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Page 4
The real plunge into Cubism was taken by Picasso, who, nurtured
on Cezanne, carried to its perfectly logical conclusion the
master's structural treatment of nature. Representation
disappears. Starting from a single natural object, Picasso and
the Cubists produce lines and project angles till their canvases
are covered with intricate and often very beautiful series of
balanced lines and curves. They persist, however, in giving them
picture titles which recall the natural object from which their
minds first took flight.
With Gauguin the case is different. The generation of his
disciples which followed him--I put it thus to distinguish them
from his actual pupils at Pont Aven, Serusier and the rest--
carried the tendency further. One hesitates to mention Derain,
for his beginnings, full of vitality and promise, have given
place to a dreary compromise with Cubism, without visible future,
and above all without humour. But there is no better example of
the development of synthetic symbolism than his first book of
woodcuts.
[Footnote: L'Enchanteur pourrissant, par Guillaume Apollinaire,
avec illustrations gravees sur bois par Andre Derain. Paris,
Kahnweiler, 1910.]
Here is work which keeps the merest semblance of conventional
form, which gives its effect by startling masses of black and
white, by sudden curves, but more frequently by sudden angles.
[Footnote: The renaissance of the angle in art is an interesting
feature of the new movement. Not since Egyptian times has it been
used with such noble effect. There is a painting of Gauguin's at
Hagen, of a row of Tahitian women seated on a bench, that
consists entirely of a telling design in Egyptian angles. Cubism
is the result of this discovery of the angle, blended with the
influence of Cezanne.]
In the process of the gradual abandonment of natural form the
"angle" school is paralleled by the "curve" school, which also
descends wholly from Gauguin. The best known representative is
Maurice Denis. But he has become a slave to sentimentality, and
has been left behind. Matisse is the most prominent French artist
who has followed Gauguin with curves. In Germany a group of young
men, who form the Neue Kunstlevereinigung in Munich, work almost
entirely in sweeping curves, and have reduced natural objects
purely to flowing, decorative units.
But while they have followed Gauguin's lead in abandoning
representation both of these two groups of advance are lacking in
spiritual meaning. Their aim becomes more and more decorative,
with an undercurrent of suggestion of simplified form. Anyone who
has studied Gauguin will be aware of the intense spiritual value
of his work. The man is a preacher and a psychologist, universal
by his very unorthodoxy, fundamental because he goes deeper than
civilization. In his disciples this great element is wanting.
Kandinsky has supplied the need. He is not only on the track of
an art more purely spiritual than was conceived even by Gauguin,
but he has achieved the final abandonment of all representative
intention. In this way he combines in himself the spiritual and
technical tendencies of one great branch of Post-Impressionism.
The question most generally asked about Kandinsky's art is: "What
is he trying to do?" It is to be hoped that this book will do
something towards answering the question. But it will not do
everything. This--partly because it is impossible to put into
words the whole of Kandinsky's ideal, partly because in his
anxiety to state his case, to court criticism, the author has
been tempted to formulate more than is wise. His analysis of
colours and their effects on the spectator is not the real basis
of his art, because, if it were, one could, with the help of a
scientific manual, describe one's emotions before his pictures
with perfect accuracy. And this is impossible.
Kandinsky is painting music. That is to say, he has broken down
the barrier between music and painting, and has isolated the pure
emotion which, for want of a better name, we call the artistic
emotion. Anyone who has listened to good music with any enjoyment
will admit to an unmistakable but quite indefinable thrill. He
will not be able, with sincerity, to say that such a passage gave
him such visual impressions, or such a harmony roused in him such
emotions. The effect of music is too subtle for words. And the
same with this painting of Kandinsky's. Speaking for myself, to
stand in front of some of his drawings or pictures gives a keener
and more spiritual pleasure than any other kind of painting. But
I could not express in the least what gives the pleasure.
Presumably the lines and colours have the same effect as harmony
and rhythm in music have on the truly musical. That psychology
comes in no one can deny. Many people--perhaps at present the
very large majority of people--have their colour-music sense
dormant. It has never been exercised. In the same way many people
are unmusical--either wholly, by nature, or partly, for lack of
experience. Even when Kandinsky's idea is universally understood
there may be many who are not moved by his melody. For my part,
something within me answered to Kandinsky's art the first time I
met with it. There was no question of looking for representation;
a harmony had been set up, and that was enough.
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