0:00:00.360,0:00:03.684
(upbeat piano music)

0:00:14.647,0:00:16.772
Male voiceover: We're going to[br]look at an extremely large painting

0:00:16.772,0:00:19.638
by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky,

0:00:19.638,0:00:23.172
working in Munich in 1913.

0:00:23.172,0:00:25.065
This is a painting that's in Moscow now.

0:00:25.065,0:00:27.504
Female voiceover: It's a year[br]before the first world war began.

0:00:27.504,0:00:31.271
Male voiceover: Exactly.[br]This called Composition VII.

0:00:31.271,0:00:36.532
Female voiceover: Kandinsky actually[br]used a lot of really abstract titles.

0:00:36.532,0:00:38.233
He painted a number of compositions.

0:00:38.233,0:00:40.657
He painted a number of improvisations.

0:00:40.657,0:00:41.700
Male voiceover: This is[br]the kind of title ...

0:00:41.700,0:00:42.802
Female voiceover: He's[br]borrowing from music.

0:00:42.802,0:00:44.251
Male voiceover: Yeah. This is ...

0:00:44.251,0:00:45.536
Male voiceover: Right, as[br]if this was orchestration.

0:00:45.536,0:00:47.135
Female voiceover: It is[br]orchestration for him.

0:00:47.135,0:00:49.902
There are various things that[br]are important to Kandinsky

0:00:49.902,0:00:54.201
and one of them is the way that color is

0:00:54.201,0:00:56.960
endurably connected to[br]music and to other senses.

0:00:56.960,0:01:00.752
We see certain sounds and[br]we hear certain colors.

0:01:00.752,0:01:03.402
Male voiceover: It's[br]almost [unintelligible][br]aesthetic experience, right?

0:01:03.402,0:01:04.000
Female voiceover: Yes.

0:01:04.000,0:01:05.134
Male voiceover: There's[br]a kind of alliance.

0:01:05.134,0:01:09.167
There's a kind of natural[br]pairing of color and sound,

0:01:09.167,0:01:10.416
or color and shape.

0:01:10.416,0:01:11.866
Female voiceover: I thought[br]it was all the senses,

0:01:11.866,0:01:12.735
a connecting of all the senses.

0:01:12.735,0:01:13.434
Male voiceover: It can be.

0:01:13.434,0:01:14.778
I think there are different experiences.

0:01:14.778,0:01:17.110
Female voiceover: I think,[br]like, this soup tastes blue.

0:01:17.110,0:01:19.943
Male voiceover: Exactly,[br]or the letter B is yellow.

0:01:19.943,0:01:22.165
Female voiceover: I[br]have a story about that.

0:01:22.165,0:01:28.832
When I was three and I went to[br]the doctor and my throat hurt,

0:01:28.832,0:01:33.587
the doctor said, "How[br]does your throat feel?"

0:01:33.587,0:01:35.584
I said, "Red."

0:01:35.584,0:01:38.197
I remember shouting, "Red."

0:01:38.197,0:01:42.586
I just remember feeling[br]that it felt the color red.

0:01:42.586,0:01:43.169
Male voiceover: There it is.

0:01:43.169,0:01:44.586
Female voiceover: That was my main way

0:01:44.586,0:01:47.828
of expressing how my throat felt.

0:01:47.828,0:01:51.286
Maybe there is this[br]connection between the senses

0:01:51.286,0:01:53.765
and maybe there is a sense ...

0:01:53.765,0:01:56.453
I think Kandinsky kind[br]of talks about this,

0:01:56.453,0:01:58.669
maybe not exactly this way,

0:01:58.669,0:02:03.503
but that our brain sort of ruined that.

0:02:03.503,0:02:06.301
That we grow up and we[br]understand convention,

0:02:06.301,0:02:10.294
more and more disassociated from[br]those sort of primal connections.

0:02:10.294,0:02:11.930
Male voiceover: Kandinsky[br]spent a lot of his life

0:02:11.930,0:02:14.162
trying to reclaim that, though. Right?

0:02:14.162,0:02:14.834
Female voiceover: Right.

0:02:14.834,0:02:16.329
If we look back at the painting.

0:02:16.329,0:02:18.390
I keep looking at it[br]and then looking away,

0:02:18.390,0:02:19.739
and then looking at it again

0:02:19.739,0:02:20.840
and trying to make sense of it.

0:02:20.840,0:02:23.225
I think one of the things that's[br]difficult for about Kandinsky

0:02:23.225,0:02:26.658
is that I don't really know what[br]he's doing a lot of the time.

