Vasily Kandinsky, a Colorful Life: The Collection of the Lenbachhaus, Munich. - book reviews

Weiss makes some very interesting interpretations of Kandinsky's works. It is unfortunate that she attempts to use them in isolation as a basis for unifying his entire career. Weiss maintains that the further Kandinsky moved from his origins, the more the earlier images reappear (albeit in a reassembled format) in his work, but it is difficult to accept her point that ethnographic and folkloric practices in Russia were the primary source of his themes and styles throughout his life--even while at the Banhaus in the twenties and in Paris during the thirties. A few selected works from each period of this artist's life may support the position that the ethnographic expedition had an impact on Kandinsky, but they do not convince us that this one trip dominated his art and life. Nonetheless, this book will contribute to the debate about arenas of influence upon Kandinsky's development.

The 1995 exhibition of Kandinsky's Compositions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York provided a spectacular opportunity for enthusiasts of abstraction and twentieth-century painting to immerse themselves in the works Kandinsky considered his major efforts. Magdalena Dabrowski, senior curator of drawings at the Museum of Modern Art and curator of the exhibition, gathered the mural-sized paintings from a wide range of public and private collections. The two largest (both from 1913), Composition 6 and Composition 7, with their vibrant colors and swirling designs were the stars of the exhibition (figs. 1 and 2)(8)

[Figures 1-2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The achievement of securing such major oils from the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and from the Tretyakov in Moscow was remarkable, but the exhibition would have been improved by a better sample of studies for the Compositions, particularly those from the Lenbachhaus in Munich. More of the preparatory water-colors and drawings would have allowed the viewer to see the motifs (apocalyptic and otherwise) upon which these major oils were based and would have provided the viewer with a more complex and varied experience of Kandinsky's intentions and processes. A number of the studies, in addition to photographs of Kandinsky's progress on Composition 7, appear in the catalogue, which synthesizes much of the literature on the Compositions. The section on Compositon 7 is particularly thoughtful and whets our appetite for a future exhibition where many scholars collaborate. The public responded strongly to this unique opportunity to see Kandinsky's major Compositions and crowded the galleries to see the works that have contributed so much to the explosive interest in pre-World War I abstraction.

The Museum of Modern Art catalogue on the Compositious should be read in conjunction with the publication related to the 1995 exhibition, Vasily Kandinsky, A Colorful Life: The Collection of the Lenbachhaus, Munich, which was translated into English this year. Edited by Vivian Barnett, who was responsible for the exacting catalogue entries, and by Helmut Friedel, director of the collection, the volume contains high-quality reproductions of the many studies for Kandinsky's Compositions as well as for his other major paintings from the Munich period. The book also includes works from the Banhaus and Paris periods, but its major contribution lies in its providing access in one volume to Kandinsky's sketchbooks, watercolors, graphics, and oils in addition to its comprehensive citations of published references to each work in the Lenbachhaus Collection.