WEBVTT

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(upbeat piano music)

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Male voiceover: We're going to
look at an extremely large painting

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by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky,

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working in Munich in 1913.

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This is a painting that's in Moscow now.

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Female voiceover: It's a year
before the first world war began.

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Male voiceover: Exactly.
This called Composition VII.

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Female voiceover: Kandinsky actually
used a lot of really abstract titles.

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He painted a number of compositions.

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He painted a number of improvisations.

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Male voiceover: This is
the kind of title ...

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Female voiceover: He's
borrowing from music.

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Male voiceover: Yeah. This is ...

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Male voiceover: Right, as
if this was orchestration.

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Female voiceover: It is
orchestration for him.

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There are various things that
are important to Kandinsky

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and one of them is the way that color is

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endurably connected to
music and to other senses.

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We see certain sounds and
we hear certain colors.

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Male voiceover: It's
almost [unintelligible]
aesthetic experience, right?

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Female voiceover: Yes.

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Male voiceover: There's
a kind of alliance.

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There's a kind of natural
pairing of color and sound,

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or color and shape.

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Female voiceover: I thought
it was all the senses,

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a connecting of all the senses.

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Male voiceover: It can be.

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I think there are different experiences.

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Female voiceover: I think,
like, this soup tastes blue.

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Male voiceover: Exactly,
or the letter B is yellow.

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Female voiceover: I
have a story about that.

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When I was three and I went to
the doctor and my throat hurt,

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the doctor said, "How
does your throat feel?"

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I said, "Red."

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I remember shouting, "Red."

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I just remember feeling
that it felt the color red.

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Male voiceover: There it is.

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Female voiceover: That was my main way

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of expressing how my throat felt.

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Maybe there is this
connection between the senses

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and maybe there is a sense ...

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I think Kandinsky kind
of talks about this,

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maybe not exactly this way,

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but that our brain sort of ruined that.

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That we grow up and we
understand convention,

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more and more disassociated from
those sort of primal connections.

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Male voiceover: Kandinsky
spent a lot of his life

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trying to reclaim that, though. Right?

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Female voiceover: Right.

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If we look back at the painting.

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I keep looking at it
and then looking away,

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and then looking at it again

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and trying to make sense of it.

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I think one of the things that's
difficult for about Kandinsky

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is that I don't really know what
he's doing a lot of the time.

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Then, if I try not to think
about what he's doing so much

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and more about what it looks like

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and maybe something about
what it sounds like.

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He named his paintings
Composition or Improvisation.

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He was also friends with one of
the great early modern composers,

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the Viennese composer, Arnold Schoenberg.

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Schoenberg works with atonal sounds

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and atonal systems and compositions.

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If you listen to Schoenberg's music
and you look at Kandinsky's painting,

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I think it makes so much more sense.

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Male voiceover: I think we
have a little bit, right?

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Female voiceover: I think we do.

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(soft orchestra music)

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Male voiceover: When
I listen to Schoenberg

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and when I listen to atonal music,

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I often feel like there is a
real attempt to shape sound

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and let it exist somehow
as this sort of abstract

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almost representation of itself.

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm. (Affirmative)

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Male voiceover: I do see a kind
of affiliation between that

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and what some of the artist
of this period are doing,

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especially somebody like Kandinsky.

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Female voiceover: I think the separation

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of the representation
from the natural world,

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whether it's sound and music separated
from a narrative composition,

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or whether it's ...

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Male voiceover: But, music composition ...

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sort of high music, what we now call
classical music, is often disassociated.

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There are examples, of
course Beethoven sometimes,

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the 6th Symphony will be
mimicking some sort of storm.

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Very often there isn't
that direct narrative.

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There is a kind of inherent abstraction.

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Female voiceover: In music.

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Male voiceover: In music.

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When you get to the atonal,

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more conscious reference to
the sound of music itself,

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to the representation of music, almost.

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Which I see is sort of more paired

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to this more subconscious
abstraction in painting.

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

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Male voiceover: But, you've
just called on, I think,

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a really important and really
significant kind of distinction

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between painting music,

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which is painting as always trying
to craft something that it's not.

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Music, it has been much more
comfortable historically, I think,

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with it's inherit abstraction.

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Female voiceover: Music, it
so specifically changes mood

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and it allows you to sort of
stay in that different space

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and it evokes emotion.

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It sort of brings you to
that very particular place.

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Listening to the Schoenberg, it
feels really uncomfortable to me,

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to my ears.

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It's not something that's pleasant.

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I start to feel physically discomforted.

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I just don't really like it,

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but that's part of what the idea is.

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Painting, at this point, the
modernist, in the early 20th century,

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are trying to cause a kind of disruption.

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Male voiceover: Yeah.

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Female voiceover: I think that's
a really interesting question.

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I mean, what it is about
atonality or dissonance

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or in the Kandinsky paintings, forms
that don't look so obviously harmonious?

