.
24 Op. cit., p. 70.