This year the Guggenheim museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Following the exhibition of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who created the signature spiraling building of the museum, Guggenheim has mounted a wonderful retrospective of Vasily Kandinsky.
The work of the abstract painter forms the foundation of the Guggenheim’s collection of modern art, and inspired Frank Lloyd Wright’s building, which was created to house the collection of Non-Objective Painting.
Kandinsky, who laid the ground work for abstract art is under appreciated in the US, where the history of modern art revolves around Picasso. In her recent article in New York Times, Roberta Smith suggest that this is perhaps because “Kandinsky did not make cleanly resolved masterpieces. He never painted a perfect picture.”
It’s true that walking through the exhibit, it’s hard to find the most important painting, which tells you the story of the world at the time. Kandinsky doesn’t have Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or Guernica. His body of work seems to be the search itself.
During the opening I spoke to the curator of the show Tracey Bashkoff who told me why Kandinsky interested her.
Besides being a painter, Kandinsky was also a theorist concerned with music and spirituality in the visual arts. He laid out his theories in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” (1912) and “Point and Line to Plane” (1926).
Ms. Bashkoff told me that in these works Kandinsky laid out a plan to introduce spirituality through abstract art to the modern audience:
One of the most pleasant discoveries was learning that the Guggenheim has encouraged a dialogue between Kandinsky and contemporary artists.
For example, the museum commissioned Rafael Lozano-Hemmer to create an interactive installation based on a Kandinsky’s work. His “Levels of Nothingness” ran for three days and consisted of a computerized microphone that analyzed the human voice and controled a full rig of robotic lights creating a color show on the ceiling of museum’s theater. The installation was shown three times with Isabella Rossellini reading passages from philosophical texts on skepticism, perception and colour by Kandinsky, Joseph Alberts, Wittgenstein and others.
Also, the museum has put on a series of artist-led tours of the exhibition. On October 19th, the Composer, artist, and performer R. Luke Dubois will take audiences through the show. On December 8-9th, the guide will be the artist collective assume vivid astro focus.
