Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: A Revolution in Painting
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: A Revolution in Painting Details
About the Author Hajo Düchting (b. 1949 in Düsseldorf) studied art history, philosophy and archaeology in Munich, where he gained his doctorate in 1981 with a thesis on Robert Delaunay’s Windows series. After working in museum and adult education, he moved on to teaching posts and guest professorships at the universities of Munich, Kassel, Leipzig, Saarbrücken and Mainz. Düchting has published numerous articles on the art of the modern era, color theory and the teaching of art, and has authored a number of TASCHEN titles, including Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Robert and Sonia Delaunay and Georges Seurat. Read more
Reviews
This review is of the large format (9.1 x 0.3 x 11.8 inches) Taschen edition of this book, which was the first edition published, as opposed to the latter smaller format editions (8.5 x 0.5 x 10.3 inches). The text is the same but, unsurprisingly, the illustrations are much larger and higher quality than in the smaller edition – if you can find the larger edition this alone makes it worth purchasing over and above the later smaller editions. This is true, in general, of all Taschen publishing books that compose the “Basic Art” series.Any review of this book would have to start out by stating that it is part of the Taschen “Basic Art” series. As such it is only 96 pages long and about half of these consist of illustrations of one type or another (primarily of the artist’s work but also a few B&W of the artist himself, with well-known artists of the time, etc.). Hence if one is looking for an encyclopedic book on the artist this is not. However, despite the book’s short length, it does a very good job at tying the artist’s life to his works as well as expounding on how his style developed over the course of his life. If someone is looking for a short book on just this, the book it is highly recommended. This, again, is very true of nearly all books in Taschen’s “Basic Art” series.This book does a very good job at integrating Kandinsky’s life with that of his art as well as examining how his “style” of art developed over the course of his life. One also learns how his art developed with his many travels. When he was young and lived in Tsarist Russia he was very much influenced by Slavic folk art. This influence stayed with him for the rest of his life albeit the form of this changed over time. When he moved to Germany his style, once again, changed but pretty much took the form that it would for the rest of his life (with minor modifications). He moved backed to Russia, immediately before the first world war and stayed through the early 1920s. However, he found Russia stifling, especially in regard to political constraints on arts (it’s a shame that the author does not provide much detail in regard to this) but, just as importantly, an artistic community that detested his “style”. He returned once again to Germany for a few years but, thanks to the rise of the Nazis in the early 1930s, moved to France. His art was included in the Nazi’s famous 1937 exhibit of “degenerate” art. In France he remained until his death in 1944 though the author does not mention why the Nazis left him unmolested. It would have been interesting to know why. In France he lived in poverty and in relative obscurity. More importantly, at least according to the author Hajo Duchting, his style did not evolve.One last point to note is that the illustrations are quite nice. Not up to par for art museum books costing $50 - $100 but unsurpassed for those in the $10 - $15 range. This is very typical of most books, but not all, in the Taschen Basic Art series (the book in this series on Hieronymus Bosch is one of the few examples of poor illustration in a Basic Art book).All and all highly recommended for anyone seeking an introduction to this wonderful artist.
