"The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being." Wassily Kandinsky

On a recent visit to New york city for the Christmas holiday, I was lucky enough to be invited to Christmas dinner with my beautiful daughter who lives in Manhattan Ashley, at her very close friends home Sara and Reed who Ashley had met while living in San Francisco, they all three moved to New york city to pursue Art (which all three are incredible real artist in every sense of there style. While at the Christmas dinner in Greenpoint which by the way was very nice, I had brought up the subject matter of Jackson Pollack and Wassily Kandinsky’s book point and line on plane, unknowing Reed was currently working on a project at the New York M.O.M.A. And he mentioned that there was an exhibit currently named on-line,

I knew the abstract impressionism show was currently at the grand museum, and I mentioned to Reed that Ashley and I were headed over to the exhibit the next day. Reed said I have something for you, he returned with an M.O.M.A. pamphlet that showed the address and photos of the original studios of the great Abstract Impressionist in the great movement of Pollack de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and all the other greats. Ashley my amazingly beautiful gifted daughter lived only a very short distance from the area. Reed then said I will V.I.P. you tickets to the M.O.M.A. for the 27 th

I could not stop looking at the said pamphlet, I knew the address fairly well right next to the N.Y.U. campus ( I thought to myself it makes so much sense) I had always presumed Pollack’s studio was on long Island and he did all his important work with Lee, he in the barn, and her in the kitchen ( with the support of Peggy Guggenheim). So off I trekked the next morning walking with Ashley to Soho where she works, as we walked a tiny snow flake appeared and Ashley said “here comes the snow storm they have been calling for two days that never showed up.” You know how New Yorkers walk, (walkrunning), so after leaving Ashley I set out to get a YouTube video of Pollack and the others studios, well you all know what happened that day Thunder snow and 80 mile an hour winds.

I kept on walking, of course in the village I got lost like everyone gets lost who does not live in the city. Jackson Pollack

I rethought my plans later much later, off to the M.O.M.A. I trekked over to the museum masterpiece, and on my way shot a video of a NEW YORK CITY bus stuck on 7 th avenue in the snow right in front of Barclays I yelled to the bus driver who was standing outside the bus shaking his head, maybe you can get some of the Investment bankers in Barclays to come bail you out, he said “now that is funny” I said no that’s a metaphor of grand proportion.

When I arrived at the M.O.M.A. I felt like a king straight over to the V.I.P. booth no waiting, wow me Kevin blanch the Utah boy lover of Pollack the Wyoming boy having the opportunity to see my first live Pollack in V.I.P. style ( better than a Irish car bomb at the blarney stone, and that is good very good).

Strait to the Pollack’s and de Koonings next up to the sixth floor to see the online exhibit, I did not expect what I found WOW WOW WOW, Kandinsky’s , with original copies of his writings, around the corner Warhol videos playing all around me I stood in the center of the room surrounded by Warhol’s Icons video masterpieces, One of his videos named the blowjob I woman and her 20 something daughter standing next to me said “ I am going to complained that is disgusting,” I THOUgTH TO MYSELF WAIT until SHE WALKS AROUND THE CORNER AND SEES the dangling harness working in nude as a Pollack’s interruption in the early 70s . Then I thought about my book I had just finished Post Ignorance the blow job that changed the world.

I then walked to the corner and was so surprised a small exhibit on Nevada lake bed spiral lines, I had just two months earlier shot video of Smithson’s Jetty and had been writing about the experience I had with Smithson in 1970 ( my father and Grandfather had been involved with the building of the jetty) I was lucky enough to meet Smithson at the Jetty in 1970 he patted me on the head and talked with my father ( they looked a lot alike as I recall) the spiral jetty is my favorite piece of real estate on earth. I visit every fall and have a little picnic there, the water is very red in October, and the vista is very blue, and the salt very white, and the stone he used from the hill side very black. It is stunning and spectacular in line but mostly in color. Spiral Jetty

I eventually got my video of Pollack’s early studio, but I could not stop thinking of Kandinsky’s line drawings of the Ballerina. I had never seen them before. I was so excited I had to drink several Irish car bombs at the blarney stone, and eat three plates of devils on horseback at the spotted pig with several more booms. Every time I drink a guinness now I think of Zenyata, Pollack, de kooning, and Kandinsky’s ballet lines, so you know I drink a lot of guinness,, if I don’t I end up thinking of my three day nightmare at J.F.K. and terminal 5 (jet blue nightmare).

