Edited with text by Tracey Bashkoff, Megan Fontanella. Text by Mark Antliff, Patricia Leighten, George E. Lewis.
Twenty-first-century Kandinsky: a reappraisal of the Russian abstractionist’s art, life and thought through the extraordinary collection of the iconic museum
One of the foremost artistic innovators of abstraction in the 20th century, Vasily Kandinsky sought to liberate painting from its ties to the natural world and promote the spiritual in art. This richly illustrated publication looks at Kandinsky anew, through a critical lens, reframing our understanding of this vital figure of European modernism, who was also a prolific aesthetic theorist and writer. A series of thematic essays considers his engagement with avant-garde artistic communities including the Bauhaus, his relationship to improvisation and music, his travels in Europe and Russia, and the influences behind his self-declared anarchist mode of abstraction, among other topics. Tracing Kandinsky’s life and work through his years in Moscow, several cities in Germany, and Paris, the texts offer striking new insights into an artist whose creative production and style were intimately tied to a sense of place—and displacement—and evolved amid the political and social upheavals catalyzed by the Russian Revolution and World Wars I and II. Kandinsky’s history is closely linked to that of the Guggenheim Museum. Solomon R. Guggenheim began collecting the artist’s work in 1929; a year later, they met at the Bauhaus, in Dessau. This book features more than half of the museum’s deep holdings of works by Kandinsky, presenting the full arc of his artistic development and career. Included are paintings in oil and oil with sand, reverse-glass paintings, as well as woodcuts, watercolors and drawings on paper. An illustrated chronicle of Kandinsky’s life and career, including selected exhibitions and publications, rounds out the volume.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle'.
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"Many call the present state of painting 'anarchy'… [which] is thought, incorrectly, to mean unplanned upheaval and disorder. But anarchy is regularity and order created not by an external and ultimately powerless force, but by the feeling for the good…giving rise to an ever-increasing freedom that, in turn, opens the way for subsequent revelations." So wrote Vasily Kandinsky in 1912 and it's still a whopper of a philosophy, drawn here from Around the Circle, the catalog to the Kandinsky show on view now at the Guggenheim, organized chronologically up and down the Museum's famous ramp so that viewers can see the Russian painter's work forward or backward in the context of his travels through Europe as he was continuously uprooted throughout the early 20th century. Featured image is "Three Sounds" (1926). continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 10 in. / 196 pgs / 125 color / 55 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $71 GBP £45.00 ISBN: 9780892075591 PUBLISHER: Guggenheim Museum AVAILABLE: 12/7/2021 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Guggenheim Museum. Edited with text by Tracey Bashkoff, Megan Fontanella. Text by Mark Antliff, Patricia Leighten, George E. Lewis.
Twenty-first-century Kandinsky: a reappraisal of the Russian abstractionist’s art, life and thought through the extraordinary collection of the iconic museum
One of the foremost artistic innovators of abstraction in the 20th century, Vasily Kandinsky sought to liberate painting from its ties to the natural world and promote the spiritual in art. This richly illustrated publication looks at Kandinsky anew, through a critical lens, reframing our understanding of this vital figure of European modernism, who was also a prolific aesthetic theorist and writer.
A series of thematic essays considers his engagement with avant-garde artistic communities including the Bauhaus, his relationship to improvisation and music, his travels in Europe and Russia, and the influences behind his self-declared anarchist mode of abstraction, among other topics. Tracing Kandinsky’s life and work through his years in Moscow, several cities in Germany, and Paris, the texts offer striking new insights into an artist whose creative production and style were intimately tied to a sense of place—and displacement—and evolved amid the political and social upheavals catalyzed by the Russian Revolution and World Wars I and II.
Kandinsky’s history is closely linked to that of the Guggenheim Museum. Solomon R. Guggenheim began collecting the artist’s work in 1929; a year later, they met at the Bauhaus, in Dessau. This book features more than half of the museum’s deep holdings of works by Kandinsky, presenting the full arc of his artistic development and career. Included are paintings in oil and oil with sand, reverse-glass paintings, as well as woodcuts, watercolors and drawings on paper. An illustrated chronicle of Kandinsky’s life and career, including selected exhibitions and publications, rounds out the volume.
