Kandinsky and Possibility

The common reaction to Abstract Expressionism usually follows the name of Barstow Art History’s famed blog: “My kid could paint that.” If so, perhaps the kid is probably onto something. Children possess a view of the world unburdened by the strictures of language and social codes rigorously implemented through harsh processes of socialization. “Here is when you must walk. Here is when you must run. Here is when you must be quiet.” Kandinsky’s Composition VII resists the authoritarian restriction on creativity: “draw in-between the lines.” For Kandinsky, lines move musically. He finds harmony in a canvas of chaos.

The liberating aspects of Composition VII come from its embrace of what Richard R. Brettell names “image/modernism” (Brettell 108). With the modern technological innovations of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, the purpose of art radically shifted. Painting, once conceptualized as a form of documentation, was supplanted by the precision of the photograph. Why paint now? In modernity, painting served as a reproduction of images rather than reality, “creating works in an endless flow of art” (107). With artists’ expanded image libraries enabled by lithography, art could embark upon an endless sea of possibilities. Brettell declares that “the imagination was the single most liberating arena available to modern man” (108). Composition VII represents Kandinsky’s project of pure imagination.

In this sense, Composition VII gives the boring world of landscapes and portraiture the middle finger. These forms of painting privileged the eye over the mind. However, why can’t we think of Composition VII as a landscape or portrait? The anarchic nature of the painting could reflect the uncertainty of the geopolitical landscape in which it was painted. Kandinsky’s reality in 1913 was drastically changing. Perhaps he was attempting to reconcile the radical transformation of Russian society from the provincial times of the 1860s in which he was born to the reality of political upheaval in his home country. Perhaps he was trying to paint a portrait of human emotion where the scale and color of Composition VII bring his audience to tears at its almost universal interpretation; not through language, but through a pictorial form of communication, which his Russian contemporaries like Kazimir Malevich attempted.

Children ask a lot of questions. Adults give a lot of answers. At times, these answers restrict possibility. Composition VII represents a project that prioritizes imagination, creativity, and openness. The painting asks us: “why can’t we?”

Works Cited

Brettell, Richard R. Modern Art 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.