Just keep thinking of my happy place at the jetty, at the New York M.O.M.A. and Sara and Reeds roof looking over the red and green art deco giant. You do know Zenyatta drinks guinness and Aloe Vera; I like to add a little red swirl on top of my Zenyatta.Horse Racing and Wealth speaking of art deco giants Leslie Hodgsons 1905 masonic temple Ogden Utah

Kevin Dwayne Blanch 2/17/11

On Line,” a century of drawing, at MOMA, review : The New Yorker

Nov 29, 2010 ... ABSTRACT: THE ART WORLD review of “On Line: Drawing Through the ... especially Wassily Kandinsky, from whose essay “On Line” (1919) the ... One idea is key: Kandinsky's proposition that a line is a point set in motion. ...

www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/.../11/.../101129craw_artworld_schjeldahl

Point and Line to plane

Point and Line to Plane (Dover Books on Art History) [Paperback]

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky: 1866-1944 a Revolution in Pai... by Hajo Duchting

4.2 out of 5 stars (5)

$9.99

Kandinsky: Complete Writings On Art by Kenneth C. Lindsay

4.5 out of 5 stars (6)

$27.32

The Biography http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/ <<<< great site

Beginning. Moscow. 1866-1896

In 1896 he left for Munich, at that time considered to be one of the centers of the European art, and entered Anton Azbe's (Yugoslavian artist) prestigious private painting school , where he received the first skills in image composition, in work with line and form. However, rather soon the school ceased to satisfy his needs. Later the artist would write, "Quite often I yielded to a temptation to play truant and to go with a painter's case to Shvabing, to Englishen-Garten, or to the parks on the Isar". In 1900 after a failure of the previous year, Kandinsky entered the Munich Academy of Arts, and studied under Franz Stuck, "German graphic artist Number One". The master is happy with his student, but considered his palette too bright. Meeting the Master's requirements, for the whole year Kandinsky drew exclusively in black-and-white spectrum , "studying the form as that". During that period Kandinsky got acquainted with a young artist, Gabriela Munter, and in 1903 he divorced his wife, Anna Chimyakina. The following five years he with Gabriela travelled across Europe, being engaged in painting and participating in exhibitions. Having returned to Bavaria, they settled down in a small town of Murnau at the bottom of the Alps. It was the beginning of the stage of intensive and fruitful search. The works of those years were basically landscapes, based on color discords. The play of color spots and lines was gradually superseding images of reality (Akhtyrka. Autumn. A sketch, 1901; Sluice, 1901; Old Town, 1902; Blue Rider, 1903; The Gulf Coast in Holland, 1904; Murnau. The Bailey, 1908). At that very time he turned to Russian fairy epic olden time, creating captivating images (Russian Rider, 1902; Russian Beauty on the Landscape Background, 1904), making mysterious legends about slavic wooden cities visible (Russian Village on the River with the Shallops, around 1902; To the City, around 1903).

"Blue Rider". 1911-1914

Kandinsky due to his active creativity and organizational skills always attracted anything intellectual, restless, striving, which was in the world of art of that time. Thus, in 1901 he founded Phalanx, an art group, in Munich and started a school, in which he taught himself. For four years Kandinsky had arranged twelve exhibitions of the painters who were Phalanx's members. In 1909 he together with Jawlensky, Kanoldt, Kulbin, Munter and others, co-founded The New Group of Artists (Neue Kunstlervereinigung), Munich (MKUM) and became President. The Creed of the society is Not only does each of participants know how to tell, but as well they know what to tell. In 1900 Kandinsky participated in the exhibitions of the Moscow Partnership of Artists, and in 1910 and 1912 in the exhibitions of "Jack of Diamonds" art group. Besides, he published his critical Letters from Munich in the magazines The World of Art and Apollo (1902, 1909). In 1911 Kandinsky together with his friend, Frantsem Mark, an artist, established a group called Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter). According to the artist, "the accent was made on revealing associative properties of color, line and composition, and they used various sources, such as Goethe and Phillip Runge's romantic theory of color, "Jugendstil" and Rudolf Steiner's theosophy".

