1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:03,684 (upbeat piano music) 2 00:00:14,647 --> 00:00:16,772 Male voiceover: We're going to look at an extremely large painting 3 00:00:16,772 --> 00:00:19,638 by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, 4 00:00:19,638 --> 00:00:23,172 working in Munich in 1913. 5 00:00:23,172 --> 00:00:25,065 This is a painting that's in Moscow now. 6 00:00:25,065 --> 00:00:27,504 Female voiceover: It's a year before the first world war began. 7 00:00:27,504 --> 00:00:31,271 Male voiceover: Exactly. This called Composition VII. 8 00:00:31,271 --> 00:00:36,532 Female voiceover: Kandinsky actually used a lot of really abstract titles. 9 00:00:36,532 --> 00:00:38,233 He painted a number of compositions. 10 00:00:38,233 --> 00:00:40,657 He painted a number of improvisations. 11 00:00:40,657 --> 00:00:41,700 Male voiceover: This is the kind of title ... 12 00:00:41,700 --> 00:00:42,802 Female voiceover: He's borrowing from music. 13 00:00:42,802 --> 00:00:44,251 Male voiceover: Yeah. This is ... 14 00:00:44,251 --> 00:00:45,536 Male voiceover: Right, as if this was orchestration. 15 00:00:45,536 --> 00:00:47,135 Female voiceover: It is orchestration for him. 16 00:00:47,135 --> 00:00:49,902 There are various things that are important to Kandinsky 17 00:00:49,902 --> 00:00:54,201 and one of them is the way that color is 18 00:00:54,201 --> 00:00:56,960 endurably connected to music and to other senses. 19 00:00:56,960 --> 00:01:00,752 We see certain sounds and we hear certain colors. 20 00:01:00,752 --> 00:01:03,402 Male voiceover: It's almost [unintelligible] aesthetic experience, right? 21 00:01:03,402 --> 00:01:04,000 Female voiceover: Yes. 22 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:05,134 Male voiceover: There's a kind of alliance. 23 00:01:05,134 --> 00:01:09,167 There's a kind of natural pairing of color and sound, 24 00:01:09,167 --> 00:01:10,416 or color and shape. 25 00:01:10,416 --> 00:01:11,866 Female voiceover: I thought it was all the senses, 26 00:01:11,866 --> 00:01:12,735 a connecting of all the senses. 27 00:01:12,735 --> 00:01:13,434 Male voiceover: It can be. 28 00:01:13,434 --> 00:01:14,778 I think there are different experiences. 29 00:01:14,778 --> 00:01:17,110 Female voiceover: I think, like, this soup tastes blue. 30 00:01:17,110 --> 00:01:19,943 Male voiceover: Exactly, or the letter B is yellow. 31 00:01:19,943 --> 00:01:22,165 Female voiceover: I have a story about that. 32 00:01:22,165 --> 00:01:28,832 When I was three and I went to the doctor and my throat hurt, 33 00:01:28,832 --> 00:01:33,587 the doctor said, "How does your throat feel?" 34 00:01:33,587 --> 00:01:35,584 I said, "Red." 35 00:01:35,584 --> 00:01:38,197 I remember shouting, "Red." 36 00:01:38,197 --> 00:01:42,586 I just remember feeling that it felt the color red. 37 00:01:42,586 --> 00:01:43,169 Male voiceover: There it is. 38 00:01:43,169 --> 00:01:44,586 Female voiceover: That was my main way 39 00:01:44,586 --> 00:01:47,828 of expressing how my throat felt. 40 00:01:47,828 --> 00:01:51,286 Maybe there is this connection between the senses 41 00:01:51,286 --> 00:01:53,765 and maybe there is a sense ... 42 00:01:53,765 --> 00:01:56,453 I think Kandinsky kind of talks about this, 43 00:01:56,453 --> 00:01:58,669 maybe not exactly this way, 44 00:01:58,669 --> 00:02:03,503 but that our brain sort of ruined that. 45 00:02:03,503 --> 00:02:06,301 That we grow up and we understand convention, 46 00:02:06,301 --> 00:02:10,294 more and more disassociated from those sort of primal connections. 