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Editorial Note for November 2024
I have been
re-visiting some of
the early pieces in
this Kandinsky Anew
series—this one
from the beginning of
the long shutdown.
This month, I am
delighted to underline
that Kandinsky was
widely known for his
good
cheer.
There is a general
reference below to
Kandinsky's Munich
friend and colleague,
the playwright Gustav
Freytag (d. 1895), but
that reference was
made before we had
Jelena
Hahl-Fontaine's
recent book, Kandinsky:
A Life in Letters. Now
we have it and it
includes remarks made
by people who knew
Kandinsky, so now we
can hear what Freytag
said, in his own
words. His final
sentence isn't
something we would say
that way today, but it
is nevertheless
interesting and
something others of
his time also
mentioned. Freytag
recalled:
People liked to
listen to
[Kandinsky's]
stories because he
always spoke
animatedly and
laughed heartily,
had a sense of
humor,
and—what
should be
particularly
emphasized, in view
of some
assumptions—never
demonstrated a
depressed or
reclusive spirit, at
least not when I
knew him. He
certainly appeared
to be a
positive,
self-assured man
with serious views.
His manners were
impeccable. Though
his looks are
slightly Asian, his
behavior was
European.
And now, onward to 2020!
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Kandinsky's Creativity:
Laughter, the Trouser Button and the Sugar Pot
Jelena Hahl-Fontaine and Lissa Tyler Renaud
When it comes to
Kandinsky, there seems
to be no end to the
discoveries one can
still make about this
extraordinarily
creative,
interested-in-everything,
multifarious
personality. Even
after all these years,
still far from
everything is known
about Kandinsky.
What was the source of
Kandinsky's creativity
in so many fields? His
humor—a certain
playfulness, a vibrant
curiosity, a sense of
the absurd, and his
emphasis on the
essential spirit and
simplicity such as we
see in children's
art—these have
been quite overlooked
so far. But we know
that these qualities
help even the most
solemn and thoughtful
artists. This is
especially true for
artists who works in
two media, such as the
musician-painter,
painter-poet, or
poet-dancer. There are
those artists who
become burdened rather
than freed by
professionalism in
their primary or first
art discipline, and
enter a second
discipline, where they
can experiment while
less overwhelmed by
traditions.
Along with his humor
and affinity for
naïve art, Kandinsky
had a predilection for
the primitive, for the
intuitive creation,
like that found in the
African art that
Picasso and others
collected. Kandinsky's
unusual interests were
at the fore when he
and the much younger
Franz Marc selected
the 141 images for the Blue Rider Almanac (pub.
1912), their
interdisciplinary
volume that also
contained fourteen
articles on
complementary,
cutting-edge topics.
Ultimately, 88 of the
illustrations they
chose featured
"primitive" and
children's art, as
well as naïve pieces
from the South
Pacific, folk puppets,
woodcarvings and even
art of the mentally
ill, all from a range
of countries and eras.
In fact, Kandinsky
included more examples
of the naïve painter,
Henri Rousseau, than
of his own or Marc's
paintings! It was a
priority for Kandinsky
to show the "inner
connection" between
the childlike, the
naïve, the folk, and
the "Primitives."
Above all, he hoped
the emphasis on these
would serve as a
direct path to the
source of all Art, to
creativity.
And how he loved
children's art.
Kandinsky owned a
remarkable collection
of children's art,
containing at least
250 drawings. In
the Blue Rider
Almanac, he
highlighted this love
in an essay entitled
"On the Question of
Form": "the
unconscious, enormous
power of the
child… [is]
often of greater value
than adult art." He
was especially drawn
to the art of very
young children, before
any influence or
teaching had been
exerted: "The Academy
is the surest way to
ruin juvenile talent!"
And this: "the artist
who in many ways is
like a child, can much
more easily reach the
inner sound of
things."
In his brief autobiography of 1913, Reminiscences,
Kandinsky put his
finger aptly on what
it means for the
artist to be "like a
child," to observe the
world through the lens
of heightened
curiosity. In this
poetic passage, we see
the gifted writer in
Kandinsky as he
describes his youthful
experience of the
"innermost being, the
secret soul," of
everything:
… not only the
stars, moon, woods,
flowers of which the
poets sing, but even
a cigarette butt
lying in an ashtray,
a patient white
trouser-button
looking up at you
from a puddle in the
street, a submissive
piece of bark carried
through the long
grass in the ant's
strong jaws to some
uncertain and vital
end, the page of a
calendar, torn
forcibly by one's
consciously
outstretched hand
from the warm
companionship of the
block of remaining
pages.
Another instance of the childlike perspective to be fostered: in a long
poem, handwritten
by Kandinsky in
Russian and German,
the hero is a Road
that vividly describes
its adventurous
descent around curves,
avoiding accidents
over tree roots, up
steep hills where it
almost stalls, all
along exclaiming its
despair, and so on.