0:02:26.658,0:02:29.558
Then, if I try not to think[br]about what he's doing so much

0:02:29.558,0:02:32.178
and more about what it looks like

0:02:32.178,0:02:34.757
and maybe something about[br]what it sounds like.

0:02:34.757,0:02:37.885
He named his paintings[br]Composition or Improvisation.

0:02:37.885,0:02:41.884
He was also friends with one of[br]the great early modern composers,

0:02:41.884,0:02:44.117
the Viennese composer, Arnold Schoenberg.

0:02:44.117,0:02:47.199
Schoenberg works with atonal sounds

0:02:47.199,0:02:49.268
and atonal systems and compositions.

0:02:49.268,0:02:53.766
If you listen to Schoenberg's music[br]and you look at Kandinsky's painting,

0:02:53.766,0:02:54.934
I think it makes so much more sense.

0:02:54.934,0:02:56.293
Male voiceover: I think we[br]have a little bit, right?

0:02:56.293,0:02:57.185
Female voiceover: I think we do.

0:02:57.185,0:03:21.083
(soft orchestra music)

0:03:21.083,0:03:22.850
Male voiceover: When[br]I listen to Schoenberg

0:03:22.850,0:03:24.686
and when I listen to atonal music,

0:03:24.686,0:03:29.799
I often feel like there is a[br]real attempt to shape sound

0:03:29.799,0:03:34.410
and let it exist somehow[br]as this sort of abstract

0:03:34.410,0:03:36.351
almost representation of itself.

0:03:36.351,0:03:37.411
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. (Affirmative)

0:03:37.411,0:03:40.718
Male voiceover: I do see a kind[br]of affiliation between that

0:03:40.718,0:03:42.619
and what some of the artist[br]of this period are doing,

0:03:42.619,0:03:44.384
especially somebody like Kandinsky.

0:03:44.384,0:03:45.493
Female voiceover: I think the separation

0:03:45.493,0:03:48.744
of the representation[br]from the natural world,

0:03:48.744,0:03:53.550
whether it's sound and music separated[br]from a narrative composition,

0:03:53.550,0:03:54.743
or whether it's ...

0:03:54.743,0:03:58.161
Male voiceover: But, music composition ...

0:03:58.161,0:04:03.952
sort of high music, what we now call[br]classical music, is often disassociated.

0:04:03.952,0:04:06.577
There are examples, of[br]course Beethoven sometimes,

0:04:06.577,0:04:10.608
the 6th Symphony will be[br]mimicking some sort of storm.

0:04:10.608,0:04:12.743
Very often there isn't[br]that direct narrative.

0:04:12.743,0:04:14.949
There is a kind of inherent abstraction.

0:04:14.949,0:04:15.661
Female voiceover: In music.

0:04:15.661,0:04:16.325
Male voiceover: In music.

0:04:16.325,0:04:17.950
When you get to the atonal,

0:04:17.950,0:04:21.517
more conscious reference to[br]the sound of music itself,

0:04:21.517,0:04:23.743
to the representation of music, almost.

0:04:23.743,0:04:25.244
Which I see is sort of more paired

0:04:25.244,0:04:27.911
to this more subconscious[br]abstraction in painting.

0:04:27.911,0:04:28.744
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

0:04:28.744,0:04:29.817
Male voiceover: But, you've[br]just called on, I think,

0:04:29.817,0:04:33.110
a really important and really[br]significant kind of distinction

0:04:33.110,0:04:34.383
between painting music,

0:04:34.383,0:04:37.953
which is painting as always trying[br]to craft something that it's not.

0:04:37.953,0:04:41.740
Music, it has been much more[br]comfortable historically, I think,

0:04:41.740,0:04:43.370
with it's inherit abstraction.

0:04:43.370,0:04:48.359
Female voiceover: Music, it[br]so specifically changes mood

0:04:48.359,0:04:52.119
and it allows you to sort of[br]stay in that different space

0:04:52.119,0:04:53.392
and it evokes emotion.

0:04:53.392,0:04:56.620
It sort of brings you to[br]that very particular place.

0:04:56.620,0:05:01.119
Listening to the Schoenberg, it[br]feels really uncomfortable to me,

0:05:01.119,0:05:02.037
to my ears.

0:05:02.037,0:05:03.214
It's not something that's pleasant.

0:05:03.214,0:05:05.963
I start to feel physically discomforted.

0:05:05.963,0:05:07.593
I just don't really like it,

0:05:07.593,0:05:10.131
but that's part of what the idea is.