47 00:02:10,294 --> 00:02:11,930 Male voiceover: Kandinsky spent a lot of his life 48 00:02:11,930 --> 00:02:14,162 trying to reclaim that, though. Right? 49 00:02:14,162 --> 00:02:14,834 Female voiceover: Right. 50 00:02:14,834 --> 00:02:16,329 If we look back at the painting. 51 00:02:16,329 --> 00:02:18,390 I keep looking at it and then looking away, 52 00:02:18,390 --> 00:02:19,739 and then looking at it again 53 00:02:19,739 --> 00:02:20,840 and trying to make sense of it. 54 00:02:20,840 --> 00:02:23,225 I think one of the things that's difficult for about Kandinsky 55 00:02:23,225 --> 00:02:26,658 is that I don't really know what he's doing a lot of the time. 56 00:02:26,658 --> 00:02:29,558 Then, if I try not to think about what he's doing so much 57 00:02:29,558 --> 00:02:32,178 and more about what it looks like 58 00:02:32,178 --> 00:02:34,757 and maybe something about what it sounds like. 59 00:02:34,757 --> 00:02:37,885 He named his paintings Composition or Improvisation. 60 00:02:37,885 --> 00:02:41,884 He was also friends with one of the great early modern composers, 61 00:02:41,884 --> 00:02:44,117 the Viennese composer, Arnold Schoenberg. 62 00:02:44,117 --> 00:02:47,199 Schoenberg works with atonal sounds 63 00:02:47,199 --> 00:02:49,268 and atonal systems and compositions. 64 00:02:49,268 --> 00:02:53,766 If you listen to Schoenberg's music and you look at Kandinsky's painting, 65 00:02:53,766 --> 00:02:54,934 I think it makes so much more sense. 66 00:02:54,934 --> 00:02:56,293 Male voiceover: I think we have a little bit, right? 67 00:02:56,293 --> 00:02:57,185 Female voiceover: I think we do. 68 00:02:57,185 --> 00:03:21,083 (soft orchestra music) 69 00:03:21,083 --> 00:03:22,850 Male voiceover: When I listen to Schoenberg 70 00:03:22,850 --> 00:03:24,686 and when I listen to atonal music, 71 00:03:24,686 --> 00:03:29,799 I often feel like there is a real attempt to shape sound 72 00:03:29,799 --> 00:03:34,410 and let it exist somehow as this sort of abstract 73 00:03:34,410 --> 00:03:36,351 almost representation of itself. 74 00:03:36,351 --> 00:03:37,411 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. (Affirmative) 75 00:03:37,411 --> 00:03:40,718 Male voiceover: I do see a kind of affiliation between that 76 00:03:40,718 --> 00:03:42,619 and what some of the artist of this period are doing, 77 00:03:42,619 --> 00:03:44,384 especially somebody like Kandinsky. 78 00:03:44,384 --> 00:03:45,493 Female voiceover: I think the separation 79 00:03:45,493 --> 00:03:48,744 of the representation from the natural world, 80 00:03:48,744 --> 00:03:53,550 whether it's sound and music separated from a narrative composition, 81 00:03:53,550 --> 00:03:54,743 or whether it's ... 82 00:03:54,743 --> 00:03:58,161 Male voiceover: But, music composition ... 83 00:03:58,161 --> 00:04:03,952 sort of high music, what we now call classical music, is often disassociated. 84 00:04:03,952 --> 00:04:06,577 There are examples, of course Beethoven sometimes, 85 00:04:06,577 --> 00:04:10,608 the 6th Symphony will be mimicking some sort of storm. 86 00:04:10,608 --> 00:04:12,743 Very often there isn't that direct narrative. 87 00:04:12,743 --> 00:04:14,949 There is a kind of inherent abstraction. 88 00:04:14,949 --> 00:04:15,661 Female voiceover: In music. 89 00:04:15,661 --> 00:04:16,325 Male voiceover: In music. 90 00:04:16,325 --> 00:04:17,950 When you get to the atonal, 91 00:04:17,950 --> 00:04:21,517 more conscious reference to the sound of music itself, 92 00:04:21,517 --> 00:04:23,743 to the representation of music, almost. 93 00:04:23,743 --> 00:04:25,244 Which I see is sort of more paired 94 00:04:25,244 --> 00:04:27,911 to this more subconscious abstraction in painting. 