"There was no any other time when Kandinsky's painting develop as promptly as during the Munich years", wrote M.K. Lacoste, "At times it is hard to understand, why at the beginning the founder of abstract painting selected the plots typical for Bidermeierstyle - fans, crinolines, riders. The style of his works of the early period can be called neither conditional nor pretentious but in them nothing portended a radical renovation of painting. However, only few artists are known to have luck to show simultaneously originality in form and content. At first, it was important for Kandinsky to try his own opportunities of expression. Though one cannot but admit that Evening (1904-1905) has its own originality, however, it is difficult to imagine that it was created by the very artist who in five-six years would bring the first abstract work (1910) in history of art into the world. What a great creative force should operate in Kandinsky! What prompt evolution from 1908 to 1914 - from landscapes, though bold already in color and form, but still true to nature, as "Houses in Murnau on Obermarkt" "(1908), up to a chaotic sketch called "Gorge" (1914) and restless compositions in a series of pictures "Seasons" in Guggenheim's Museum (Autumn). It would be difficult to guess a hand of the same artists in rather objective "Crusaders" (1903) and in such an abstract work, as "Composition VII", 1913, despite their common dynamics. Here - a constrained impulse, there - a liberated movement". At the same time Kandinsky rendered tribute to literary activity. In 1912 "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" was published. Turning upside down the established idea about art in general, this book became the first theoretical foundation of abstractionism. Having come to an idea, that "the purposes (and therefore, means) of nature and arts are essentially, organically and according to the laws of the Universe are various - and equally great... and equally strong", the artist proclaimed creative process of "self-expression and self-development of spirit". Besides, Kandinsky wrote memoirs Looking Back (1913); in Russian translation - Stairs), the collection of verses Sounds (1913) with 55 black-and-white and color lithographs.

Returning to Russia. 1914-1921

When the World War began Kandinsky was compelled to leave Germany. On August, 3rd, 1914 he and Gabriela moved to Switzerland where Kandinsky started to work on the book about "point and line". By November of the same year they had parted. Gabriela came back to Munich, and Kandinsky went to Moscow. In the autumn of 1916 Kandinsky got acquainted with Nina Andreevskaya, the daughter of the Russian General, and he married her in February, 1917. During these crisis years of revolution Kandinsky alternated among half-abstract idiom, Impressionist landscapes and romantic fantasies. In his abstract pictures geometrization of separate elements became stronger, the reason for that is, first, the proper process of simplification, and, secondly - the Avant-Garde artistic atmosphere of Moscow of that time. In Russia Kandinsky was in the vein of the post revolutionary cultural and political development. From 1918 till 1921 he cooperated with ISO of Narkompros (People's Committee of Education) in the field of art training and museum reform.

1919 and 1921 he published six big articles. As Chairman of the State Purchasing Commission at the Museum Bureau of the ISO Department of Narkompros he participated in founding twenty two provincial museums. But Kandinskt renders the biggest influence as a teacher of the Moscow Svomas (Free Workshops), and then Vkhutemas. Being its Professor since October, 1918, he designed a special curriculum based on the analysis of color and form, developing the ideas stated in On the Spiritual in Art. Then, participating in the foundation and management of the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) he designed a curriculum for it, based on his theory. However, his opinion differed from the opinion of the Board of the Institute. Kandinsky's opponents - Rodchenko, Stepanova and Popova - are for the exact analysis of materials, for their constructive arrangement and setting. Any display of irrationality in creative process was emphatically denied. Kandinsky, in his turn, vigorously opposed the Constructivist opponents: "Just because an artist uses 'abstract' methods, it does not mean that he is an 'abstract' artist. It doesn't even mean that he is an artist. Just as there are enough dead triangles (be they white or green), there are just as many dead roosters, dead horses or dead guitars. One can just as easily be a "realist academic" as an "abstract academic". A form without content is not a hand, just an empty glove full of air". The unceasing attacks of his colleagues-artists considering his works as " mutilated spiritism " (Punin) were a determinative for Kandinsky to leave Moscow in December, 1921. The pressure of socialist ideology upon the art, which led eventually to appearance of socialist realism, began after 1922. Kandinskii's pictures for many years are put away from the Soviet museums.

