New York - Saturday - Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky - "Composition VIII" - 1923

Doug (of the jokes) offered to drive me anywhere I wanted to go in and around New York, within reason. We arranged to meet at the Guggenheim Museum at 10:00 AM to view the Kandinsky exhibit. I love the Guggenheim. I love walking the ramp to view the art. In a review of the exhibit in The New Yorker, the author advised starting at the top of the winding ramp, because the best of the exhibit was located there. I always like to do that anyway, because it's easier to walk on a downward slope.

To see an exhibit of many works by a prolific and gifted artist is an extraordinary experience to me. I remember the wonderful Brancusi exhibit at the Guggenheim some years ago. The Kandinsky exhibit was no less extraordinary. I can't say that I agree with the reviewer in The New Yorker, because I saw works that resonated with me more so than others all throughout the exhibit and from several different periods in his long painting career.

My response to art is emotional to a great extent. Either I feel the work inside, or I don't. Some art literally takes my breath away. I think of the works of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Botticelli, Bellini, and Bernini's small "Head of an Angel" sculpture at the Frick Collection, (another of my favorite museums). There are others, but I won't make my list long.

Kandinsky is an artist of the spirit, so it was no surprise that a good many of his works attracted me. As we walked through the exhibit, I seemed to see more erotic forms than Doug, and he was laughing at me and maybe a little shocked as I pointed them out. I'm not sure what that says about me, but there it is. I won't be so bold as to do a review of the exhibit, as I have done previously, because I now know that the other Doug (Counterlight), the artist, will likely read the post, and I don't want to make a fool of myself.

The painting at the head of the post resonated with me, along with Reciprocal Accord. Due to copyright constraints, I can only link to the painting. I wanted to note the paintings that I liked best, but neither Doug nor I had a pen. Think of the brilliant commentary you missed for lack of a pen. The exhibit was drawn principally from the Guggenheim's own extensive collection of Kandinsky, from Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and from Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, as well as loans from private collections.

Monet's series of paintings of haystacks made a deep impression on Kandinsky:

That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me. I could not recognize it. This non-recognition was painful to me. I considered that the painter had no right to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting was missing. And I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.

Quote from Wiki.

Kandinsky left Russia and went to Munich to study, and then returned to Russia. There he was at odds with Russian theories of paintings, so he went once again to Germany to teach at the Bauhaus, until the Nazis shut it down. He left for France and spent the rest of his life there.

See the website of the Columbia Spectator for a review of the exhibit and an illustration of one of Kandinsky's haunting horse and rider series of paintings.



Me and Doug

After touring the exhibit, Doug and I went to the Madison Square Street Market, pictured below.



After walking around to view the wares in the booths, we had lunch from the food booths. Doug had BBQ, and I had Viking food, served by a Dane wearing braids and a horned helmet. I'm not joking. My Viking food consisted of meat balls of veal and pork, potato salad, and hot orange juice. The heating machine broke down while the Dane was heating my juice, so he gave it to me free, because it was not hot. To be quite honest, I was relieved to have an unheated cup of OJ, and that it was free made it taste all the better.

A post on our visit to New Jersey will follow.

PS: The Viking food was tasty.