95 00:04:27,911 --> 00:04:28,744 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. 96 00:04:28,744 --> 00:04:29,817 Male voiceover: But, you've just called on, I think, 97 00:04:29,817 --> 00:04:33,110 a really important and really significant kind of distinction 98 00:04:33,110 --> 00:04:34,383 between painting music, 99 00:04:34,383 --> 00:04:37,953 which is painting as always trying to craft something that it's not. 100 00:04:37,953 --> 00:04:41,740 Music, it has been much more comfortable historically, I think, 101 00:04:41,740 --> 00:04:43,370 with it's inherit abstraction. 102 00:04:43,370 --> 00:04:48,359 Female voiceover: Music, it so specifically changes mood 103 00:04:48,359 --> 00:04:52,119 and it allows you to sort of stay in that different space 104 00:04:52,119 --> 00:04:53,392 and it evokes emotion. 105 00:04:53,392 --> 00:04:56,620 It sort of brings you to that very particular place. 106 00:04:56,620 --> 00:05:01,119 Listening to the Schoenberg, it feels really uncomfortable to me, 107 00:05:01,119 --> 00:05:02,037 to my ears. 108 00:05:02,037 --> 00:05:03,214 It's not something that's pleasant. 109 00:05:03,214 --> 00:05:05,963 I start to feel physically discomforted. 110 00:05:05,963 --> 00:05:07,593 I just don't really like it, 111 00:05:07,593 --> 00:05:10,131 but that's part of what the idea is. 112 00:05:10,131 --> 00:05:13,526 Painting, at this point, the modernist, in the early 20th century, 113 00:05:13,526 --> 00:05:17,693 are trying to cause a kind of disruption. 114 00:05:17,693 --> 00:05:18,291 Male voiceover: Yeah. 115 00:05:18,291 --> 00:05:19,693 Female voiceover: I think that's a really interesting question. 116 00:05:19,693 --> 00:05:24,671 I mean, what it is about atonality or dissonance 117 00:05:24,671 --> 00:05:30,830 or in the Kandinsky paintings, forms that don't look so obviously harmonious? 118 00:05:30,830 --> 00:05:31,626 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. 119 00:05:31,626 --> 00:05:35,246 Female voiceover: Like in this painting where there's shapes and lines 120 00:05:35,246 --> 00:05:37,459 moving in different directions, 121 00:05:37,459 --> 00:05:41,357 kind of a sense of parts clashing together 122 00:05:41,357 --> 00:05:44,246 and coming together in that kind of dissonant way. 123 00:05:44,246 --> 00:05:45,578 Male voiceover: Like a disruption of space. 124 00:05:45,578 --> 00:05:47,995 Female voiceover: What is it about modernism 125 00:05:47,995 --> 00:05:54,858 that sort of asks for the disruption of melody and harmonious sound 126 00:05:54,858 --> 00:06:01,624 and sees atonality as a more effective representation of itself? 127 00:06:01,624 --> 00:06:03,724 Female Voiceover: Kandinsky is really trying to evoke 128 00:06:03,724 --> 00:06:08,857 his particular subjective experience of a color 129 00:06:08,857 --> 00:06:11,124 or of a shape or of whatever else he's looking at. 130 00:06:11,124 --> 00:06:13,625 He's sort of creating that subjective moment, 131 00:06:13,625 --> 00:06:18,058 making it look specifically non referential and non naturalistic. 132 00:06:18,058 --> 00:06:21,126 It's not about making a bridge look like a bridge. 133 00:06:21,126 --> 00:06:23,725 It's about, what do you feel like when you're crossing a bridge, 134 00:06:23,725 --> 00:06:25,025 what does that do to you. 135 00:06:25,025 --> 00:06:28,328 If you look at the topic, I mean, is that a horizon line up there? 136 00:06:28,328 --> 00:06:28,957 I don't know. 137 00:06:28,957 --> 00:06:30,857 What is he ... 138 00:06:30,857 --> 00:06:31,857 Is this a landscape? 