Van Gogh and expressionism

fM fiflllH MD EXPRESSIilSMZ

tAlt liOGH
410

eXPRESSIOIISM

3fAURICE TLXHMAIV

©1964, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, ^ew lork

Library of Congress Catalogue Card .A umber: 64-21306

Printed in the United States of America

TIIK SOLOMON- H. G L'TiGK^f TIKIM KOUXIJ AXION"

TKUSTEES

HARKY K. GUG0E:]VHEI>I, PKESIDEXT

ALBERT E. Tl-TIRLE. VICE PRESir>EN'T

H. TT, AK>"ASO>r. VICE PRESID K?*^'r, ART ADMIJflSTKATIOJ*^

ELEAXOK, COONTESS CASTLE STEWART

DAX^A DRAPER

PETER O. LAAVSOJf-.JOHNSTON'

A. CHATJXCEY >rE\VLI>.'

>IRS. HE>rRY OBRE

n A X I !•: L CATTOX RICH

MICHAEL F. ■U^ETTACH

MEDLEY G. B. WHELPLEY

CARL ZIGROSSER

Van Gogh and Expressionism was prepared by Maurice Tuchman.
Research Fellow and Lecturer at The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Musem. It follows a similar commentary on Cezanne and Struc-
ture in Modern Painting published by the Museum a year ago.

In both instances it was our intention to make obvious points.
We wished to reiterate that the most consistent and conspicuous
forms of Cezanne later found expression in the styles of Cubism,
Neo-Plasticism and Suprematism, the Bauhaus and the geometric
modes of contemporary painting. Similarly, we mean to stress
in the current exhibition and the accompanying commentary
that the opposite, clearly identifiable aspect of Van Gogh's style
—one transforming emotion through expressive color and ges-
ture—is embodied in Fauvism, Expressionism and Abstract Ex-
pressionism.

To be sure, Cezanne is progenitor of more than one tradition
and it must be well understood that his structural attainment is
a springboard to his expressive powers. Similarly, Van Gogh's
expressive intensity is entirely compatible with, indeed depend-
ent on, the artist's profound concern with formal pursuits.

Conceptual art categories, although to some degree arbitrary,
may nevertheless be useful for purposes of initial orientation.
Such a theme as the current exhibition offers is meant to function
as a temporary scaffolding to be discarded when the principal
structure has come to rest on its own foundations.

Thomas M. Messer. Director

l\TRODl('TIO\

In expre?>iriiii5ni. the image of the perceived world is
pervasivelv transftjrnied by emotion rather than by an objec-
tive or idealizing concept. The expressionist artist imagina-
tivelv projects his own feelings into other beings and objects
—even, in certain cases, into non-representational forms. Older
artists— Griinewald in the 15th century and El Greco in the
16th. for example— infused religious themes with intense emo-
tion. The painful deformations and lacerated flesh of Griine-
■^v'ald's Christ reflect the German painter's identification with
His suffering. Similarlv. El Greco's saints are etherealized into
flame-like rhythms expressing the artist's ecstatic and mystical
spirituality. Beginning with Go} a and \ an Gogh and continu-
ing through the abstract expressionists, modem expressionist
art has tended to discard intrinsically emotional subjects, such
as climactic religious episodes, in favor of subjects drawn
from e\ ervday life. By exaggerating, simplifying and freely
distorting forms, the modern artist's "self" may be projected
intri a pair of worn boots ' \ an Gogh ' . a hanging dead rooster
I Suutine ' or the portrayal of ordinary individuals ' Pv.ouault.
Kokoschka • .

Crimniiin to the man\" expressionist styles, abstract as
well as representational, is the element of directness, which
A an G(igh first rec^ agnized when he declared "'there is some-
thing good in e\ erv direct action." Erom \an Gogh to the
painters of todav. the individual brushstroke— the unique touch
of the painter's hand— has been the crucial component in the
expressiveness of the complete picture.

The expressionist stroke is loaded, highly charged and
self-conscious. It implies the gesture of the artist in the paint-
ing act— a gesture of body mo\"ement. not merely the motion
(if the \N rist. as in impressionism. The expressionist painter's
toucli contains in emlir\othe qualities of his larger expression:
it is line of the miracles rif art that a mere mark can be so evoc-
ative iif feeling and iensibilit\. Thus \ an Gogh's stroke seems
to burn intri canvas with savaee but deliberate forcefulness:

Rouault's characteristic stroke is like a flagellant's blow, ec-
static and unconstrained; Soutine's stroke is never a line but
a fleshy patch, a section of sentient visceral matter ; Kokosch-
ka's mark is a seismographic quiver, an exquisitely sensitive
emotional vehicle; Kandinsky's touch may be dainty or ag-
gressively crude, it may be thin and spindly or dangerously
explosive, but it is always in unpredictable dynamic flux; de
Kooning's emphatic mark piles one potent charge of paint
upon another, implying a constantly self-generating process.

These characteristics of the stroke are tied to the sense
of urgency in expressionist art, the need to communicate vital
emotional experiences to others. The very quality of haste or
speed in the creation of the picture, which is often due to the
feverish rapidity of the execution, is transmitted to the viewer.
In expressionism, surface and image qualities are more im-
portant than compositional qualities. Spatial ambiguities and
certain kinds of formal ambiguities— for example, a distant
mountain appearing close to the viewer, or a vase seen simul-
taneously from different viewpoints — which were vital to
Cezanne and the cubists, are avoided in expressionism. Forms
are reduced, simplified and concentrated to facilitate the trans-
mission of the message. It is significant that a key influence
upon many expressionists was the 15th century woodcut, whose
rugged and unequivocal style permitted its wide dissemination
among the people. Primitive art, displaying similar virtues of
bold simplicity, exerted an equally powerful attraction upon
the expressionists.

The expressionists, like many modern artists, have
painted in bold and pure colors, but they have been especially
intrigued by the emotive possibilities of discordance and blunt
contradiction. Van Gogh first perceived such color possibilities
when he declared his wish "to express the love of two lovers
by the marriage of two complementaries, their blending and
their oppositions." Later artists have extended the possibilities
of color clash, applying pigments straight from the tube ("like
sticks of dynamite" as Vlaminck said) , or by placing opposing
shades of full saturation side by side, and even abandoning
tones altogether and intermingling vast sections of black and
white. The expressionists have applied impaste freely in the
service of color intensification, gleaning rich chromatic effects
from the density of pigment.

Vl\ GOGH

"My great longing is to learn to make incorrectness . . .
more true than the literal truth." \Nrote Vincent \an Gogh. In
his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, \an Gogh strove to
convey the clumsy honest}" and naive strength of peasantry by
rude and frank] v unsophisticated means. Figures were awk-
\\ ardlv placed or obscured, their anatomies deformed, their
gestures exaggerated. Xot unexpectedly, he was denounced for
these distortions of natural form. "Dare you." exclaimed his
frieni the painter \ an Rappard. ""working in such a maimer,
invoke the names of [the peasant painters] Millet and Breton?
Cijrne ! Art stands in my opinion too high to be treated so care-
lesslv.'" \ an Gogh responded. "'I want to paint what I feel and
feel ^vhat I paint"— without regard, he added, to what "civil-
ized" people might think or say.

