Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art

A densely translated book. A must have reference for any artist's library.

This book deserves a commanding coign of vantage on the shelf of any reader desiring a deeper understanding of the creative process. In extending its reach beyond the requisite inclusion of Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art and Point and Line to Plane, the work embraces nearly 900 pages of life-giving insight by the master and driving force of nonobjective art. To cast a light on any one Kandinsky commentary is to risk a plunge of the whole into shadow. We nevertheless salute in general the author's reflections on his fellow artists, for as Kandinsky finds characteristics to praise he provides a refreshing view of art's operating mechanisms. To select but a single example, in a charming commentary on the paintings of musician Arnold Schoenberg the author skewers the popular idea that an artist achieves full realization through a discovery of a "corresponding form" recognizable to all comers. In fact, it is the very discovery of what Kandinsky calls a "dying form" which is to the artist "fatal." As for the converse, the artist who produces an ever-changing series of works representing in their form the development of a more sensitive and robust inner soul discovers, ironically, his works condemned for a lack of stylistic conformance. And so, says Kandinsky, "the dead passes for the living, and vice versa." Schoenberg, the author assures us, is one of the living for in each of his disparate works "the inner desire of the artist speaks forth in a form appropriate to it." If Kandinsky's control of the linguistic levers fails to rise to a degree of calibration one imagines appropriate to the vital topic, and if the author very often satisfies himself with the bold proposition which arrests the reader and inspires a healthy suspicion as to a deliberate reduction of the author's encircling vision, his conclusions are fired by a robust soul attuned to the finest strands of the real, and it only remains to add that in terms of abstraction this work must to the archway of understanding provide a requisite keystone.

This book is as thorough of a collection of writings by an individual as you will ever find. Including every major treatise, essay, and book by Kandisky, it goes a few steps further with every Kandisky poem (English and German translations) and play. Moreover, the book includes innumerable pamphlets and the like from the earlier late-Expressionist exhibits; also incorporated are several corrspondances between Kandinsky and contemporaries, particularly atonal composer Arnold Schoenburg--illuminating how each other's theories were mutually related and held a reciprocal influence. A little known fact, Schoenburg himself was a non-objective painter--photos of his works are among these pages, as well! Before each section is a contextual introduction to that particular writing. And much much more.

An obligatory text for any visual, aural, or literary artist, and a necessity for any true understanding of the nature of artistic creation.