0:05:10.131,0:05:13.526
Painting, at this point, the[br]modernist, in the early 20th century,

0:05:13.526,0:05:17.693
are trying to cause a kind of disruption.

0:05:17.693,0:05:18.291
Male voiceover: Yeah.

0:05:18.291,0:05:19.693
Female voiceover: I think that's[br]a really interesting question.

0:05:19.693,0:05:24.671
I mean, what it is about[br]atonality or dissonance

0:05:24.671,0:05:30.830
or in the Kandinsky paintings, forms[br]that don't look so obviously harmonious?

0:05:30.830,0:05:31.626
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

0:05:31.626,0:05:35.246
Female voiceover: Like in this[br]painting where there's shapes and lines

0:05:35.246,0:05:37.459
moving in different directions,

0:05:37.459,0:05:41.357
kind of a sense of parts clashing together

0:05:41.357,0:05:44.246
and coming together in[br]that kind of dissonant way.

0:05:44.246,0:05:45.578
Male voiceover: Like[br]a disruption of space.

0:05:45.578,0:05:47.995
Female voiceover: What[br]is it about modernism

0:05:47.995,0:05:54.858
that sort of asks for the disruption[br]of melody and harmonious sound

0:05:54.858,0:06:01.624
and sees atonality as a more[br]effective representation of itself?

0:06:01.624,0:06:03.724
Female Voiceover: Kandinsky[br]is really trying to evoke

0:06:03.724,0:06:08.857
his particular subjective[br]experience of a color

0:06:08.857,0:06:11.124
or of a shape or of whatever[br]else he's looking at.

0:06:11.124,0:06:13.625
He's sort of creating[br]that subjective moment,

0:06:13.625,0:06:18.058
making it look specifically non[br]referential and non naturalistic.

0:06:18.058,0:06:21.126
It's not about making a[br]bridge look like a bridge.

0:06:21.126,0:06:23.725
It's about, what do you feel like[br]when you're crossing a bridge,

0:06:23.725,0:06:25.025
what does that do to you.

0:06:25.025,0:06:28.328
If you look at the topic, I mean,[br]is that a horizon line up there?

0:06:28.328,0:06:28.957
I don't know.

0:06:28.957,0:06:30.857
What is he ...

0:06:30.857,0:06:31.857
Is this a landscape?

0:06:31.857,0:06:33.332
Figure out what anything is.

0:06:33.332,0:06:34.764
I think that that's his point.

0:06:34.764,0:06:36.712
Male voiceover: It does feel[br]like it's a painting about

0:06:36.712,0:06:40.034
a kind of conflict of the[br]forms themselves. Right?

0:06:40.034,0:06:40.767
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

0:06:40.767,0:06:41.878
Male voiceover: I think you're right.

0:06:41.878,0:06:45.463
I think he sort of pushes[br]past our desire to associate

0:06:45.463,0:06:48.664
this will landscape or still life[br]or some sort of representation,

0:06:48.664,0:06:50.264
even if it's abstracted.

0:06:50.264,0:06:51.547
We sort of get ...

0:06:51.547,0:06:55.546
He's very successful, I think, in[br]sort of pushing us to another point

0:06:55.546,0:06:59.630
where we actually can take seriously[br]this notion of form and color

0:06:59.630,0:07:02.597
beginning to have[br]conflict in and of itself.

0:07:02.597,0:07:05.879
In a sense, making the[br]abstract legitimate.

0:07:05.879,0:07:08.297
Female voiceover: Read against[br]yellow, blue with green.

0:07:08.297,0:07:08.764
Female voiceover: Yeah.

0:07:08.764,0:07:10.128
Male voiceover: Yeah and in someways,

0:07:10.128,0:07:12.477
that's what the music that we just[br]listened to was doing as well.

0:07:12.477,0:07:15.213
The very term, atonal, is speaking of this

0:07:15.213,0:07:16.463
kind of this kind conflict between sound.

0:07:16.463,0:07:18.213
Female voiceover: Something[br]about the modern world though,

0:07:18.213,0:07:20.545
that doesn't feel like it matches.

0:07:20.545,0:07:21.598
Male voiceover: In that part of it.

0:07:21.598,0:07:22.827
Female voiceover: Right. Female[br]voiceover: In classical music[br]there's a narrative in it.

0:07:22.827,0:07:23.516
Female voiceover: Right.[br]There's a narrative

0:07:23.516,0:07:24.488
and there's a resolution,[br]even if it's disrupted.

0:07:24.488,0:07:25.338
Male voiceover: Yes.

