Thinking in retrospective of Kandinsky's work I recently saw in an exhibition on the Russian Avant-garde and its significance in respect to the principles described in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art. It is hard to ignore the powerful presence of these paintings in the exhibition rooms, recalling the notion of the rhythms of colors and shapes described by Kandinsky as part of his emerging style. The significance of these rhythms, although probably perceived at various degrees by viewers (I am assuming), it is only interpreted and fully understood by an educated audience, that Kandinsky himself place at the top of the"pyramid"of knowledge.
Kandinsky wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art in explanation of the principles of his notion of nonobjective painting. The book, almost a manifesto reclaiming spirituality and Kandinsky's personal escape from the oppression of materialism (both in art and spirituality), clearly advocates the importance of an "internal spiritual truth"expressed in art with compositions of colors and abstract forms.
Kandinsky claims that this "internal truth" can be rendered by expressing a detachment of the inner self from the natural world (intended as the world we inhabit). The abstraction of the forms with which the world is perceived is necessary to achieve this separation from nature, and the more abstracted are these forms, the "more likely ... [is] the inner meaning to be pure." He also claimed that a direct effect on emotions can be evoked with abstract forms and colors tight to perceptions of the visual realm. And interpreted this notion through analogies between the activity of painting and composing music, suggesting that compositions of colors have a direct effect on emotion and evoke mental images and feelings in a similar way musical notes do. Composition of colors and shapes can be, therefore, according to Kandinsky, put together and perceived in a similar way a melody is.
Kandinsky's paintings in the Russian Avant-garde exhibition explicitly exemplified this resonance of colors and abstract forms. And the abstract form most used for this series is the theme of the"oval," a shape apparently adopted often by Kandinsky during this time.
The exhibition's flyer describes these variation in compositions of the oval shape as "enclosures of a space with abstract design occupying the interior of that space alongside." Kandinsky in regard had claimed that (from the exhibition's flyer) "creation is free and must remain so, in other words it must not be subject to any pressure, with the sole exception of the pressure brought to bear by one's interior voice. So, I am not afraid when something is reminiscent of a natural shape."
It was also suggested shamanic rituals to have had a certain influence in pieces such as Composition n: 217 "Grey Oval"; suggesting that the symbolic shape-the oval-at the perimeter of the interior image, is also the shape of the shamanic drum, representing the cosmos. An idea emphasized by the apparent role of oriental and shamanic culture in the construction of notions of avant-garde cosmology in Russia.
The theosophic thought, overall driving Kandinsky's search for spirituality, is particularly felt in the painting Black Spot-because of its association, the exhibition's flyer suggested, with satanic forces and with the "cosmological effects of the black hole."
Black Spot:
Composition n.217 "Grey Oval"
Two Ovals
White Oval
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