139 00:06:31,857 --> 00:06:33,332 Figure out what anything is. 140 00:06:33,332 --> 00:06:34,764 I think that that's his point. 141 00:06:34,764 --> 00:06:36,712 Male voiceover: It does feel like it's a painting about 142 00:06:36,712 --> 00:06:40,034 a kind of conflict of the forms themselves. Right? 143 00:06:40,034 --> 00:06:40,767 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. 144 00:06:40,767 --> 00:06:41,878 Male voiceover: I think you're right. 145 00:06:41,878 --> 00:06:45,463 I think he sort of pushes past our desire to associate 146 00:06:45,463 --> 00:06:48,664 this will landscape or still life or some sort of representation, 147 00:06:48,664 --> 00:06:50,264 even if it's abstracted. 148 00:06:50,264 --> 00:06:51,547 We sort of get ... 149 00:06:51,547 --> 00:06:55,546 He's very successful, I think, in sort of pushing us to another point 150 00:06:55,546 --> 00:06:59,630 where we actually can take seriously this notion of form and color 151 00:06:59,630 --> 00:07:02,597 beginning to have conflict in and of itself. 152 00:07:02,597 --> 00:07:05,879 In a sense, making the abstract legitimate. 153 00:07:05,879 --> 00:07:08,297 Female voiceover: Read against yellow, blue with green. 154 00:07:08,297 --> 00:07:08,764 Female voiceover: Yeah. 155 00:07:08,764 --> 00:07:10,128 Male voiceover: Yeah and in someways, 156 00:07:10,128 --> 00:07:12,477 that's what the music that we just listened to was doing as well. 157 00:07:12,477 --> 00:07:15,213 The very term, atonal, is speaking of this 158 00:07:15,213 --> 00:07:16,463 kind of this kind conflict between sound. 159 00:07:16,463 --> 00:07:18,213 Female voiceover: Something about the modern world though, 160 00:07:18,213 --> 00:07:20,545 that doesn't feel like it matches. 161 00:07:20,545 --> 00:07:21,598 Male voiceover: In that part of it. 162 00:07:21,598 --> 00:07:22,827 Female voiceover: Right. Female voiceover: In classical music there's a narrative in it. 163 00:07:22,827 --> 00:07:23,516 Female voiceover: Right. There's a narrative 164 00:07:23,516 --> 00:07:24,488 and there's a resolution, even if it's disrupted. 165 00:07:24,488 --> 00:07:25,338 Male voiceover: Yes. 166 00:07:25,338 --> 00:07:30,933 Female voiceover: That sense of things coming of the center, not holding, right? 167 00:07:30,933 --> 00:07:31,616 Male voiceover: Yeah. 168 00:07:31,616 --> 00:07:32,960 Female voiceover: To use Yates, 169 00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:34,826 of things coming apart. 170 00:07:34,826 --> 00:07:35,326 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. 171 00:07:35,326 --> 00:07:39,027 Female voiceover: Of the world not having a narrative 172 00:07:39,027 --> 00:07:41,292 that explains it, that makes sense, 173 00:07:41,292 --> 00:07:45,325 that represents human beings position in the universe anymore. 174 00:07:45,325 --> 00:07:47,242 Male voiceover: It's so seductive to then say, 175 00:07:47,242 --> 00:07:51,159 okay this is 1913, the first world war is about to break out. 176 00:07:51,159 --> 00:07:51,826 Female voiceover: Right. Female voiceover: Right. 177 00:07:51,826 --> 00:07:53,077 Male voiceover: All of those players are there. 178 00:07:53,077 --> 00:07:54,898 I think we have to be very careful about doing that, 179 00:07:54,898 --> 00:07:57,078 but never the less, this is a world that is really 180 00:07:57,078 --> 00:07:59,076 sort of at a moment of crisis. 