To attain original expressiveness.Van Gogh first adopted
a completely non-emotional manner. He broke with the dark
Millet-like modeling of The Potato Eaters and yielded to im-
pressionism. In Paris in 1886 he painted 200 canvases in which
brief delicate strokes carry airy tones. Impressionism liberated
\ an Gogh's responsiveness to the outdoor w^orld, to the bright
sun and vital multiplicity of things on earth. Japanese art also
affected him. encouraging \an Gogh to contrast pure colors
' including black and white I and draw precisely contoured flat
shapes. Then, in 1888. in Aries, he discarded the manner of
impressionism, but retained its lessons— of luminosity and di-
rectness—and discovered a new art.

Van Gogh's paintings at Aries are the first intensely
bright pictures in modern art. In describing his ^^'orking
method, \an Gogh said he "exaggerated"' the perceived tone of
an object: as with "incorrect'" drawing, so \\-\\h unnaturally
heightened colors he aimed at a higher— a more personal-
truth. Color was the supreme modern qualitv to \an Gogh.
He believed that the art of the future would be portraiture and
believed it would have to be rejuvenated through color which
could ""express and exalt character." \an Gogh recognized the

pure evocative power of color, in his words, "color expresses
something by itself." Color was related in his mind to poetry
and to music: "one can express poetry by nothing but arrang-
ing colors well, just as one can say consoling things in music."
He pointed to examples in his o^vn work in which colors were
meant to express states of mind, or passionate feelings, or ab-
stract ideas. "Thought," "love," the "terrible passions of hu-
manity," "hope"— Van Gogh believed all these could be sug-
gested by combinations of tones.

In Van Gogh's new style of Aries, vivid tones fill entire
canvases, without shadows or dark relieving areas. The Sun-
flowers, for example, is virtually all yellow, with more or less
bright surfaces according to the object described, whether
petals, vase, table or background. Such a composition is based
on shades of similar hue. In others, such as the famous Night
Cafe, a fully saturated color clashes Avith equally intense op-
posing colors: yellow appears beside red and green. The dif-
ferent approach— modulation or bold contrast— is tied to the
meaning of each picture: nervous strain and disturbance is the
theme of the Aight Cafe, whereas the intention of the Sunflow-
ers was to soothe the viewer.

At Saint-Remv. beginning in Mav. 1889, Van Gogh's
palette becomes more restrained, with cooler and more mixed
tones. These are arranged in small variegated areas rather than
large flat patterns. Forms become more agitated and energetic
in Saint-Remy paintings: Van Gogh projects his emotional ex-
perience into linear rhythms instead of color contrasts. In the
last phase of his art, \ an Gogh often sought to fuse the ample
form of Aries with the spontaneous rhythms of Saint-Remy.

The Mountains at Saint-Remy, painted in July. 1889, is
a masterwork of Saint-Remy style and of expressionist method.
The large central region of the picture, comprised of moun-
tains and trees, is the most compelling area. In the mountain
range convoluted rhythms cascade over each other with seem-
ing abandon. Each curved stroke leads to the next in a tor-
rential flow. Each mark is a visual problem encountered and
solved, then leading, in turn, to another problem.

The task in this kind of spontaneous painting is to
maintain subtlety and inventiveness throughout the pressing
haste of the painting act. Van Gogh was aware of these oppos-
ing demands when he compared his manner of working to that

of "an actor on a stage . . . [who] has to think of a thousand
things at one time in a single half-hour." Even when he painted
in a "feverish condition." as he put it. \ an Gogh wished it
understood that he "was in the midst of complicated calcu-
lation."

We can see how certain areas express both immediacy
and subtle complexity. Beginning high at the left canvas edge,
the contour of a hill plunges diagonally to earth in the center.
The descent is swift and unbroken, pressing as lava flow, yet
the rhythm is composed of skillfully varied curves, no one of
which is repeated. Furthermore, the individual curves become
increasingly broad as they descend — a play on perspective
schemes where largeness suggests proximity and smallness
evokes distance. Here the mountain does not approach the
viewer so much as fall from left to right in a single plane
parallel to the picture surface. The mountain at the right offers
another example of the fusion of impulse w ith invention. It is
spread out before the vie\\ er at its base and then ascends pyra-
midally to its apex. The mountain is a seething mass of en-
ergy. Hard stone is here transformed into a fluid substance.
Forms coil, overlap and fuse in unpredictable ways. Certain
tonal pairings— an orange beside a blue, a green beside a yel-
low—add a discordant note. Yet, as we gaze at this emotion-
distorted mountain, we perceive many configurations of order
and control. The small form at the apex, shaped like a head
and shoulders, is repeated many times, in varying positions
and sizes, throughout the body of the mountain— for example,
the blue and black outlined shape directly above the tallest
tree. Certain lines traverse the entire breadth of the mountain,
bringing continuitv to the iig-sa^\" pattern: near the top of the
mountain a black diagonal slices through the coiling lines.
Also, as forms ascend and recede they become smaller: in cor-
responding fashion, the tones are contrasted less and become
muted as they rise and recede.

Contrast to the agitation of the mountaimais region is
provided by the flanking areas of sky and earth, each painted
in a uniform and low-keyed manner. The small house, peace-
fully nestled beneath the avalanche of forms, is also an element
of contrast. And the sprav of flowers, a brilliant explosive burst
of pure colors, further opposes the sweeping linearity of the
mountains.

^,^,^^ -""',- r^

Vl>tEXT VAX iiOiiU

MOUNTAINS AT SAINT-REMY. 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 37".

Collection Thannhauser Foundation, Inc., New York.

MUNCH

Edvard Munch's art exerted a powerful influence on
German expressionist painters. Munch invented a wide range
of emotional subjects pertaining to modern life, certain of
which were eagerly adopted by the German artists. His presen-
tations of night street scenes, for example, provided the sub-
ject and theme for some of Kirchner's most effective works.
His vigorous portrait style also provided a model for many of
the later artists.

At a time when all original artists were purging their
subject matter of literary content, Munch proposed a frankly
psychological art, rooted in literary themes. The themes of his
art— the isolation of an individual in a group, love-hate feel-
ings toward women, obsessive doubts about identity— were re-
lated to those in contemporary Scandinavian drama and litera-
ture. Munch, born in 1863, spent his artistically formative
years in Oslo's bohemian and intellectual society of the 18o0s.
In a land all but untouched by the crises and controversies that
marked 19th century continental life, debates on moral, social
and artistic questions were raised by rebellious literary fig-
ures, Ibsen, Bj^rnson and others. Munch's peers, representing
a younger generation than these veterans, took more radi-
cal positions than they, urging anarchism and the destruction
of conventional restraints on individual behavior. Munch's
friend, Hans Jaeger, was fined and jailed for publishing an
autobiographical novel containing descriptions of sexual ex-
periences. At this early moment in his own development.
Munch's concern with erotic and sexual subjects commenced.
The theme of puberty, for example, was first painted in 1886.
although the famous version of it was made in the Nineties.
Munch's expressionistic production continued until 1908,
when he suffered a nervous breakdown.

