Inventing Abstraction

I love the arts coverage on the NYTimes. Every once in a while I find myself lost in an exhibit or performance that I could never see, since I am on the "other coast." They often have commentary and videos for all of us non-New Yorkers to explore. I thought, over the next few weeks, I would share a few of my favorite finds here on my extremely neglected blog.

I'll begin with today's find...

Today when I opened up my link to the NYTimes, a video by David Carr and A. O. Scott was in the featured article/video spot. They went to the MoMA to explore a current exhibition, Inventing Abstraction. I am slightly obsessed with this period of European arts history, mostly because of my ongoing obsession with Arnold Schoenberg and Wassily Kandinsky. For example, there was a point in their video which showed Kandinsky's painting that was inspired by a concert of Schoenberg's 2nd String Quartet. Schoenberg's music not only inspired Kandinsky to paint, but also to correspond with the composer. This was the beginning of a friendship of likeminded artists, where they shared ideas, philosophies, and even vacations.

Kandinsky & Schoenberg with their wives in Murnau (1927)
I love the swimsuits!!

And this gets us to the focus of the MoMA exhibition, networks and connections. The curators of the exhibition wanted to show that move toward abstraction in the arts was not the invention of a single or solitary genius. Instead, it was the result of a large and interconnected network of artists - poets, musicians, composers, painters, sculptors, dancers, etc. In the video, they show a wall with a map of this interconnectivity across Europe. On the MoMA site, this map is interactive. It is amazing. The names in red are the artists that are included in the exhibit, but you can click on any of the names, linking you to a specific page for that artist. You'll see a short biography, along with their connections and holdings by MoMA. This gets you into images of the art as well as original musical manuscripts, etc.

• Connections: Inventing Abstraction

I think that I could play with this wonderful resource for days! This is not an overly detailed resource, but it does show off the art and the connections well. Be careful, you might find yourself motivated to read the correspondence between these fascinating and innovative artists (and not just Schoenberg & Kandinsky). In many ways, this map destroys the myth that I was taught in my music history classes that there was a specific French and German aesthetic. It is true that there are distinctions, but the connections show that there was a commonality of mind in the artistic community all over Europe. Imagination and creativity transcended national boundaries.

Of course, politics and power sometimes destroyed these creative friendships as well, as shown with Kandinsky and Schoenberg. Schoenberg was told by Alma Malher (another fascinating character that should be included in the interactive map) that Kandinsky was anti-Semitic, thus ending their friendship. They did correspond later in life, after Schoenberg had learned that her accusation was false, but by then, the toll of war, distance, and age were against any substantive renewal of their friendship. But between the years of 1910 and 1925, these creative Europeans did not know anything of the political and genocidal turmoil of WWII. How could any war be worse that WWI?

Overall, the point of the exhibit (or so said one of the curators on the NYTimes video) was to wonder and explore how such a change of mind in the arts could have occurred culturally. Imagination and interconnectivity can change the world... even in times of war.

“there has never been a time when the arts approached each other more nearly than they do today… In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the abstract, the non-material. Consciously or unconsciously [the arts] are obeying Socrates’ command—Know thyself. Consciously or unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material, setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements…A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end.“

Wassily Kandinsky in Concerning the Spiritual in Art