Kandinsky, Klee, and Kline

Vassily Kandinsky; Composition VIII (1923)

            Three non-representational or abstract paintings I enjoy viewing are those of Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Paul Klee (1879-1940), and Franz Kline (1910-1962).  Although it’s obvious that I produce imagery that is entirely different from these painters, I’ve always liked their work and earlier some of my imagery was similar to theirs.  I see these three as representing the expressionist tradition that developed in the 20^th century, bridging the art circles of Europe and America.

            Kandinsky presents a development that is as much a part of his Russian environment as it was that of the proliferating movements among European painters.  Having settled in Germany, his landscapes, hills, and horses in vivid colors recall his Russian upbringing and the legacy of Orthodox icons along with peasant hues.  By 1909 his painting was stretching the bounds of realist expressionism and making its way to pure abstraction, as even the titles changed from such labels as “Landscape with Church” to “Study for Improvisation.”   Post-WW1, and once he was teaching at the German school Bauhaus, straight lines and geometry overtake the organic shapes and these are probably his best-known examples of abstract art.   Nonetheless, even after the NSDAP (National Socialist Deutsche Workers Party) shut down the Bauhaus and Kandinsky’s flight from Germany for France in the 1930s he continued to progress, recalling some of his older imagery through the organic shapes and ambiguous backgrounds. 

            Just to note that I remember decades ago in an Art History class, I asked whether Kandinsky’s paintings were meant to evoke microscopic life.  The teacher noted correctly that it really was about line, color, and shape paralleling music.  Still, I felt vindicated years later when I read that Kandinsky gleaned some of his later forms from viewing through a microscope.

 

Paul Klee; Fish Magic (1925)

            Swiss-born artist Paul Klee, like Kandinsky, moved to Germany in order to gain from the new art movements afoot there.  That in itself may deserve a future article since many may still think more of France than any other country between the wars as a place of artistic ferment.  And yet, Germany offered much creative impulse in all of the arts.  In any case, that’s where we find Klee in 1906 and parallel to Kandinsky, he too taught at the Bauhaus.  Klee’s early work reminds one of a Max Ernst collage, except that these are drawings instead of collage.  Strange figures, attenuated at points, anthropomorphic, within a minimal strange landscape, reflect a kinship with Ernst’s aesthetic.  By WW1, however, he was given over more to linear drawing sometimes overlaying a color-tiled landscape and after the war he intensified this in the use of color and repetition of shapes within the picture.

            In 1937, the NSDAP presented an exhibition the staff entitled Entarte Kunst or “Degenerate Art,” the purpose was to show these directions as corrupt, perverse, and a threat to society.  Among those works were those by both Kandinsky and Klee.  Klee had already returned to his Swiss homeland in 1933, where he died of progressive scleroderma in 1940.

 

Franz Kline; Orange and Black Wall (1959)

             Franz Kline exemplifies the American school of “Action Painting” or “Abstract Expressionism.” Along with those as Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, Kline paved the way for a new diversity in imagery, realizing that the process was as important as the result, and showing the process in the result.  Kline’s early work displays this potential and, indeed, it was at the de Kooning residence where pictures of his painting were shown through slides or some kind of viewer that enlarged it.  I believe it was Elaine de Kooning who suggested to Kline that he take a section of the painting and expand it as a full work.  Some critics have linked Kline’s black and white abstract imagery of his painterly bravado to his blue-collar upbringing in the coal town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, whereas others see no direct relation to any external situation or construction.  Either way, I’ve always liked the impact of a Kline painting more than his better known contemporaries Pollock and de Kooning, but that’s simply a personal preference.  Until his death Kline continued to adjust his style by adding color to his work, always sure to make the white spaces as important as those colored.

            It’s difficult to judge the impact of these three artists on my own imagery except to say that the iconic effect, the ability to hold attention because of the image itself, has been important.   The work of these three do so without relation to an external event or cause whereas most of my own artwork certainly does have an external relation but a few do not.  Those that do not follow in the legacy of Kandinsky, Klee, and Kline.