Until that time, Munch's paintings had been about
alienation. In his view, communication between the sexes or

between an individual and society is impossible. In dozens of
paintings and graphic works, Munch expressed his conviction
that women are unattainable and dangerous. There are three
types of women, corresponding to three chronological stages:
youth presents the idealized and innocent aspect of woman,
but this type is self-absorbed and therefore unattainable; in
maturity, woman is the voluptuary, unabashedly physical but
grasping and voracious; in old age, the woman offers succor
and relief to man, but only as an accompaniment to death. In
Munch's bitter presentations, the three types appear singly or
together, and always are a menace.

Man's inevitable separation from woman is matched,
in Mujich's art, by man's hopeless estrangement from so-
ciety. Munch's vision of this condition, expressed repeatedly
throughout the Nineties and until 1908, is of frozen immobile
figures, correctly, even formally, dressed, staring bleakly at
the viewer. Munch titled these scenes of lonely crowds Anxiety.
In later and more gentle versions, figures appear beside each
other and stare off into the distance, or as in the painting op-
posite the following page, of 1905, a group of girls stand
huddled together in a circle .

After his breakdown in 1908, and until his death at 80
in 1944, the artist exorcized morbid and depressing subjects
from his work, replacing them with presentations of workers
and common people, with landscapes and allegorical themes

Thus far, we have discussed Munch's subject matter
But, like most important artists in history, he was also a for
mal innovator, bringing a new compression and reductive sim
plicity to the handling of pictorial elements. The shape and
emotional meaning of a figure is determined by its gesture
The gesture is the figure's essential aspect— this is true even
when it is not a motion-filled gesture. To render it most ex-
pressively, Munch eliminates all distracting detail and greatly
exaggerates and simplifies the important rhythms. In the fa-
mous Shriek, for example, the shouting figure is transformed
into a single tremulous rhythm, a rhythm based on the motion
of seizing the head with the arms. The swaying curves of the
figure are repeated throughout the picture, in the large areas
of sea, mountain and sky. Thus, the most important form, sim-
plified and subjectivized, contains in embryo the prevailing
pictorial qualities found in the rest of the work.

In the 1890s Munch (along with Gauguin and ^'allotton.
all of whom worked independently i revived the woodcut a? an
expressive medium. This medium had fallen into misuse in the
16th century when it began to serve merely as a reproductive
tool. The woodblock was drawn upon (and then incised)
rather than directly cut into. Munch"? achievement lay in di-
rectly scoring the woodblock surface with varied and forceful
marks— completely unrelated in their quality to draAvn lines.
(Munch also harnessed the textural qualities of the wood in
the printing process.) In Van Gogh's dra\dng technique there
is an anticipation of this graphic directness. The paper surface
of his pen and ink sketches at Aries is stroked and stabbed by
quick pen thrusts, as if the pen itself -^vere being tried as an
expressive instrument.

The Girls on a Bridge is gentle and restrained com-
pared to most expressionist paintings. An air of great solem-
nity prevails. Yet there is a hint of menace in the creeping
green foliage which threatens to envelop the house at the cen-
ter. The sad, perhaps furtive gathering of the girls similarly
augurs trouble.

The arrangement of the forms in the picture implies
greater tension than is first apparent. Large, ample rhythms
describe the trees while crisp angular lines describe the houses.
Above all the plunging strokes of the bridge contrast with the
relaxed rhythms found els e^vhere.

The bridge springs from the left, ^vhere a railing bisects
the picture corner, to the center where the bridge flows into a
road in an uninterrupted rhythm. W'hich swiftly diminishes as
it recedes. Munch turns perspective— which for centuries had
served art merely as an aid to representation or had been ig-
nored altogether— to expressive use. Munch. like \an Gogh,
uses perspective to suggest emotion. His perspective schemes
evoke the anguish of hrniian separateness.

The major forms in the picture, the houses, the trees
and figure-group, exhibit a similar sense of closure and
seclusion. The houses have small windows and no doors, and
no light penetrates the dense foliage of the trees. The group
of figures has. literally, turned its back on the outside world.
A yellow'-ochre outline, seen clearly along the right edge of
the girl at the right and beneath the pairs of shoes, further
enfolds the group and binds it tightly together.

EDVARD MrXCH

GIRLS ON A BRIDGE. 1902. Oil on canvas, 39% x 39^2".

Collection Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon. Los Angeles.

ROIULT

The French fauvist movement "vv'as precisely contem-
poraneous ^dth the first German expressionist movement. Die
Briicke. The aggressive and subjective character of paintings
by Matisse. Maminck. Derain. and the other fauves (in works
between 1905 and 1907) caused this art to be called expres-
sionism, in contrast to impressionism. In fact, the term expres-
sionism was applied to fau^^sm before modem German art
became so labeled. Fau\dsm. like the German painting, was
an art of bright color, animated brushstroke and free altera-
tion of natural forms. French art of this period had no affinity,
however, ^nth the prevailing sense of anxietv" and the brooding
pessimism of contemporary German production. Nor did the
fauvist artists stress discordant and disturbing color contrasts.
or nervous linear rh\ thins, as rlid the Brucke group.

"A special kind of fauve" was the description given of
Georges Rouault by a critic of the period. Although Rouault
exhibited beside the fauves in 1905. and shared with them an
ardent desire for spontaneous, even violent expression, he was
closer in most respects to the German expressionists. Rouault"s
subjects were depressing, his figures were deformed and mis-
shapen: his tones were almost impenetrably dark. Like the
Germans' art, Rouault's paintings were acts of moral protest.
But while German themes were concerned with the indi\Tdu-
al's relation to society (the destructive effects of society were
stressed) Rouaults sole concern was the relationship of man
to God.

Rouault was born in 1871 in Paris. His father, a cabi-
netmaker at the Pleyel piano factory, apprenticed him to a
stained-glass maker, and then to a restorer of stained-glass
windows: these experiences convinced Rouault that one could
"start out as an artisan and develop into a sensitive artist,
step by step, without taking oneself for a born classic or a
genius/' At twenty he entered Gustave Moreau's studio at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying with this romantic academi-
cian for eight years. During these years Rouault painted bibli-
cal and religious themes in a manner affected by Rembrandt
as well as his master Moreau. Then, around 1903. Rouault
absorbed the profound influence of the Catholic w riter Leon
Bloy. Bloy insisted on the most intense suffering as expiation
for sin. Recognizing no gradations between good and evil,
Bloy reserved his greatest scorn for the safe, petty bourgeois,
"that soft and sticky monster equally incapable of the abomi-
nations of vice and the abominations of virtue." Rouault, a
born Catholic, was deeply drawn to this obsessed and vehe-
ment man and in 1903 Rouault's style began to take on the
savage apocalyptic force of Bloys fanaticism. Interestingly
enough, the artist— now deeply infused by religious sentiment
—eliminated religious subjects from his paintings, save for a
few heads of the suffering Christ. (Later, about 1918, when the
force of Rouault s expressionism abated, religious and bibli-
cal subjects were reintroduced.) Instead, Rouault turned to
modern life, finding in certain contemporary subjects— ac-
tually in a narrow range of figure types— vivid examples of the
moral decay w hich in Rouault's view must attend the absence
of belief. Prostitutes are brutally compressed into bulbous
shapes, their refulgent blue-white bodies the incarnation of
mortal sin. Their faces, contorted into an eternal grimace, are
the analogues of their mutilated anatomies. Yet one never
doubts Rouault's sincere compassion. As contrasted with Tou-
louse-Lautrec's presentation of prostitutes, in which sarcasm is
blended with prurience, Rouault genuinely weeps for these
sufferino; women.

