This week, in the latest installment of our series looking at monumental art, we’re immersing ourselves in the vibrant and joyful hues of Wassily Kandinsky’s masterpiece Composition No. 8, painted in 1923.
It is a reflection of the artist’s movement towards pure abstraction and is a perfect realisation of the increasingly influential idea of separating object from form, which had been developing from the start of the Twentieth Century.
The painting is large – approximately one and a half metres by two – and dominates the viewer’s gaze. But after the first striking moment of contact, we are drawn in by the intricate details of line and colour. Geometric shapes are spread in front of us on a quiet background of pale blue, yellow, and white. Unlike in the earlier compositions of this series, this background allows the shapes to become the focus of our gaze, whilst colours form relationships across the canvas, tying the red circular form on the left with the small square on the right.
The criss-crossing lines that meet across the canvas direct our gaze to the different moments of collision where the separate forms come together. The colours move from a soft haze of red and blue on the left of the canvas to the harsher whites and greys on the right. You can almost see the progress of the musical piece, which the work mirrors in its own way.
The recurrent semi-circles are also very noticeable, spanning their way across the canvas until they are met with a line that crosses them, signalling the start of a new movement.
Themes recur and vary, the painting adopting the structure of the rise and falls of a symphony. Looking at Composition No. 8, one cannot help but recall Walter Pater’s comment, “All art constantly aspires to the condition of music.” In this piece, Kandinsky moves beyond a centrally focused subject and achieves a unity of form, reflected in the recurring circular motif.
We are swept along by the movement, evoked through the forms and hues which seem to pulsate on the canvas, eliciting an almost physical response. We can almost hear the mixing of yellow with blue, of line with curve.
The strong impact of this technique is best understood when viewed in the context of Kandinsky’s approach to the painting. It is now widely presumed that the artist experienced synaesthesia, a neurological condition which allows the experiencing of multiple senses simultaneously. When painting Composition No. 8, it is important to consider that he may well have literally been seeing sound. On top of this, he was heavily influenced by the colour theories of Rudolf Steiner, as well as by the new musical theories of Arnold Schoenberg.
In Composition No. 8, one can see Kandinsky moving away from his work with the Blue Rider group, with whom he had previously been involved with in Germany, and towards the abstract expressionism for which he is now most widely recognised.
In this piece, and the series which surrounds it, he developed his focus on painting as a form through which to evoke the feeling of subject over direct representation of the subject itself. It is a highly evocative piece, and works on both a monumental and detailed scale, repeatedly drawing viewers in anew.