181 00:07:59,076 --> 00:08:03,364 Female voiceover: I think the idea of apocalypse in inescapable here. 182 00:08:03,364 --> 00:08:04,494 We haven't talked about it, 183 00:08:04,494 --> 00:08:07,577 but in looking at it, it feels like Kandinsky is looking 184 00:08:07,577 --> 00:08:13,661 with ideas of apocalypse, that he's looking to kind of destroy and then renew, 185 00:08:13,661 --> 00:08:16,797 which is a really seductive idea for the artist at this time. 186 00:08:16,797 --> 00:08:18,189 Male voiceover: Yeah. 187 00:08:18,189 --> 00:08:21,325 Female: [Unintelligible] like destroy what's there. 188 00:08:21,325 --> 00:08:22,774 Female voiceover: What is that? 189 00:08:22,774 --> 00:08:24,472 Female voiceover: Because in order to make something new, 190 00:08:24,472 --> 00:08:25,725 you have to destroy what's already there. 191 00:08:25,725 --> 00:08:27,835 Male voiceover: Also this notion of just this ... 192 00:08:27,835 --> 00:08:28,519 Female voiceover: Wipe it all away. 193 00:08:28,519 --> 00:08:29,701 Female: Mm-hmm, wipe it away. 194 00:08:29,701 --> 00:08:31,346 Male voiceover: Absolutely, and create a utopia ... 195 00:08:31,346 --> 00:08:32,001 Female voiceover: Yeah. 196 00:08:32,001 --> 00:08:33,025 Male voiceover: ... that would replace it. 197 00:08:33,025 --> 00:08:35,727 Female voiceover: To me, I think, one of things that's really amazing 198 00:08:35,727 --> 00:08:37,794 is that this is before World War I 199 00:08:37,794 --> 00:08:39,460 and so much changes after World War I. 200 00:08:39,460 --> 00:08:42,298 I think when they realize [unintelligible]. 201 00:08:42,298 --> 00:08:44,083 Female voiceover: Wipe everything out is not such a good idea. 202 00:08:44,083 --> 00:08:48,417 Female voiceover: No, it actually doesn't do anything necessarily good. 203 00:08:48,417 --> 00:08:50,416 Male voiceover: Right, and now we have the technology 204 00:08:50,416 --> 00:08:51,859 that actually allows us to do that. 205 00:08:51,859 --> 00:08:52,251 Female voiceover: Yeah. 206 00:08:52,251 --> 00:08:53,395 Male voiceover: We have machine guns. 207 00:08:53,395 --> 00:08:54,159 We have ... yeah. 208 00:08:54,159 --> 00:08:55,084 Female voiceover: Look what happens. 209 00:08:55,084 --> 00:08:57,084 People are maimed and horrible disfigured 210 00:08:57,084 --> 00:08:58,392 and it's actually not as pretty. 211 00:08:58,392 --> 00:08:59,166 Female voiceover: People don't come back from war. 212 00:08:59,166 --> 00:08:59,726 Female voiceover: No, they don't. 213 00:08:59,726 --> 00:09:05,084 They don't have visions that give them access to new truths. 214 00:09:05,084 --> 00:09:08,909 They just sort of see, basically, how horrible people are to one another. 215 00:09:08,909 --> 00:09:10,195 I think this is sort of before that. 216 00:09:10,195 --> 00:09:13,660 There's a kind of utopian idea of what apocalypse will bring, 217 00:09:13,660 --> 00:09:15,410 that it will bring some kind of inner truth. 218 00:09:15,410 --> 00:09:16,893 Male voiceover: Is there also sort of a religious ... 219 00:09:16,893 --> 00:09:18,227 Female: There's a spiritual. 220 00:09:18,227 --> 00:09:19,230 Male voiceover: I mean, a kind of spiritual aspect here. 221 00:09:19,230 --> 00:09:20,053 Female voiceover: Definitely. Female voiceover: Yeah. 222 00:09:20,053 --> 00:09:22,659 Female voiceover: Kandinsky wrote on the spiritual in art in 1911, 223 00:09:22,659 --> 00:09:24,327 two years before he paints this. 224 00:09:24,327 --> 00:09:30,461 He evokes a lot of connection between color and art and faith and spirituality, 225 00:09:30,461 --> 00:09:32,577 having that core belief in something. 226 00:09:32,577 --> 00:09:37,160 Female voiceover: For him, the modern world has lost that spirituality, 227 00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:40,393 that innocence, that connection to emotion ... 