Then there are circus performers, cIomtqs. jugglers,
wTestlers. rer.dered ^^i-ith ferocity but with more than a trace
of admiration. He ^vrcte oi his envy for those "strolling

plavers. drifting froir- ^ "-'.':' to South, from East to West, fun-
loving. pea':e-:"::aki!:^ <: :_■: ..-r-i^rs.*'

Both . ei: ::ye:? a:: i : stitutes. marginal people in
his society, earned a measure of s^Tupathy from Rouault, The
bourgeoisie, however, recei^"e- t;;- 'ae-':'e5t reproach. Judges
are transfer'/"-- \\\':'- hide^/U- .■.■"a:e':: :n:n5ter5, mute and
cruel perver:-:> • ■: :;:e jusLiLe ine}" auegeciv ;.erve. "Mr. X.,"
portrayed in the picture cpposite, is ^^blamed" (to quote Rou-
ault's interp'retat:-::: > : Daumier's attitude, an interpretation
which des':r:; -- R .;.v.:.:"- ■ ■. ;■. :'--.::■_;:? as \\'ell ' "'for liis prig-
gish convict: : n.a; - a-v - :nc v, orld go round and secures
our wefl-heirg 1 \ i : kh^ after his oAvn.. .under a cloak of
priest-Kke candor, he presumes to judge us afl,"

Rc'uault passed off the Portredt of Mr. X. of 1911 as a
pert: a' a! oi a real man, until, several decades after it was
pa:::te :. re admitted it w^as imaginary, a synthesis of his feel-
ings about the petty bourgeoisie. This is surprising, for the
portrait has that sense of direct : cfrcntation found in genu-
ine and trulv incisive p-rtraiture. Pic-uault here fuses the real
and the fantastic: he creates "a creaib-C fonn of the mon-
strous." as Baudelaire said of Goya. In n:aKing dark paint-
ings PvCiuault rejected a prevalent tender.cy in avant-garde
Fre::':n : ainting of the TPth century to ever-brighter, more
lu:n:::cu5 canvases. In this resnect also, Renault's art recalls
LTCva"s. esp-eciahy ti:e ^pa::is:: ::'.aster's ";na:K paintings" of
:;:e early 19th century. But Fiouault"s gr':t-S'::ue personages
are auth-: t: 2' Jth century creations, and several formal fea-
tures testnv tC' tbe'r :n'-'der::itv. I- M-. X.. a. in all Rouault's
work ii: this nericc. t::- hu:;:a:: : ncn :- rrrught extremely
cLcse-un. :t is r:atte::e':l. :::ade :r':c:tal a::':: ■.::5;:"" -e:: ::: a narrow
space. The form is cc':::pressec. a::d sin:';:i.if:ed: it seems to
bulge a::d ^f-xia::'": > c: th- '"an: a- -:;r:a' ^. The :■'!::: ci a single
tigure so ciliwo? tr.e suriaLc it is cut : ". t;:- :" : "":: ■ - -dge. Rou-
ault's many versic'r.s cd three iudg'r-. '.•,;;;._:: -:___uariy thrust
at the \de^ver ■v\diile the}" spread, at tr.e sides, closely resemble
Kolde s paintings of iSlew Guinea sa a^ - pa: ted about this
sa e :: h ::.een 1907 and 1913; in terms of this formal—
puien n,- urn— presentation.

GEORGES ROUAULT

PORTRAIT OF MR. X. 1911. Oil on paper, SOVi x 22y4".

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. Edmund Hayes Fund.

Kl\DI.\SKY

\ asily Kandinsky is the foremost pioneer of abstract
art. art devoid of imitative forms. Other artists working inde-
pendent!). such as Kupka. Picahia. and Delaunay made non-
representational paintings at about the same time. Lnlike
these artists, however, Kandinsky produced a spontaneous and
highly expressive style, far removed from the structural or
symbolic content of a Kupka or a Delaunay. In paintings be-
ginning around 1910 Kandinsky strove to express his feelings
on canvas without refei'ence to obvious natural appearances.
As early as 1920 his paintings of the previous decade were la-
beled "abstract expressionism." and tliis term is still applied to
that period of his art. It describes Kandinsky"s attempt to ap-
proximate the rhythms of nature without imitating the objects
of nature. This type of abstraction contrasts Avith "pure" ab-
stract art. \s Inch— as practiced later by Kandinskv himself and
others— offers a configuration of forms which are often geo-
meti'ical rather than organic and ^vhich do not spring from the
artist's emotional life or relate tu urdinar\ \isual appearance.

Born in 1866 in Mosco^v. Kandinskv iirst decided to
become a painter at the age of 30. after extensive training in
law and political economv. Kandinskv came to Germanv in
1896 as an art student and resided there until "^orld \S ar I
forced his return to Mosco\s'. In 1911. Kandinsky founded
w ith Franz Marc the Blaue Reiier — a revolutionary group
that urged artists to project their "spirituality" and "inner
desires" onto canvas. According to Kandinsky. the picture
need not be abstract— success depends solely on "ho\\' far the
artist is able to carry his emotion." The "immense need." he
said, was "cultivating" this emotion. Xe\ ertheless. Kandinskv
had come to believe that the appearance of natural objects in
a painting detracted from the direct esthetic response to the
painting. One's experience of the sensations evoked by shapes

and lines and colors, potentially a rich and satisfying experi-
ence, was obstructed by recognizing objects which provoke ir-
relevant associations.

Kandinsky had his first doubts about the necessity of
the "object" fifteen years before he actually made a non-rep-
resentational painting. In 1895— before he became a painter
—he saw Monet's haystacks and perceived the picture as a pure
color harmony, failing at first to recognize in it the existence
of objects, \ears later a similar experience with a painting
deepened his feeling that representational forms were ines-
sential and probably harmful. In 1908, in his studio, he was
"suddenly confronted by a picture of indescribable and in-
candescent loveliness." Kandinsky goes on to say, "The paint-
ing lacked all subject, depicted no identifiable object, and
was entirely composed of bright color patches. Finally, I ap-
proached closer and, only then, recognized it for what it really
was— my own painting, standing on its side." Convinced now
that the depiction of objects should be eliminated altogether,
Kandinsky still could not take the final step. He feared making
works which were "mere goemetric decoration . . . like a necktie
or a carpet." To search for "beauty of form and color by itself"
was not enough. Rather, the artist must express his innermost
emotion, his spirituality. In 1908 Kandinsky felt too isolated
and too spiritually weak to be capable of infusing abstraction
with emotion. In the course of the next few years, however,
encouraged by fellow artists and the art historian Worringer,
and heartened by the conviction that science would soon cor-
roborate his ultimate intention ("the dissolution of matter is
imminent," he said) Kandinsky gradually excised representa-
tion from his art.