Apparently, for
Kandinsky, to be
creative and to
experiment, to arrive
at the essence of Art,
its "universal
language," its source,
it is inevitable that
one will keep some of
childhood's
characteristic poetry
and hilarity.
Kandinsky's distinctive humor is all too rarely what people learn about
him. Both
specialist and popular
sources have
established an "image"
of him as a Serious
Person. This may
account at least
partially for why
those funny "microbe
shapes" of his final
period, so different
from his earlier
periods, have been
dismissed for such a
long time. "Fluttering
Figure" of 1942, the
painting used for the
logo of this
"Kandinsky Anew"
series (see above),
captures a sense of
irrepressible gaiety:
an undefinable and
silly organism, a
kooky critter leaps
about on some kind of
circus animal that is
wearing a festive
headpiece. Let's keep
in mind that the
"children's art" of
Paul Klee was also
ridiculed. Certainly
with both Klee and
Kandinsky, we can say
that playfulness and
profound seriousness
are compatible!
Kandinsky's
contemporaries knew
best: his friend,
Gustav Freytag, son of
the famous writer,
gave an extensive
description of the
many hikes they took
together into the
Alps, of how fun the
excursions were and
how much he and
Kandinsky laughed.
Freytag seems to have
explicitly mentioned
Kandinsky's good
humor and his
readiness to laugh.
The painter August
Macke also wrote a
letter about a
gathering at which
there was a lot of
general laughter,
specifying that
"Kandinsky had
a Homeric laugh."
In a 1983 interview for Art Journal, Vincent
Weber looked back on
what Kandinsky's
teaching was like when
Weber was his student
at the Bauhaus. Weber
remembers Kandinsky's
stimulating teaching,
often full of
pantomime, and tells
this endearing story:
"How Kandinsky
chuckled at the
arrangement of a still
life consisting of a
coffee pot, a small
milk jug and a sugar
bowl... 'Not very
exciting. Therefore we
must bring
eccentricity into the
arrangement and the
positioning. Look at
the coffee pot: fat,
stupid and haughty.
She has a very
arrogant air when we
turn her a little
sideways and draw her
snout still higher.
Now the little milk
jug: small, modest. It
looks humble if we
turn it down thus at
an angle. An
obeisance before the
powerful coffee pot!
And now the sugar
bowl: satisfied, fat,
well-to-do, content
because she is full of
sugar. She laughs when
we put her lid on at
an angle.'"
Along with all these
glimpses of the
authentic creativity
Kandinsky enhanced in
himself and others, it
is interesting to have
an example of
creativity that is
false, forced, or
inauthentic. Here, Dr.
Hahl-Fontaine, one of
your two authors,
contributes a lively
firsthand account of
Otto Hofmann, a former
Bauhaus student. She
writes:
"Kandinsky's letters
to Hofmann are typical
in showing that he
spent half his
life helping just everybody!! In
Hofmann's case, first
Kandinsky helped him
find a teaching job,
then invited Hofmann
to Paris, praising his
paintings—but
only having seen them
in photos. Typically
this "follower"—actually
imitator!!—of
Kandinsky and Klee was
able to sell his
imitations already in
the 1920s and '30s,
when there was a
market for decorative
copies of artworks at
affordable prices.
"In 1993, I organized
a week-long show with
lectures and panel
discussions under the
title 'What does
Kandinsky still have
to say to today's
painters?' This was
jointly sponsored by
the Royal Museum and
the Goethe-Institut of
Brussels. Completely
by chance, the latter
had an Otto Hofmann
show. When I saw those
harmless, uninspired,
small "Klees" and
"Kandinskys," I was
furious!! When I
interviewed Hofmann
for the "What does
Kandinsky…"
program, I asked him
what he thought about
Kandinsky's key
expression, "inner
necessity." Hofmann
understood the
criticism implicit in
my question, and
answered rightly that
this is the most
important belief of
every
artist—but, he
went on, living in
East Germany he
had been somewhat
hindered… But by
then he was living
luxuriously in
Southern France at the
Mediterranean Sea, and
was continuing to sell
his imitations very
successfully. What a
horror!"
All in all, we can see
that the thread of
creativity ran through
all of Kandinsky's
life in one form or
another. As a boy,
when all the families
with all their
children came
together, it was
always Kandinsky who
organized the theater
performances given by
the young people and
small children. As an
adult, once during a
visit to Odessa he
wrote to his longtime
companion, Gabriele
Münter, that he was
building an airplane
for one of the
boys. In 1937, in
his later life, he
mentioned in a letter
that he'd been to the
circus, as if it were
a usual outing:
"Yesterday I met by
chance Mrs.
André-Loewe at the
Circus."
Ultimately, the
creativity of the
artist is like that
circus animal in
Kandinsky's
"Fluttering Figure."
As artists we "ride"
creativity, not
knowing quite what
kind of being we
ourselves are, or even
what kind of creature
we are riding: is it a
pony? an elephant?
neither? both? We hold
on as gaily as we can,
partly guiding an
impulse, partly guided
by it; fluttering
somewhere between
pleasure and mystery.
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