228 00:09:40,393 --> 00:09:41,910 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. 229 00:09:41,910 --> 00:09:43,660 Female voiceover: ... and sort of primal emotion 230 00:09:43,660 --> 00:09:48,194 and the apocalypse might restore that to human beings, ... 231 00:09:48,194 --> 00:09:48,960 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm, absolutely. 232 00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:51,402 Female voiceover: ... what culture, in a way, has stolen from us. 233 00:09:51,402 --> 00:09:53,280 It's a very primitivist idea. 234 00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:53,833 Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. 235 00:09:53,833 --> 00:09:56,947 Female voiceover: I find this idea, the colors, the ... 236 00:09:56,947 --> 00:09:57,861 Male voiceover: The movement. 237 00:09:57,861 --> 00:09:58,831 Female voiceover: ... the connections of everything, 238 00:09:58,831 --> 00:10:01,778 the things moving apart and coming together, 239 00:10:01,778 --> 00:10:04,279 I mean, it's ... you know. 240 00:10:04,279 --> 00:10:09,361 When I allow myself to have colors and lines and shapes 241 00:10:09,361 --> 00:10:14,006 just sort of suggest feelings and tastes and smells, 242 00:10:14,006 --> 00:10:16,506 then I think this painting becomes really enjoyable. 243 00:10:16,506 --> 00:10:19,365 Male voiceover: There's a kind of incredible freedom here 244 00:10:19,365 --> 00:10:20,633 that, you used the word expressionist, 245 00:10:20,633 --> 00:10:24,256 it's so different from later Kandinsky, where things become 246 00:10:24,256 --> 00:10:28,466 so much more systematized in a way, and clarified. 247 00:10:28,466 --> 00:10:32,669 There's a wonderful sense of invention here. 248 00:10:32,669 --> 00:10:34,900 Female voiceover: It's large, so it would have been really immersive. 249 00:10:34,900 --> 00:10:35,670 Male voiceover: Yeah. 250 00:10:35,670 --> 00:10:37,965 Female voiceover: One wonders at the extent to which 251 00:10:37,965 --> 00:10:41,148 he was trying to give us a kind grand statement of. 252 00:10:41,148 --> 00:10:41,927 Male voiceover: A symphony. 253 00:10:41,927 --> 00:10:43,765 Female voiceover: I guess the longer that I look at it, 254 00:10:43,765 --> 00:10:45,630 I can understand more of it, 255 00:10:45,630 --> 00:10:50,595 but I have a hard time really enjoying it. 256 00:10:50,595 --> 00:10:51,398 Male voiceover: It's a tough painting. 257 00:10:51,398 --> 00:10:52,293 Female: It's a tough painting. 258 00:10:52,293 --> 00:10:53,259 Female voiceover: It is a tough painting. 259 00:10:53,259 --> 00:10:54,527 Female voiceover: I think it's meant to be tough. 260 00:10:54,527 --> 00:10:55,360 Maybe that's ... 261 00:10:55,360 --> 00:10:56,398 Male voiceover: That's a tough moment. 262 00:10:56,398 --> 00:10:58,147 Female voiceover: It's interesting that it's still tough. 263 00:10:58,147 --> 00:11:00,898 Female voiceover: Duchamp and Warhol 264 00:11:00,898 --> 00:11:05,126 and the whole century of modernism and post modernism have passed 265 00:11:05,126 --> 00:11:07,409 and this is still a difficult art. 266 00:11:07,409 --> 00:11:08,266 Male voiceover: Schoenberg is still tough. 267 00:11:08,266 --> 00:11:09,300 Female voiceover: Yeah, Schoenberg is still tough. 268 00:11:09,300 --> 00:11:09,743 Male voiceover: Yeah. 269 00:11:09,743 --> 00:11:10,491 Female voiceover: That says a lot. 270 00:11:10,491 --> 00:11:11,159 Male voiceover: It does. 271 00:11:11,159 --> 00:11:12,203 Female voiceover: There's still a lot of power. 272 00:11:12,203 --> 00:11:16,304 (upbeat piano music)