As representational motives decline, individual painted
marks become increasingly animated. These distinctive marks
testify to Kandinsky's assertion of the independence of pic-
torial elements. They form a wealth of irregular shapes. Bright
sparkling tones— sometimes attached to the contours of a
shape, sometimes separated and free— may flare shrilly or re-
sonate quietly. A thin line slicing through space will take on
body and rear up, then dwindle and vanish. An exciting air of
fresh discovery is imparted to the entire canvas.

There is a sense of new birth in each picture, and this
also results from the process in Kandinsky's art whereby

forms become intensified as their representative function is
destroyed. Kar. ::::.? ky explained this process:

A significantly acting objective destruction is in
such a way also a complete song of praise, a singu-
lar sound, which resounds like a hymn of new re-
vival, which does follow every ruination.^
In Impromsation 28, of 1912, reproduced opposite, the dis-
solution and consequent intensification of forms is found in
many areas: in the reminiscence of mountains at the high
left, the clump of trees beneath the mountain, and the castle
at the upper right— the shape of which is repeated in two
parallel elongated forms which traverse the height of the
canvas. This picture, like most of Kandinsky's abstract ex-
pressionist canvases, is noL evidently, as "abstract" as one
might at first suppose. Ii.ceed, there are many other deriva-
tions from natural forms in these paintings. Another, par-
ticularly interesting '^:" '" iii is the horse and rider at the
middle right: the reai i„^ ^ rse, seen from behind, is indicated
by a few sketchy lines of mane and by longer, dynamic smtxIs
of neck, back and rear leg; astride it, the rider's head and legs
are sununarily marked- The theme of horse and rider was per-
haps the most meaningful figurative theme to Kandinsky. It
appears in his work between 1903, about the time Kandinsky
was commencing original work, and 1913, when he reached a
culminating point of his abstract expressionism. At first, the
horse and rider, each naturally proportioned and moving in
unison at a leisurely pace, symbolize a desired harmony and
equilibrium betiiveen reason and passion, intellect and emo-
tion. As Kandinsky's art develops toward the emotional and
spiritual, the configuration of horse and rider changes. In
1908, a key year, the horse begins to rear up and take the
lead: by 1911 and 1912, the horse, now over-sized, races
forward, his surging power barely restrained by the rider.
Kandinsky's style of expression, as we see, echoes the im-
portance given to passion and emotion. Dissolution accom-
panies intensification: this process, then, is found in the
evolution of a theme, as well as in the specific presentation of
a subject in a single picture. The pictorial vestige of horse-
and-rider seen opposite is a concentrated and energetic near-
abstraction; in subsequent paintings all traces of its origin
will vanish, and only its force will remain.

^Quoted by Kenneth C Lindsay in **Kandinsky in 1914 iNew \brk: Solv-
ing a Riddle," Art Neies, toL 55, no. 3, May 1956, p. 59.

VASiLY ka:\-di:xsky

NO. 160b (IMPROVISATION 28) . 1912. Oil on canvas, 44 x 63%''

Collection The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

kllk(IS(Hkl

Oskar Koko^chka carried the expressionist quest for
^mmpf^^ar^ into the reahn of portraiture. In his earlv period
between 1907— ^vhen he -was onlv 22— and 1914. KokoscKka
produced a series of powerful portraits of the ^ iennese and
German intelligentsia and wealthy classes. These are the most
psvchologically incisive of modem portraits, essentially ex-
pressionist in their a^'owed objective. Each prirtrait presents
a direct emotional confrontation bet^seen painter and sitter.
The artist's feelings about the model, generally of an aggres-
sive and morbid nature, are grafted onto the models features.
Nevertheless, a physiognomic likeness is maintained, reflect-
ing Kokoschka's search for the true individual.

In older portraiture, which was usually commissioned.
the artist adopted a subservient stance: the modebs nobilit}" or
beauty or po^ver had to be stressed— or. if need be, invented.
If the artist ^^ ished to express negative or mixed feelings about
the sitter, he had to be courageous and adept in doing so.
Goya's court portraiture is the outstanding example of a sav-
age indictment being accepted, even embraced by the insulted
party.

In the 19th centurv. the artist began to make por-
traits of individuals chosen freely from his acquaintances.
The modern portrait was invented late in the century by
^ an Gogh. In ^ an Goghs fresh conception, the eccentricity
and irregularity of features, rather than tlieir harmonious dis-
position, was emphasized. \an Gogh sought the human in the
peculiarly indiWdual. He eliminated modeling in light and
dark, and surrounded the face with unnaturallv bright colors.

Of all the artists of the next generation, both in France
and the Germanic nations, who were affected by Van Gogh's
art, Kokoschka best understood the nature of Van Gogh's por-
traiture. His first portraits, with their thickly painted surfaces
divided into broad simplified forms, come directly out of
Van Gogh. Then, almost immediately, Kokoschka shed Van
Gogh's formal devices, but retained the idea that insightful
portrayal depended on capturing marginal aspects of physi-
ognomy. Paint is applied thinly, like watercolor, and a highly
activated line connects patches of colors. Van Gogh had hoped
his portraits would look like "apparitions" in the future; Ko-
koschka seized upon this latent aspect of his work and created
hallucinatory and demoniac creatures. His portraits of Aus-
trian writers and artists project a certain physical and spiritual
decadence. These are related to Kokoschka's fascination with
illness and disease— at one time he painted tuberculosis victims
in a Swiss sanatorium. Kokoschka aims to expose mental suf-
fering in these "black portraits," as he called them.

While Van Gogh's sitters are generally stationary and
quite obviously posing, Kokoschka's are seized, as if unaware,
in motion. They are caught talking, usually gesticulating. Or
they have become lost in themselves and have drifted into
fantasy life. Tlieir gestures and expressions are rendered with
agitated lines, tense sensitive flicks and jabs of the brush. In
certain portraits, forms are flattened, thinly stretched out on
the canvas surface. In others, however— and contrary to most
modern practice— Kokoschka models a form, a face and hands,
not in terms of light and dark, but by variously weighted lines,
so that they suggest protrusions and recessions, proximity and
distance, and also the texture of a shape— a bony knuckle, a
wisp of hair, an aged worn skin.

