Kandinsky

by Thomas M. Messer, Wassily Kandinsky (Artist)

Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was one of the founders of abstract painting, perhaps the most revolutionary development in 20th-century art. In this book, 40 of his major works are reproduced in full-page colorplates, each with an accompanying commentary.Author Thomas M. Messer has selected important paintings from every period of Kandinsky's long and varied career. The early Riding Couple is followed by such masterpieces as the apocalyptic Composition VI and Composition VII, which date from the years before World War I that witnessed Kandinsky's radical breakthrough into a richly colored abstraction. Other colorplates include the complete set of four decorative panels executed in 1914 for the American collector Edwin R. Campbell and Several Circles, perhaps the finest geometric work from Kandinsky's years at the Bauhaus school in Germany. The artist's final decade, spent in Paris, is represented by such works as the valedictory Tempered Elan.The introduction includes discussion of Kandinsky's highly original contributions to aesthetic theory, developed in the famous Blue Rider Almanac and his influential treatises On the Spiritual in Art and Point and Line to Plane. Photographs of the artist, his family, and his associates are also featured.m

Genres: Art, Art and Photography, Nonfiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Thomas Maria Messer was the director of the The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, for 27 years, a longer tenure than any other director of a major New York City arts institution.
Born and raised in Czechoslovakia, Messer became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and served in the U.S. Army in World War II. He earned a master's degree in art history and museology from Harvard University. From 1947 to 1961, he worked in a series of art and museum administration positions, the last of which was director of the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art. In 1961, he became director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. There, he was able to establish the usefulness of the spiral-shaped Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim as a venue for the display of art, despite the doubts of critics and artists. Messer was instrumental in expanding the museum's collection during his tenure, especially by persuading Peggy Guggenheim to donate her collection to the Guggenheim Foundation. He retired in 1988 to take up freelance curating, teaching, writing, lecturing.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Messer tracks Kandinsky from early landscapes through abstraction and geometry to his last years. I see his art as an attempt to depict spiritual forms in a material age.

[Steve Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for any fan of Kandinsky's art. It has 40 full-page color plates of some of his most significant works, spanning more than 40 years of his professional output. Each of these is accompanied by several paragraphs of focused analysis. The first 50 pages of the book feature an in-depth biography and analysis of Kandinsky's progression as he moves to between Germany, Russia, and France, and his art evolves through several distinct periods. The biographical half of the book contains another 40 pictures of the artist, his contemporaries, and other artworks. All of these are black and white, which is understandable for the historical photographs, but unfortunate for the reproductions of artwork.

While I'm sure that more comprehensive biographies exist, and more complete catalogs of his art, this seems like the perfect balance of art, analysis, and biography for anyone other than a Kandinsky scholar. After reading it and poring over the gorgeous art, I have a surprisingly complete and coherent picture of his development as an artist.

The parallel structure of the narrative text and the analysis accompanying the color plates made it somewhat cumbersome to read. And there were a surprising number of sloppy edits (duplicated sections of text, etc) for a book which otherwise seems meticulously prepared. But I certainly can't begrudge it the fifth star, considering how much I enjoyed it, and how much I learned from it at the same time.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed the text in this one, but drooled over and carefully studied the color plates. All in preparation for a lesson with my students on building abstractions, primarily music based. Kandinsky was a great way to introduce them to the idea of making art that was an emotional response to their surroundings.

[Namrirru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful large plates and a good biography.

[Heather]

I must read this since I should know all about the history of Kandinsky!! :)