The Painters of the Blaue Reiter and Japan

Japonisme, like today’s Japanese pop culture, is a transcultural phenomenon. In the ‘classical phase of Japonisme’ individual artists were influenced by Japanese art (especially by ukiyo-e woodblock prints) and transcended thematic and compositional adaption: the confrontation with Japanese art sparked a creative process and led to new developments in art. Japonisme became not only an important medium in the development of modern western art, but also attested a cultural transcendence.

Choreographing Kandinsky’s ‘Spiritual’ in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Wassily Kandinsky’s geometrical paintings were inspired by the ballet world, and by the body movements of the ballerina. Moreover, painting and ballet communicate with each other. And geometry has helped that. Then, the idea of this article starts with the necessity in relating Kandinsky’s Spiritual theory on non-materiality exposed in Über das Geistige in der Kunst with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes brought on Parisian scene between 1909s and 1929s. Ballets Russes is the term which names all the ballet representations thought and designed by Sergei Diaghilev after his musical-cultural conflict with Nikolai Rimski Korsakov. Starting with 1907s, Kandinsky had initiated Der Blaue Reiter group and he starts with various drawing techniques. Were favourable years in which Kandinsky’s evolution from simple drawings to sophisticated Compositions got up. We are witnessing a cultural increasement. So, the ballet, the music, the theatre and the painting can not be separated any more or, at least, or, at least, cannot be thought of separately as systems of aesthetic theory. The aesthetic evolution from ballet and theatre had influenced the evolution in painting. What we will try to show as novelty in our investigation, is the kinetic and spiritual relation between Kandinsky’s Compositions and some representations from Ballets Russes by Sergei Diaghilev, especially with the «L’Oiseau de feu». In conclusion, we want to show how the lines designed by Wassily Kandinsky are describing ballet’s movements. The methods used in our research have consisted in the inter-artistic comparison between Wassily Kandinsky’s theory of painting and the ballets designed by Sergei Diaghilev. We also brought a philosophical and personal perspective on both worlds.

Suomalaisen tarinan saksalaisvenäläinen säie: Tyko Sallisen kansankuva ja primitivismi

Käsittelin artikkelissani Tyko Sallisen (1879-1955) henkilökuvia ja niiden suhdetta Saksan ja Venäjän modernin taiteen pyrkimyksiin. Halusin selvittää, millä tavalla Sallisen 1910-luvun jälkipuolella maalaamissa kansankuvissa ilmennyt arkaaisuuden tavoittelu ja alkukantaisen primitiiviseksi koettu ilmaisu on yhteydessä vastaaviin ilmiöihin Saksassa ja Venäjällä. Sallisen aiempi leimaaminen erityisesti kansalliseksi taiteilijaksi oli pääasiallinen syy siihen, miksi venäläisen Natalia Gontsharovan ja saksalaisen Der Blaue Reiter –ryhmän pyrkimysten ja Sallisen taiteen vastaavuus näytti tutkimisen arvoiselta. Artikkelissani osoitin, että Sallisen taiteessa on samankaltaisia tunneilmaisun primitiivisyyttä ja hartautta korostavia piirteitä sekä kertomuksellisuutta kuin Natalia Gontsharovan niin sanotussa uusprimitivismissä. Molemmat ovat käyttäneet taiteessaan myös kansallisesti luonteenomaisiksi oletettuja väriyhdistelmiä, vaikka molempien taidetta yhdistää tunnevaikutusta luovien tyylikeinojen omaksuminen Ranskan modernista taiteesta. Vuonna 1912 julkaistun Der Blaue Reiterin almanakan kirjoitukset ja varsinkin saksalaisen Franz Marcin vaatimus saada taiteella välitön yhteys ’kansaan’ limittyvät myös siihen alkuperäisyyden hakemiseen, mitä Sallinen tavoitteli.

Klee, Paul (1879-1940)

Paul Klee was one of the most important and inventive figures in the development of Modernism in the visual arts. The Swiss-German artist's unusual oeuvre drew on the work of other modernist painters while also challenging foundational tenets of Modernism in painting. The son of a music teacher, Klee was a talented violinist. As an adolescent growing up in Berne, Switzerland, Klee was interested not only in the visual arts but also in poetry and music. After graduating from the Berne Gymnasium in 1898, Klee moved to Munich to study art at the academy. In 1906, Klee married the pianist Lily Stumpf; their only child was born the next year. Relatively isolated from avant-garde art, Klee undertook a prolonged artistic self-education, attempting to break down pictorial art into its elements—line, tone, color—and master them one by one. In 1911 and 1912, Klee became friendly with the artists of Der Blaue Reiter, including Vassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and August Macke, who accompanied Klee on a trip to Tunisia in 1914. Through these new connections, Klee became familiar with a broad spectrum of modernist art. In 1916, Klee, a German citizen, was drafted; he served as a clerk in Bavaria, far from the front. During the war, the Berlin dealer Herwarth Walden energetically promoted Klee's work. By 1920, many in the German avant-garde acknowledged Klee as a major artist, and Walter Gropius invited him to join the faculty of the newly established Bauhaus.

Fauvism

French Fauvism (c. 1904–1907) comprised a loosely formed group of painters whose mentor, Henri Matisse (1869–1954), argued for a new approach to painting, integrating the chromatic lessons of Neo-Impressionism, the symbolist evocation of sensation through color and form and the expressive nature of the artist. The style was not programmatically theorized until it was essentially over, and yet Fauvism fundamentally shifted the course of modern painting, anticipating Cubism, Orphism and abstract painting. Fauvism incorporated bold, brash colors, often applied directly from commercially produced tubes of paint; gestural and broken brush-work; lack of finish; and color used for expression rather than description, resulting in flattened and distorted perspectives that radically diverged from mimetic representation. While its pictorial advances shocked conservative critics and audiences of its time, Fauvism – like many early avant-garde movements – maintained an appreciation of historical painting and its iconographies (landscape, cityscape, still life, and portraiture). Similar to Expressionism, Fauvism differed significantly from the German schools Die Brücke (Dresden, 1905–13) and Der Blaue Reiter (Munich, 1911–14) in its stress on pleasing decorative and synthetic effects.