The artist's presence in each picture is asserted by the
vivid alteration of natural forms and by the forcefulness of
each stroke, which calls attention to itself as a singular crea-
tion of the artist. (In distorting a figure, or exaggerating phys-
iognomic features, Kokoschka's delineation could descend in-
to caricature— which simplifies to elucidate a single aspect of
character— were it not for the rich complexity of the pictorial
configuration substituted in its place.) In many pictures

Kokoschka introduces a specific imaginative device which
also declares the painter's emotional involvement ^s■ith the
painted figure. In portrayals of the psvchiatrist Forel. the art
historians Professor Tietze and Mrs. Erika Tietze-Conrat, and
other intellectuals, the painted surface is scratched upon ^dth
delicate marks, arranged as starbursts or crossed netsvorks.
or in a seemingly aimless and random fashion. Thev are like
doodles, symbolizing the sitter's self -absorption, his mental
preoccupation. These scrawls, which do not properlv belong
to the sitter, are also the artists unique sign, reflecting his
independent presence in the picture.

BetA\ een 1910 and 1915. Kokoschka's style, which had
been essentially that of a draftsman, becomes freer and more
painterly. Symbolic presentations also appear. Both features
mark the Knight Errant of 1915, reproduced opposite. This
was the last painting that Kokoschka made in Vienna be-
fore being called to military ser^"ice. Tlie artist imagines a
dark battlefield, bare and desolate, upon which a wounded
soldier lies. Dressed, ironically, in medieval armor, the sol-
dier has toppled on his back, as helpless as an overturned in-
sect. He bears the artist's o-wn features. Shortly after this pic-
ture was made, the artist was wounded in battle, on the Gali-
cian front, and found himseH in a similar, desperate situation.

The painting is unusual for Kokoschka for it is a prod-
uct purely of the imagination, rather than an interpretation
of reality. It is a sad. lyrical fantasy projected in strong ex-
pressionist terms. The night is illuminated by objects which
possess a weird, inner luminosity. The metallic costume, the
morose reclining -woman and the wave-capped sea are ren-
dered in charged ^vhitish strokes, palpable, thick, rugged and
energetic. The taut arrangement of these rhythms, no less than
the strained, pathetic gesture of the soldier, conveys his fear-
ful tension. A network of angular, intersecting lines clashes
in turbulent action in the center of the picture. This vigor-
ously painted area contrasts with the prevailing tone of quiet
desperation.

OSKAR KOKOSCHKA

KNIGHT ERRANT. 1915. Oil on canvas, 35% x 7078".

Collection The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

\OLDE

By 1905. after a long period of study in Germany and
a brief stay in Paris. Emil Xolde had developed a kind of
energetic impressionism. \ an Gogh"s example had probably
inspired him to adopt a \ibrant palette and to paint with as-
sertive strokes. In his search for a personal and emotional ex-
pression Xolde worked at this time in isolation, unaware that
other German artists shared his beliefs. In fact. E. L. Kirchner.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel had just joined to-
gether to form the first modem German expressionist move-
ment—DzV Briicke i The Bridge i. These artists lived and
worked together > in a renovated butcher's shop in Dresden's
working-class district), thus making a reality of \an Gogh's
dream of an artists" community. The Briicke artists launched
a revolution against the then prevailing and moribund style of
German impressionism. In public manifestoes, in paintings
and graphic media, they asserted the need for an emotional
art. direct and forceful, like the art of Griine\N'ald in Germany's
golden age.

In 1906. the Briicke artists, who were in their early or
mid-twenties. in\ited Xr,lde tri jriin them. Although lie "was
many years their senior, having been bom in 1867, he eagerly
embraced the cause. Xolde's association with the Briicke was
35 crucial as it was short-lived. It lasted less than ts\'o years but
the enthusiasm and understanding of the younger men quickly
fired Xolde, giving him confidence and fresh ideas. His pro-
duction sharply increased and his style became more personal.
After his formal break with the group. Xolde remained an
expressionist, developing, indeed, in the foUo^sing decade,
into the chief exponent of German expressionism.

Like the younger men. Xolde was drawn to primitive
art. but not as most French artists were, for formal reasons
(which spurred the invention of cubism). Xolde admired its

spirit, in his a\ ords. the "absolute originality, the intense fre-
quently grotesque expression of strength and life in the sim-
plest possible f orm"^ he found in primitive art. Primitive man
himself, encountered in the South Seas and among the pea-
santry of Russia and his own North German homeland, af-
fected Nolde deeply, intensifying his own mystical propen-
sities.

In Nolde's view, nature— elemental and supreme— nur-
tures man, while divorce from the soil destroys and deranges
him. Many paintings made after his travels in Melanesia and
Asia (in 1913-14) project his understanding and reverence
of primitive man. His fascination with primitive people was
equalled by his attraction, however horrified, to the ultra-
sophisticated types of Berlin night life. Nolde wrote of the
"revelers with corpse-like faces... feverish demimondaines in
elegant evening gowns . . . the seamy side of life, with its rouge,
its slippery mud and its degeneration."- He painted these im-
pressions, as passionate condemnations, in the second decade
of the century. These "degenerate" denizens of the city proved,
to Nolde, the vital necessity of man's tie to nature. Nolde's
"blood and soil" mystique was so pronounced he took the
name of his native village as his own— he was born Emil Han-
sen. The mystical love of Teutonic soil led him to join the
Nazi party.

Color was Nolde's chief means of expressing his mysti-
cal rootedness in the soil. He rhapsodically verbalized his ap-
preciation of the power of color:

Colors, the materials of the painter: colors in their

own lives, weeping and laughing, dream and bliss,

hot and sacred, like love songs and the erotic, like

songs and glorious chorals I Colors in vibration.

pealing like silver bells and clanging like bronze

bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love.

soul, blood and death. ^'

Nolde's color is, however, not as arbitrary as the color

schemes of other advanced artists— French artists, primarily—

who were working at this time. Noldes color is essentially

^Quoted by Peter Selz in German Expressionist Painting, Berkeley and
Los Angeles. University of California Press. 1957. p. 290.

"Quoted by "Werner Haftmann in £"7?;// Xolde, New York. Abrams, 1959,
p. 60.

^Quoted by Selz, op. cit., p. 87.

Jiiimetic— it generally imitates, iii however intensified a fash-
ion, color properties of the perceived object and scene. The

fauves. on the contrary, otfered a metaphor of perceived real-
ity. Nolde"s intention may be contrasted with that of Matisse.
When the French artist painted an autumn landscape, he did
"not ti-y to remember what colors suit this season." but \\ as
inspired bv the sensation that the season gave him. As he
wrote, "the icy clearness of the sour blue skv will express the
season just as well as the tonalities of the leaves." ?Solde would
have painted those seasonal tonalities— burnt yellows and rust
oranges— associated mth Fall, in exaggerated tones and in
startling combinations. 'W hen Matisse painted a dionysiac
dance his tones were cool blue and green: \olde's colors, on
the contrary, "were those suggested by the scene— a barbaric
dance under the hot sun prompted him to paint with "hot"
yello^NS and oranges.

