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Jelena writes:
Let us "liberate" Kandinsky from the continually repeated claim
that he was a theosophist.
Essentially, Kandinsky was not at all interested in theosophy. It
should also not remain unchallenged—it is a terrible mistake—that
Kandinsky was a member of the Theosophical Society!! He was
never, never a member of anything anywhere, except in artists'
associations. And his curiosity about theosophy was "of the
moment." Everyone was interested in those exciting new Eastern
ideas, with their alternatives to the dualities of Western
philosophy: body/soul, good/bad, material/spiritual, and so on.
Like every cultured person, of course he was interested in any new
"discoveries" or tendencies. But regarding theosophy, Kandinsky
was only curious for about a year or two, around 1910.
In his book, On the Spiritual in Art—written 1908-1910—he
mentioned it favorably when he quoted a lot of "spiritualist and
occult" authors, but they were mainly recognized as scientists just
curious about these new Eastern (theosophical) experiments.
Kandinsky's positive attitude expressed in this early book changed fast. Already in the 1911 Blue Rider Almanac (pub. 1912), his
collaboration with young Franz Marc, his very brief mention was
harshly negative. He had written to Marc that the Almanac could
only include a brief or "statistical" mention of the theosophists. In
fact, there was not a word about them then, or following that.
Cover for the Almanac by the
Kandinsky-Marc Blue Rider group
artists association, c. 1912.
The misunderstanding that Kandinsky was a theosophist has been
based largely on books and booklets in his and Münter's library,
now in the Munich archive. But how to know how many were given
to him by Giesler to interest him in Rudolph Steiner, the founder of
anthroposophy, his own version of theosophy? Maria Giesler was
Kandinsky's art student, the wife of Steiner's secretary [and later,
editor of Rudolf Steiner Complete Edition, ed.]; she's the one who
introduced Kandinsky to Steiner. And how many of those books
were bought by Münter? She had read and mentioned favorably Sideric Birth by the esoteric mystic, Erich Gutkind (pseudonym
Volker), before passing the book on to Schoenberg.
Indeed, in those early years of the 1900s, it made sense for
Kandinsky to inform himself about this new, highly popular,
movement from Eastern culture. Kandinsky read 1904-1908
articles in Steiner's journal, Lucifer-Gnosis, on Atlantis and
Lemuria, and made notes on seven tiny pages. He, and especially
Münter, bought books by socialist reformer and theosophist Annie
Besant. In 1910, Kandinsky's best (young!) friend, de Hartmann,
wrote to him that he was reading Steiner's "Akasha Chronik," (on
theosophy). "So it's forgivable," he added, "to dream nonsense,
right?" In the German version of the letter, he goes on to give a
long version of his own dream within a dream. It starts out similar
to Kandinsky's stage play, Yellow Sound, and continues to a theatre
stage; all the while he is aware of dreaming in a dream. In 1916,
Hartmann joined the Sufis, to which Kandinsky also never
adhered.
These are facts instead of gossip!!
*
Lissa writes:
I often see comments like this on arts social media threads: "One
thing I am interested in is the 'spiritual' influence on Kandinsky by
theosophy… I gather that there are some art critics who downplay
the 'spiritual' ideas in Kandinsky's work and focus instead wholly
on its formal qualities…"
I have replied in part: It's hard to dismiss the role of "spirituality"
in Kandinsky's work: his early and profoundly seminal book was
entitled On the Spiritual in Art, and the Russian avant-garde
continued to associate him with a spiritual take on life and art after
they themselves had moved on from it. About the word "spiritual,"
I wrote in a previous article: "Today, we might get closer to his
sense with a word less fraught, such as 'transcendent' or 'non
-material.'" Above all, he believed in the spiritual dimension of art.
He also thought—and experienced--that there was more to life
than what we can see or touch—which doesn't seem like an
outlandish proposition—and he was dedicated to capturing in
painting that can't-see-or-touch-ness. Which was interesting!
About theosophy--well, as a young man Kandinsky briefly showed some interest, just as lots of bright people now get curious about
ideas that are current or new. For me, Kandinsky's interest in
theosophy is somewhat like our interest in Buddhism today. We
may or may not have gone through, or be in, a period of active
interest in it, but we all know what "karma" and "meditation" are,
and know someones (!) who are fervent. And also like today, in
some circles such an interest can sound a bit passé, as Kandinsky's
emphasis on the spiritual power of art did to many of his
contemporaries, and you can see some shift when he got to the
Bauhaus after his traumatic years in Russia just previous.
Certainly there were enough "new" ideas circulating around the
Bauhaus students to break their worried parents' hearts. At the
Bauhaus, throughout Germany, and throughout Europe, there
were all kinds of impulses towards the transcendental, the
mystical, the … vegetarian! But Kandinsky was very communicative
about his thinking, and his mentions of theosophy in the various
editions, versions and languages of his books ranged from nothing,
to one footnote to somewhat buried. Beyond that, the argument for
his supposed interest in theosophy is that books on the subject
were found in his shelves. Which has always made me worry that
I'll be remembered by what's in my shelves! I passed along my
doubt about this the-books-on-his-shelf method of determining his
interest in theosophy to the eminent, brilliant Kandinsky scholar,
Jelena Hahl-Fontaine, and she replied: "Judging a bit from myself
I once said about K's library: What if he always gave away or lent
(and never got back) what he REALLY FOUND MOST
INTERESTING!" The editors of Kandinsky's incomplete Complete
Writings, Lindsay and Vergo, take the position that "excessive
weight" has been given to the role of theosophy in Kandinsky's
ideas and artwork; some scholars point at other scholars "who
started it." His wife, Nina, said he wasn't interested.
* * *
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