Kandinsky and the Symbolist Heritage

• Published in: Art journal (New York. 1960) 1985-06, Vol.45 (2), p.137-145
• Main Author: Weiss, Peg
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Almanacs; Art exhibitions; Artistic representation; Circles; Cubism; Secessionism; Symbolism; Symbolist art; Symbolist poetry; Woodcuts
• ISSN: 0004-3249; 2325-5307
• DOI: 10.1080/00043249.1985.10792290

Franz Marc had no hesitation about situating Kandinsky in a direct line of succession from Symbolism. Writing in 1911, he said that there had been only three isolated examples of serious artists in the Germanic realm since what he termed the "catastrophic breakdown" of art in the middle of the nineteenth century. He named: Von Marées-Hodler-Kandinsky. Today that sequence may startle us. Von Marées, whose triptych on the theme of the "horseback" saints had become a kind of pilgrimage shrine for Munich artists, was seen as something of a curiosity. His enigmatic figures disposed within shallow landscapes suggested something of Puvis de Chavannes, and his heavy, dark impasto, Moreau. Hodler, whose Night (1890; Bern, Kunstmuseum) and Eurythmy (see Fig. 5) were exhibited at the Munich Secession in 1897, during Kandinsky's first full year in Munich (Night was awarded a gold medal at that exhibition), jarred contemporary sensibilities by situating "realistic" figures in stylized, unreal spaces. Both Von Marées and Hodler have been associated in the literature with the Symbolists. Today, both artists seem out of date and out of tune with the Kandinsky we think we know. Kandinsky, in contrast, seems ultramodern. But if we compare his St. George II of 1910 with the Von Marées precedents he surely knew, we find certain similarities-despite Kandinsky's seeming radicalism-both in the two-dimensionality of the rendering and in the pose of the figures (Figs. 1, 2). And another Kandinsky St. George-the St. George on the cover of the Blaue Reiter almanac (Fig. 3)-recalls yet another Von Marées St. George: the St. George of the "horseback" triptych (Fig. 4). Von Marées had painted his triptych St. George as a steel blue rider sporting an orange plume on his helmet. It was, in fact, this very color scheme that Kandinsky would select for the almanac St. George.