0:07:25.338,0:07:30.933
Female voiceover: That sense of things[br]coming of the center, not holding, right?

0:07:30.933,0:07:31.616
Male voiceover: Yeah.

0:07:31.616,0:07:32.960
Female voiceover: To use Yates,

0:07:32.960,0:07:34.826
of things coming apart.

0:07:34.826,0:07:35.326
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

0:07:35.326,0:07:39.027
Female voiceover: Of the[br]world not having a narrative

0:07:39.027,0:07:41.292
that explains it, that makes sense,

0:07:41.292,0:07:45.325
that represents human beings[br]position in the universe anymore.

0:07:45.325,0:07:47.242
Male voiceover: It's so[br]seductive to then say,

0:07:47.242,0:07:51.159
okay this is 1913, the first[br]world war is about to break out.

0:07:51.159,0:07:51.826
Female voiceover: Right.[br]Female voiceover: Right.

0:07:51.826,0:07:53.077
Male voiceover: All of[br]those players are there.

0:07:53.077,0:07:54.898
I think we have to be very[br]careful about doing that,

0:07:54.898,0:07:57.078
but never the less, this[br]is a world that is really

0:07:57.078,0:07:59.076
sort of at a moment of crisis.

0:07:59.076,0:08:03.364
Female voiceover: I think the idea[br]of apocalypse in inescapable here.

0:08:03.364,0:08:04.494
We haven't talked about it,

0:08:04.494,0:08:07.577
but in looking at it, it feels[br]like Kandinsky is looking

0:08:07.577,0:08:13.661
with ideas of apocalypse, that he's[br]looking to kind of destroy and then renew,

0:08:13.661,0:08:16.797
which is a really seductive idea[br]for the artist at this time.

0:08:16.797,0:08:18.189
Male voiceover: Yeah.

0:08:18.189,0:08:21.325
Female: [Unintelligible][br]like destroy what's there.

0:08:21.325,0:08:22.774
Female voiceover: What is that?

0:08:22.774,0:08:24.472
Female voiceover: Because in[br]order to make something new,

0:08:24.472,0:08:25.725
you have to destroy what's already there.

0:08:25.725,0:08:27.835
Male voiceover: Also this[br]notion of just this ...

0:08:27.835,0:08:28.519
Female voiceover: Wipe it all away.

0:08:28.519,0:08:29.701
Female: Mm-hmm, wipe it away.

0:08:29.701,0:08:31.346
Male voiceover: Absolutely,[br]and create a utopia ...

0:08:31.346,0:08:32.001
Female voiceover: Yeah.

0:08:32.001,0:08:33.025
Male voiceover: ... that would replace it.

0:08:33.025,0:08:35.727
Female voiceover: To me, I think,[br]one of things that's really amazing

0:08:35.727,0:08:37.794
is that this is before World War I

0:08:37.794,0:08:39.460
and so much changes after World War I.

0:08:39.460,0:08:42.298
I think when they[br]realize [unintelligible].

0:08:42.298,0:08:44.083
Female voiceover: Wipe everything[br]out is not such a good idea.

0:08:44.083,0:08:48.417
Female voiceover: No, it actually[br]doesn't do anything necessarily good.

0:08:48.417,0:08:50.416
Male voiceover: Right, and[br]now we have the technology

0:08:50.416,0:08:51.859
that actually allows us to do that.

0:08:51.859,0:08:52.251
Female voiceover: Yeah.

0:08:52.251,0:08:53.395
Male voiceover: We have machine guns.

0:08:53.395,0:08:54.159
We have ... yeah.

0:08:54.159,0:08:55.084
Female voiceover: Look what happens.

0:08:55.084,0:08:57.084
People are maimed and horrible disfigured

0:08:57.084,0:08:58.392
and it's actually not as pretty.

0:08:58.392,0:08:59.166
Female voiceover: People[br]don't come back from war.

0:08:59.166,0:08:59.726
Female voiceover: No, they don't.

0:08:59.726,0:09:05.084
They don't have visions that[br]give them access to new truths.

0:09:05.084,0:09:08.909
They just sort of see, basically, how[br]horrible people are to one another.

0:09:08.909,0:09:10.195
I think this is sort of before that.

0:09:10.195,0:09:13.660
There's a kind of utopian idea[br]of what apocalypse will bring,

0:09:13.660,0:09:15.410
that it will bring some[br]kind of inner truth.

0:09:15.410,0:09:16.893
Male voiceover: Is there[br]also sort of a religious ...