Nolde simplifies and condenses forms, eliminating
from tliem finicky details which would detract from the glow
and resonance of color. The forms are large and they cro^^'d
the surface, filling the canvas at all four sides, barely con-
tained or at times actuallv cut ofi" by the limits of the picture
field. Individual objects are flattened and brought into a single
narrow plane close to the picture surface. The large and simple
shapes project a grave monumental! ty. enlivened by the snap-
shot immediacy of this close-up view. The Mulatto, painted in
1915, reproduced opposite, exemplifies these formal character-
istics. Here, in presenting one large form, the head and shoul-
ders of a Melanesian ^\'oman. perhaps a dancer, \olde searches
for expansive round rhythms to evoke the robust health and
emotionalism of primitive life. Circles and semi-circles are
shaped out of the face and eyebrows, the green hair ribbon
and the large crown of hair, the necklace and the jewel. A
great halo-Uke yellow arc embraces these smaller rhythms.
l^Only the upper part of this yello\v' arc is drawn: the neck-
lace, also yellow, suggests the completion of the circle. '

"\'an Gogh had hoped to instill into his portraits "that
something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize"
by "the actual radiance and vibrancy of coloring." \olde.
painting like \an Gogh in an almost religious spirit, employs
a radiant palette and even paints the halo. The result is this
glorious celebration of the pagan \\orld.

EMIL NOLDE

THE MULATTO. 1915. Oil on canvas, 30y2 x 28%".

Collection Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

S01T1.\E

Like \an Gogh. Chaim Soutine made expressionist

paintings in all the categories of art— landscape, portrait and
still life. In each category he widened the formal and emotional
possibilities of expressionism. To the landscape. Soutine. in
works painted between 1919 and 1922. imparted a violent
and cataclysmic power, a sense of constant change, of con-
tinual creation and destruction. Soutines landscapes are not
rational constructions, not the result of a desire to arrange
nature and harmonize its parts, in the traditional conception
of landscape painting. On the contrary, pictures such as the
Hill at Ceret, reproduced in this booklet, are passionate indi-
vidual responses to the dynamic processes of nature. The artist
identifies with di\erse natural elements, with their gro\vth
and decay. He makes the mute existence of trees, rocks, or a
cavity in the earth sentient, and the relationships between
them emotionally charged.

Soutine's portraits rank w ith K(ikoschka"s as the most
significant bodv of portrait paintings of this century. Com-
pared with Kokoschka"s psychologically incisive portraits.
Soutine"s are less probing, less concerned with analysis and
characterization of personality. Soutine. however, did not
wish t(i probe and expose the human soul or to reproduce too
carefulh the human exterior on canvas. Soutine attempted
to form new living creatures, additions to the world of nature.
These are often demoniac and anguished, always possessed of
a palpable substance and a rich sensibility. They are creatures
born of the most extraordinary deformations, yet Soutine was
nevertheless bound by the model— the portraits maintain a
likeness.

Soutine's portraiture, like Kokoschka's. comes out of
Van Gogh's new conception of portrait painting, described
earlier in this booklet. Soutine, in portraits of the Twenties,
extended the Van Gogh conception in various ways: by mak-
ing extreme deformations of the face and body (thus elevating
idiosyncracy of physiognomy, recognized by Van Gogh, into
the essence of characterization) : by employing multiple,
bright color schemes; by— above all— transforming flesh and
clothing into a pigment-skin possessed of an uncanny living
quality, Soutine's attraction to human flesh in the portraits
carries over to fascination with costume— virtually all his
Twenties portraits are of uniformed figures: valets, pastry
cooks, choirboys. The fabric of the costume— flat, and unvary-
ing in texture and color— becomes a vibrant physical sub-
stance, itself like flesh.

In the Twenties, contemporaneous with the costumed
portraits, Soutine painted the famous series of still lifes. Like
the portraits these are most often concerned with the substance
of flesh— but this time the dead flesh of animals. In these still
lifes, monumental sides of beef are stretched on the rack, their
insides exposed, the inner substance of their life studied and
painted with great gusto and great care. In others, pheasants.
turkeys and other fowl hang bv the neck, their plumage torn
off, their flesh revealed. The matter, the texture, the color of
flesh is Soutine's singular and crucial passion. Substance,
whether of animal or man, fascinated Soutine as the one real
and basic thing, the irreducible component of all life.

Soutine was born in Lithuania in 1893 and came to
Paris when he was twenty. In 1919 he went to Ceret. in the
French Pyrenees, and worked there for three years. At Ceret.
on his own, he quickly developed an original and remark-
able style. The turbulent and savage Hill at Ceret typifies this
Ceret style. After leaving Ceret in 1922, Soutine lived in
Cagnes and then Paris, where he mainly worked until 1940.
As a Jew, Soutine was forced to flee Paris under the German
Occupation. He died in 1943.

Soutine did not maintain the fierce intensity of Ceret
paintings, but until the late Twenties his work remained ex-
pressionistic and highly charged. A milder and more lyrical
spirit then becomes apparent. At this time Soutine denounced
his own Ceret pictures and took much pleasure in destroying
all those he could get his hands on. Nevertheless, these are
highly prized works today, both for art-historical and aesthetic
reasons.

Soutine's Ceret paintings stand midway betAveen \an
Gogh's and de Koonings in the evolution of modern expres-
sionism. The Hill at Ceret may be compared with Van Gogh's
Mountains at Saint-Remy, reproduced and discussed earlier.
In the following essay, de Kooning's Composition will be con-
sidered in relation to these paintings.

Soutine's hill is like the inunense mountain at the
right in \an Gogh's painting. In both pictures the mountain
is presented as an expansive triangular mass completely spread
out at the base and capped by a small form at the apex (a
house in the Soutine I . Both mountains are painted in similar
tones, grays and blue-greens predominating. The forms in
both mountains become larger toward the bottom and appear
to descend urgently and powerfully.

These are some of the formal and expressive similar-
ities. The difference between them depends on the brushstroke,
the single most important "tool" of the expressionist artist.
Van Gogh makes vigorous drawn lines which seem to press
into canvas. These are clear, unambiguous black lines. They
coil, overlap and fuse at times with each other but they always
retain their character as lines. Soutine, however, dispenses
with the concept of the line as a drawn rhythm. Pigment itself
—thick and fluid— evokes energy and motion. Viscous patches,
liquid strokes of pigment, applied by a sensitive but emphatic
touch, seem to generate into life on canvas. Pigment is han-
dled as both a material and a vehicle of color (as the varying
densities produce varying tones). Tlie thick pigment, further,
points up the greater importance of the picture itself, rather
than the image it presents.

CHAIM SOL'TIXE

HILL AT CERET. c. 192L Oil on canvas. 29y4 x 21%'

Lent by Perls Galleries. New York.

n kOOiMNG

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam in 1904 and
emigrated to America in 1926. His first experiments with ab-
straction date from 1928; they are cerebral and formalistic
paintings in which certain motifs, particularly egg shapes and
vertical stripes, are deployed with compulsive frequency, al-
beit with the most sensitive and calculated precision, conscious
inventiveness and devotion. Other motifs, derived from every-
day life, were introduced over the next few years— a vase, a
chair, a table top, windows. These elements comprise virtually
the entire repertory of de Kooning's forms. Commonplace
items are arranged and painted with gravity and mystery. A
certain spatial ambiguity attracts the painter from the outset
as well, whereby solid, palpable objects are placed in settings
which confuse the relationship of one object to another.

