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Lot Essay
Kandinsky painted Weissgebunden (Whitebound) during a formative period of his career, when he was working and teaching at the Bauhaus alongside contemporaries like Paul Klee and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. This time at the Bauhaus in Dessau witnessed a significant development in both Kandinsky’s artistic and theoretical practices. During this period, Kandinsky moved away from the expressionistic style that had defined his work in the 1910s in favor of a much more geometric approach that invites comparisons with contemporaneous movements like Constructivism and de Stijl.
Throughout his career, Kandinsky’s artistic practice went hand-in-hand with his theoretical writing, and in 1926, Kandinsky published his seminal treatise, Point and Line to Plane, which elaborates upon many of the ideas introduced in On the Spiritual in Art (1911). Despite the sterility of its title which seems to reduce artistic creation to a mechanical process, Kandinsky was still searching for a spiritual dimension in art and actually insisted on a delicate balance between scientific rationality and painterly intuition: “In general, the ideal balance between the head (conscious moment) and the heart (unconscious moment-intuition) is a law of creation, law as old as humanity” (quoted in “Art Today,” Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1935, p. 83). In Weissgebunden, the gossamer, white threads which string together the central geometric shapes appear to mediate this relationship between two seemingly opposite artistic strategies – between an almost mathematical insistence on precision and a distinctly personal aesthetic sensibility. In one sense, these ‘threads’ form a kind of formal scaffolding, connecting the various elements of the ordered composition. However, as the eye follows these tenuous ‘threads’ across the composition, the viewer can also somehow trace the spontaneity of Kandinsky’s thought as it darts capriciously from one geometric form to the next.
In both his theoretical and artistic practices, Kandinsky in this way resisted a simplistic opposition between art and science. Instead, he posited “a science of art,” as he sought to locate a spiritualism within the sharp geometries of his compositions from this period. Will Grohmann observes that "During the last years in Dessau, from 1929 to 1932, Kandinsky constantly gained in assurance and lightness of touch. […] What distinguishes the paintings prior to 1933 is first of all the spirituality with which the mathematical and 'Constructivist' elements are treated, the unprecedented empathic response to forms derived from mathematical physics, and their adaptation to the realm of pictorial invention" (Grohmann, Kandinsky: Life and Work, pp. 210-211). For instance, in a similar work from 1929, Scharf im dumpf, the translucence of the reddish orb lends this shape a softness despite the apocalyptic associations of a blood-red sun. In Weissgebunden, the geometrical composition is ‘softened’ by the ethereal aura which forms a kind of halo around the central shapes. Forming a constellation in the darkness of the night sky, these shapes conjure up all the mystical associations of the cosmos. In this way, Kandinsky infuses these sharply-delineated shapes with the softness of painterly intuition such that Weissgebunden is able to transcend the finite dimensions of the picture-plane as it opens onto a beyond, the realm of the spirit.
Throughout his career, Kandinsky’s artistic practice went hand-in-hand with his theoretical writing, and in 1926, Kandinsky published his seminal treatise, Point and Line to Plane, which elaborates upon many of the ideas introduced in On the Spiritual in Art (1911). Despite the sterility of its title which seems to reduce artistic creation to a mechanical process, Kandinsky was still searching for a spiritual dimension in art and actually insisted on a delicate balance between scientific rationality and painterly intuition: “In general, the ideal balance between the head (conscious moment) and the heart (unconscious moment-intuition) is a law of creation, law as old as humanity” (quoted in “Art Today,” Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1935, p. 83). In Weissgebunden, the gossamer, white threads which string together the central geometric shapes appear to mediate this relationship between two seemingly opposite artistic strategies – between an almost mathematical insistence on precision and a distinctly personal aesthetic sensibility. In one sense, these ‘threads’ form a kind of formal scaffolding, connecting the various elements of the ordered composition. However, as the eye follows these tenuous ‘threads’ across the composition, the viewer can also somehow trace the spontaneity of Kandinsky’s thought as it darts capriciously from one geometric form to the next.
In both his theoretical and artistic practices, Kandinsky in this way resisted a simplistic opposition between art and science. Instead, he posited “a science of art,” as he sought to locate a spiritualism within the sharp geometries of his compositions from this period. Will Grohmann observes that "During the last years in Dessau, from 1929 to 1932, Kandinsky constantly gained in assurance and lightness of touch. […] What distinguishes the paintings prior to 1933 is first of all the spirituality with which the mathematical and 'Constructivist' elements are treated, the unprecedented empathic response to forms derived from mathematical physics, and their adaptation to the realm of pictorial invention" (Grohmann, Kandinsky: Life and Work, pp. 210-211). For instance, in a similar work from 1929, Scharf im dumpf, the translucence of the reddish orb lends this shape a softness despite the apocalyptic associations of a blood-red sun. In Weissgebunden, the geometrical composition is ‘softened’ by the ethereal aura which forms a kind of halo around the central shapes. Forming a constellation in the darkness of the night sky, these shapes conjure up all the mystical associations of the cosmos. In this way, Kandinsky infuses these sharply-delineated shapes with the softness of painterly intuition such that Weissgebunden is able to transcend the finite dimensions of the picture-plane as it opens onto a beyond, the realm of the spirit.