I found out a few weeks ago that the Centre Pompidou has a large Kandinsky exhibit. The head librarian at the Amsterdam Theosophical Library was going to Paris last week and asked if I knew of any interesting things going on there. I immediately told him about the Kandinsky exhibit and briefly outlined how Kandinsky was influenced by Theosophy. I asked him to bring me the catalog of the exhibit if he was going. Much to my pleasure, he did go and was kind enough to buy the large and heavy book. He lugged it around Paris for the day just to bring it back for me. He has my greatest appreciation for sacrifice made on my part. I picked up the book yesterday and it is fantastic.
Kandinsky, Fragment 2 for Composition VII , 1913; Oil on canvas, 87.5 x 99.5 cm (34 1/2 x 39 1/4 in); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Kandinsky is considered one of the founders of abstract art. For this he is both praised and cursed. For many, abstract or non-representational art is hard to approach. At least with figurative art, there is something in it we can recognize, evaluate, and compare to the conventional world. Abstract art takes us away from what we know, from that with which we are comfortable. How is one supposed to evaluate abstract art? Just for the colors? Forms? Brush strokes? Materials? This makes looking at the art difficult. People say they just don’t “get it.” This is one of the many reasons that abstract and non-representational art as become the domain of specialists and modern art enthusiasts and is less appreciated by the “average man on the street.”. I must admit, at one point I was in this camp. I did not know what to do with abstract art. How long do I look at it? Do I focus on all of it, or just a part? How am I supposed to feel about it? Does the art make any sense?
A few years ago I was talking to a friend about how we would create the world if we were gods? If you were the Almighty, what aesthetic would you use to design the world? In the course of the conversation I mentioned Romare Bearden and how I really liked his large scale collages. For me, putting the two together created a world in which living collages interacted and size and proportion were divergent from what we are used to today. Without knowing it, though, in that conversation the seed was laid for my appreciation of abstract art.
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Tags: abstract, Amsterdam, Art, astral, Centre Pompidou, Jackson Pollock, Nieuwe Kerk, non-representational, personal thoughts, Romare Bearden, the source, Theosophy, Wassily Kandinsky
Tags: Amsterdam, Art, Books, Magick, Modernity, Personal, Theosophy
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