Bauhaus. 1922-1933

After returning to Germany, Kandinsky accepts an invitation of Walter Gropius, the founder of the well-known Bauhaus (the Higher school of construction and art designing) and he and Nina moved to Weimar where Kandinsky headed a fresco workshop. He again taught and developed the ideas. They dealt, first of all, with the deep analytical studying of separate elements of a picture, which resulted into "Point and Line to Plane" in 1926. Kandinsky also worked much and experimented with color, applying his analytical foundation and the conclusions in his teaching. Kandinsky's works again underwent changes: individual geometrical elements increasingly entered the foreground, his palette was sated with cold color harmonies which, at times, are perceived as a dissonance, the circle is used differently, as a sensual symbol of perfect form. "Composition VIII", 1923 is the main work of the Weimar period. Alongside with conceptual works, at this time he created Small Worlds rich in fantasy for Propilei Publishing House and some chamber, "intimate" pictures, such as "Small Dream in Red", 1925. Also Kandinsky lectured and exhibited in the USA, having established together with with Feininger, Javlenskii, and Klee "Blue Four".

In 1925, due to the right wing parties' attacks Bauhaus in Weimar was closed. The second period of Bauhaus in Dessau began in quite favorable conditions: Kandinsky and other artists conducted some free classes of painting where they, besides teaching, could paint freely. "Yellow-Red-Blue", 1925, is one of the significant works describing a stage of "cold romanticism" in Kandinsky's painting. "A circle, which I use recently so often, could not be called otherwise but romantic. And the present day romanticism is essentially deeper, more beautiful, more substantial and more salutary - it is a piece of ice, in which fire is burning. And if people feel only cold and do not feel fire - so much the worse for them..." In Dessau Kandinsky with a new force was carried away with romantic ideas of "Gesamtkunstwerk" (an idea of synthesis of arts in one work). These ideas were embodied in Yellow Sound and in graphic support of Mussorgskii's Pictures to the Exhibition. Kandinsky's painting of the last years in Bauhaus was penetrated with ease and strange humour, which again would be shown in his late Parisian works, For example, his picture "Capricious", 1930, can be possibly referred to them, it evokes some cosmically Egyptian associations and is filled with fantastic symbolical images in the spirit of Paul Glue, the artist with whom Kandinsky made friends at that time. About 1931 national socialists started a large scale campaign against Bauhaus, which led to its closing in 1932. Kandinsky with his wife emigrated to France where they took up their residence in a new house in the Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. Between 1926 and 1933 Kandinsky painted 159 oils and 300 water colors. Many of them, unfortunately, have been lost after Nazis declared Kandinsky's and many other artists' paintings to be "degenerate".

Biomorphic Abstraction. Paris. 1934-1944

The Parisian artistic environment turned to be reserved to Kandinsky's presence. The reasons for that were his isolation from foreign colleagues and absence of recognition of abstract painting in general. As a result of this the artist lived and worked lonely, being limited to socialize only with his old friends. At this time the last transformation of his painting system happened. Now Kandinsky did not use a combination of primary colours but worked with soft, refined, subtle nuances of colour. Simultaneously, it supplemented and complicated the repertoir of forms: on the foreground there appear biomorphic elements, which feel at ease in the space of a picture as if floating all over the surface of a canvas. Kandinsky's pictures of this period are far from the feeling of "cold romanticism", in them life seethes and boils (see pictures "Sky Blue", 1940, "Complex-Simple", 1939, "Colourful Ensemble", 1938 и др.). The artist named this period of his creativity to be "really a picturesque fairy tale". During the war-time period because of the shortage of materials the formats of his pictures become ever less, up to that moment when the artist was compelled to be content with gouache painting on cardboards of a small format. And again he confronted with aversion of the public and colleagues. And again he developed and improved the basics of his theory: "Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with "reality," next to the "real" world. Deeper down, it is subject to the common laws of the "cosmic world." And so a "new world of art" is juxtaposed to the "world of nature." This "world of art" is just as real, just as concrete. For this reason I prefer to call so-called "abstract art" "concrete art.". Kandinsky up to the very end had not doubted his "inner world", the world of images where the abstraction was not an end in itself, and the language of forms was not "deadborn"; they arose from will to pithiness and vitality.

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