0:09:16.893,0:09:18.227
Female: There's a spiritual.

0:09:18.227,0:09:19.230
Male voiceover: I mean, a[br]kind of spiritual aspect here.

0:09:19.230,0:09:20.053
Female voiceover: Definitely. [br]Female voiceover: Yeah.

0:09:20.053,0:09:22.659
Female voiceover: Kandinsky wrote[br]on the spiritual in art in 1911,

0:09:22.659,0:09:24.327
two years before he paints this.

0:09:24.327,0:09:30.461
He evokes a lot of connection between[br]color and art and faith and spirituality,

0:09:30.461,0:09:32.577
having that core belief in something.

0:09:32.577,0:09:37.160
Female voiceover: For him, the modern[br]world has lost that spirituality,

0:09:37.160,0:09:40.393
that innocence, that[br]connection to emotion ...

0:09:40.393,0:09:41.910
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

0:09:41.910,0:09:43.660
Female voiceover: ... and[br]sort of primal emotion

0:09:43.660,0:09:48.194
and the apocalypse might restore[br]that to human beings, ...

0:09:48.194,0:09:48.960
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm, absolutely.

0:09:48.960,0:09:51.402
Female voiceover: ... what culture,[br]in a way, has stolen from us.

0:09:51.402,0:09:53.280
It's a very primitivist idea.

0:09:53.280,0:09:53.833
Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

0:09:53.833,0:09:56.947
Female voiceover: I find this[br]idea, the colors, the ...

0:09:56.947,0:09:57.861
Male voiceover: The movement.

0:09:57.861,0:09:58.831
Female voiceover: ... the[br]connections of everything,

0:09:58.831,0:10:01.778
the things moving apart[br]and coming together,

0:10:01.778,0:10:04.279
I mean, it's ... you know.

0:10:04.279,0:10:09.361
When I allow myself to have[br]colors and lines and shapes

0:10:09.361,0:10:14.006
just sort of suggest feelings[br]and tastes and smells,

0:10:14.006,0:10:16.506
then I think this painting[br]becomes really enjoyable.

0:10:16.506,0:10:19.365
Male voiceover: There's a kind[br]of incredible freedom here

0:10:19.365,0:10:20.633
that, you used the word expressionist,

0:10:20.633,0:10:24.256
it's so different from later[br]Kandinsky, where things become

0:10:24.256,0:10:28.466
so much more systematized[br]in a way, and clarified.

0:10:28.466,0:10:32.669
There's a wonderful[br]sense of invention here.

0:10:32.669,0:10:34.900
Female voiceover: It's large, so it[br]would have been really immersive.

0:10:34.900,0:10:35.670
Male voiceover: Yeah.

0:10:35.670,0:10:37.965
Female voiceover: One wonders[br]at the extent to which

0:10:37.965,0:10:41.148
he was trying to give us[br]a kind grand statement of.

0:10:41.148,0:10:41.927
Male voiceover: A symphony.

0:10:41.927,0:10:43.765
Female voiceover: I guess[br]the longer that I look at it,

0:10:43.765,0:10:45.630
I can understand more of it,

0:10:45.630,0:10:50.595
but I have a hard time really enjoying it.

0:10:50.595,0:10:51.398
Male voiceover: It's a tough painting.

0:10:51.398,0:10:52.293
Female: It's a tough painting.

0:10:52.293,0:10:53.259
Female voiceover: It is a tough painting.

0:10:53.259,0:10:54.527
Female voiceover: I think[br]it's meant to be tough.

0:10:54.527,0:10:55.360
Maybe that's ...

0:10:55.360,0:10:56.398
Male voiceover: That's a tough moment.

0:10:56.398,0:10:58.147
Female voiceover: It's[br]interesting that it's still tough.

0:10:58.147,0:11:00.898
Female voiceover: Duchamp and Warhol

0:11:00.898,0:11:05.126
and the whole century of modernism[br]and post modernism have passed

0:11:05.126,0:11:07.409
and this is still a difficult art.

0:11:07.409,0:11:08.266
Male voiceover: Schoenberg is still tough.

0:11:08.266,0:11:09.300
Female voiceover: Yeah,[br]Schoenberg is still tough.

0:11:09.300,0:11:09.743
Male voiceover: Yeah.

0:11:09.743,0:11:10.491
Female voiceover: That says a lot.

0:11:10.491,0:11:11.159
Male voiceover: It does.

0:11:11.159,0:11:12.203
Female voiceover: There's[br]still a lot of power.

0:11:12.203,0:11:16.304
(upbeat piano music)