THE BAUHAUS GROUP: SIX MASTERS OF MODERNISM COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Colors affected Kandinsky profoundly, like pure emotions. Even at an early age, bright hues made him rapturous; black induced fear. Above, Dunaberg, 1909. PHOTOS: ABOVE, © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/CORBIS; RIGHT, COURTESY GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM/ © BETTMANN/CORBIS dinsky himself was a very unusual, original type, uncommonly stimulating to every artist who came in contact with him. There was something uniquely mystical, highly imaginative about him, linked with rare pathos and dogmatism.” It was impossible not to respond to him and his work. In 1910, Kandinsky painted a watercolor that went one step further than his previous work by eliminating any reference whatsoever to known subject matter. This is possibly the first entirely abstract painting — as opposed to objects with abstract decoration — by anyone, ever. That same year, he wrote On the Spiritual in Art. This book, which declared painting “a spiritual act,” embraced the supernatural and irrational as valid components of art. In advocating what was sensory and intuitive and opposing materialism, On the Spiritual in Art liberated many readers; following its initial publication at Christmastime of 1911, it went through two more printings within a year. Observing Kandinsky firsthand, Grohmann had the opinion that the artist’s beliefs derived directly from his own mental state. According to all who knew him, his was a complex mind, given to violent contrasts, and his deep-rooted mistrust of rationalism drove him in the direction of the irrational, that which is not logically graspable. We know that he suffered from periodic states of depression, imagining that he was a victim of persecution, and that he had to run away. He felt that part of his being was closely tied to the invisible; life here and now and in the hereafter, the outer world and the inner soul, did not seem to him opposed. Although the stated goals of the Bauhaus stressed the practicality of objects and the utilization of modern technology for aesthetically worthy results, Kandinsky’s presence there would cause many people to explore mystical realms and to accept the inevitability of neuroses as an aspect of creativity. Kandinsky declared his purpose to be the creation of “purely pictorial beings” with their own souls and religious spirit. He believed that WINTER 2011–12 46 such art would have major ramifications. At the same time that he bravely accepted the reality of the mind’s tortures, Kandinsky had “an absolute faith in the onset of a new era, in which the spirit will move mountains” and in which painting would defeat materialism “by asserting the primacy of inner values, and by directly appealing to what is good in man.” In On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky conceives of a “spiritual triangle” divided into three tiers, with atheists in the lower segment, and, in the layers above, “positivists, naturalists, men of science, and art students.” This middle category does not have an easy time; “they are dominated by fear,” for they grapple with “the inexplicable” while remaining unable to accept it, and thus suffer great “confusion.” He writes of the plight of these people as if he were narrating the plight of the damned at the Last Judgment: “The abandoned churchyard quakes, the forgotten grave yawns open. . . . All the artificially contrived suns have exploded into so many specks of dust.” Denizens of this middle tier suffer from their illusion that it is possible to create or live in an “impregnable fortress.” The occupants of the highest realms of Kandinsky’s triangle recognize the fallacy of that assumption. Among this select group of “seers” and “prophets,” creative geniuses who have entered the realm of “light” and “the spiritual,” Kandinsky names Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, explaining how each eschewed superficial beauty in preference for a true representation of “inner life” as well as “the divine.” Kandinsky considered music the ultimate art form, which is why he included more composers than painters in his pantheon. But he attributes to color some of the same transformative effects he cherishes in music. To chart the process of the impact of color on the viewer, he draws an analogy to the workings of a piano: “Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano of many strings.” From the book: THE BAUHAUS GROUP: Six Masters of Modernism by Nicholas Fox Weber. Copyright © 2009 by Nicholas Fox Weber. Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY THE HIDDEN REALITY Alumni News 48 Message from the CCAA President 49 Obituaries 52 Bookshelf 54 Class Notes 96 Alumni Corner PHOTO: COLIN SULLIVAN ‘11
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