In the Thirties and Forties, de Kooning painted both
abstract and figurative works. In a series of black and white
pictures of the Forties, de Kooning investigated problems of
multiple-meaning forms and the spatial concerns with which
they are inextricably connected. Organic shapes are frag-
mented and fused to calligraphic elements and ordinary rela-
tionships of figure to ground aie destroyed in favor of a new
unity. Then, there are figure drawings executed with the most
elegant nuances. There are haunting and melancholic paint-
ings of seated working-men, crisply and energetically painted,
conceived with a formal breadth and expansiveness that magi-
cally co-exists with de Kooning's search for the evanescent
nuance, the subtle pressure of one form against another. The
male figures themselves are usually dismembered— anatomical
parts are cut off or missing. Other parts of the figure are ac-
tually related more to the background (by virtue of their tone
and surface quality) than to the totality of the figure. These

male figures, who bv pose and facial expression are possessed
of a spiritual disenchantment, appear to be struggling into
existence. On the other hand, when de Kooning paints female
figures there is no doubt about their tangible reality and com-
pelling presence. From the earliest entrance into de Kooning's
art of the female figure, in the early Forties, women are de-
picted as real and complete. Woman is handled wdth a unity
of style, whereby all her parts share a similar aggressive de-
formation, unlike Man who is not only divided anatomically
but also by a stylistic bifurcation : certain portions of the male
figure are conceived realistically while other parts are ren-
dered in an almost abstract fashion.

Woman I was the product of a two-year assault upon
the canvas. In 1950 the artist first drew a woman's figure on
canvas, then pasted a cut-out of a lipstick smile from a maga-
zine upon it. Later, de Kooning would cut out anatomical sec-
tions from his own preparatory drawings and try them in all
sorts of positions, pasting them on canvas, and then continu-
ing to paint. Constantly de Kooning tried to complete the en-
tire work at one go. Painting with furious speed on this over
life-size canvas, he tried to keep any portion of the field from
drying until the entire surface was finished. Painting "wet on
wet" in this w ay de Kooning strove for the quality of a liv-
ing skin, a stretched membraneous surface which would be
charged throughout w ith vital energies. The painting was con-
stantly scraped and re-scraped, until a final attack on the
canvas in 1952 brought off the desired unity. The finished
painting reveals this process of protracted violence, a process
inextricably tied to the expressiveness of the work. This proc-
ess of painting characterizes Composition of 1955, repro-
duced opposite the following page. Composition contains for-
mal references to the imagery of Woman: at the upper right
two yellow shapes recall the breasts, and a red area beneath
them recalls the female torso, of the earlier work. Other forms
in the painting also bring to mind the recurrent use of certain
similar elemental shapes in de Kooning's development. These
shapes often vary in meaning according to the varying con-
text in which they appear: a breast-shape in one picture may
suggest an eye in another.

In spite of the fact that certain forms emerge through
the paint maelstrom, the salient impression in Composition is

of a forniles? painting— a painting in which the sense of iden-
tity and structure ordinarily granted to shapes has been denied
them. Consequently, the relationship of figure to ground is
also eliminated in favor of creating an immense— almost seven
foot high— flat sheet of energy. Instead of putting forms down.
de Kooning manipulates the surface with loaded gestural
marks. Xo rest is permitted the eye by this fluid, ever-changing
surface.

Like many de Koonings of the Fifties. Composition
derives from \an Gogh"s landscape images of upheaval and
struggle. Soutine"s extension of the landscape conception— by
heightening the turbulence and emphasizing the material of
paint— is. however, closer to de Kooning's intention. As de-
scribed in the preceding essay. Soutine retained a certain form-
making goal and also retained a perceivable image, but he
substituted fleshy brushwork for \ an Gogh's passionate draw-
ing and thereby weakened the integrity" of indi^"idual forms.
De Kooning goes further by reducing the significance of
forms as separately felt things and. instead, heightening the
pure expressive po^sers of pigment, and the singular impact
of the total canvas. Soutine was still concerned with a cen-
tralized image: de Kooning tends to destroy the centralizing
aspect, whether the picture is figurative or not. bv painting
'"all over" the canvas, by imparting equal intensities through-
out. Thus, while one feels in a Soutine Ceret painting a single
emotional confrontation between artist and canvas, one feels
in a de Kooning such as Composition the aspect of protracted
collision.

Finally, it should be noted that at Ceret. Soutine's color
was murky and dark: fewer color decisions had to be made
during the painting act, and this facilitated Soutine's concen-
tration on vehement stroking. De Kooning, on the contrary.
chooses brilliant and contrasting colors. Thus, every motion
of the brush on canvas must take into account the tonal com-
binations it provokes. In this dazzling and daring improvisa-
tional manner of painting the artist is indeed like the actor
cited bv \an Gogh, who has to keep a thousand things in mind
and keep going all the while. \^ hile \ an Gogh, however, in-
sisted that the image must be "calculated a long time in ad-
vance" of painting, de Kooning insists, one may say. that the
actor throw awav the script and find his wav as he goes.

1%'ILLEM l»K K04»l>4.i

COMPOSITION. 1955. Oil on canvas, TQVs x 69Vs

Collection The Solomon R. Guggenheim Musemn, New \ork.

The following educational commentaries

prepared by the staff members of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

are currently available:

MODERN ART
Thomas M. Messer

SIX PAINTERS AND THE OBJECT
Lawrence Alloway

CEZANNE AND STRUCTURE IN MODERN PAINTING

Daniel Robbins

VAN GOGH AND EXPRESSIONISM
Maurice Tuchman

THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

STAFF

Director

Thomas M. Messer

Curator

Associate Curator
Assistant Curator
Research Fellows
Librarian

Laivrence Alloway

Louise Averill Svendsen

Daniel Robbins

Carol Fuerstein and Maurice Tuchman

Mary Joan Hall

Public Affairs

Membership

Registrar

Conservation

Photography

Custodian

Everett Ellin

Carol Tormey

Kathleen W. Thompson

Orrin Riley and Saul Fuerstein

Roberts. Mates

Jean Xceron

Business Administration
Administrative Assistant
Office Manager
Building Superintendent
Head Guard

Glenn H. Easton, Jr.
Viola H. Gleason
Agnes R. Connolly
Peter G. Loggin
George J. Sauve

PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS

All photographs but the following were made by Robert E. Mates:

Munch. Courtesy Marlborough-Gerson Gallenr", New York.

Nolde, Courtesy Busch-Reisinger Museum. Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass.

Rouault. Sherwin Greenbers Studio Inc.. Buffalo.

6,000 copies of COMMEMiRY 1/64

designed by Herbert Matter,

have been printed by Sterlip Press, Inc.,

in May 1964

for the Trustees of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

THE S0L03I0> R. GUGGENHEOl MISFA >f

1071 FIFTH AVEM E. XEW YORK 28. X. Y.