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

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Female voiceover: Like in this
painting where there's shapes and lines

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moving in different directions,

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kind of a sense of parts clashing together

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and coming together in
that kind of dissonant way.

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Male voiceover: Like
a disruption of space.

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Female voiceover: What
is it about modernism

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that sort of asks for the disruption
of melody and harmonious sound

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and sees atonality as a more
effective representation of itself?

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Female Voiceover: Kandinsky
is really trying to evoke

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his particular subjective
experience of a color

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or of a shape or of whatever
else he's looking at.

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He's sort of creating
that subjective moment,

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making it look specifically non
referential and non naturalistic.

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It's not about making a
bridge look like a bridge.

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It's about, what do you feel like
when you're crossing a bridge,

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what does that do to you.

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If you look at the topic, I mean,
is that a horizon line up there?

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I don't know.

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What is he ...

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Is this a landscape?

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Figure out what anything is.

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I think that that's his point.

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Male voiceover: It does feel
like it's a painting about

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a kind of conflict of the
forms themselves. Right?

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

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Male voiceover: I think you're right.

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I think he sort of pushes
past our desire to associate

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this will landscape or still life
or some sort of representation,

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even if it's abstracted.

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We sort of get ...

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He's very successful, I think, in
sort of pushing us to another point

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where we actually can take seriously
this notion of form and color

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beginning to have
conflict in and of itself.

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In a sense, making the
abstract legitimate.

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Female voiceover: Read against
yellow, blue with green.

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Female voiceover: Yeah.

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Male voiceover: Yeah and in someways,

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that's what the music that we just
listened to was doing as well.

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The very term, atonal, is speaking of this

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kind of this kind conflict between sound.

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Female voiceover: Something
about the modern world though,

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that doesn't feel like it matches.

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Male voiceover: In that part of it.

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Female voiceover: Right. Female
voiceover: In classical music
there's a narrative in it.

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Female voiceover: Right.
There's a narrative

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and there's a resolution,
even if it's disrupted.

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Male voiceover: Yes.

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Female voiceover: That sense of things
coming of the center, not holding, right?

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Male voiceover: Yeah.

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Female voiceover: To use Yates,

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of things coming apart.

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

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Female voiceover: Of the
world not having a narrative

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that explains it, that makes sense,

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that represents human beings
position in the universe anymore.

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Male voiceover: It's so
seductive to then say,

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okay this is 1913, the first
world war is about to break out.

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Female voiceover: Right.
Female voiceover: Right.

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Male voiceover: All of
those players are there.

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I think we have to be very
careful about doing that,

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but never the less, this
is a world that is really

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sort of at a moment of crisis.

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Female voiceover: I think the idea
of apocalypse in inescapable here.

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We haven't talked about it,

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but in looking at it, it feels
like Kandinsky is looking

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with ideas of apocalypse, that he's
looking to kind of destroy and then renew,

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which is a really seductive idea
for the artist at this time.

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Male voiceover: Yeah.

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Female: [Unintelligible]
like destroy what's there.

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Female voiceover: What is that?

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Female voiceover: Because in
order to make something new,

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you have to destroy what's already there.

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Male voiceover: Also this
notion of just this ...

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Female voiceover: Wipe it all away.

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Female: Mm-hmm, wipe it away.

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Male voiceover: Absolutely,
and create a utopia ...

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Female voiceover: Yeah.

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Male voiceover: ... that would replace it.

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Female voiceover: To me, I think,
one of things that's really amazing

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is that this is before World War I

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and so much changes after World War I.

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I think when they
realize [unintelligible].

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Female voiceover: Wipe everything
out is not such a good idea.

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Female voiceover: No, it actually
doesn't do anything necessarily good.

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Male voiceover: Right, and
now we have the technology

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that actually allows us to do that.

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Female voiceover: Yeah.

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Male voiceover: We have machine guns.

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We have ... yeah.

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Female voiceover: Look what happens.

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People are maimed and horrible disfigured

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and it's actually not as pretty.

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Female voiceover: People
don't come back from war.

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Female voiceover: No, they don't.

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They don't have visions that
give them access to new truths.

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They just sort of see, basically, how
horrible people are to one another.

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I think this is sort of before that.

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There's a kind of utopian idea
of what apocalypse will bring,

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that it will bring some
kind of inner truth.

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Male voiceover: Is there
also sort of a religious ...

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Female: There's a spiritual.

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Male voiceover: I mean, a
kind of spiritual aspect here.

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Female voiceover: Definitely. 
Female voiceover: Yeah.

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Female voiceover: Kandinsky wrote
on the spiritual in art in 1911,

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two years before he paints this.

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He evokes a lot of connection between
color and art and faith and spirituality,

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having that core belief in something.

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Female voiceover: For him, the modern
world has lost that spirituality,

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that innocence, that
connection to emotion ...

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

00:09:41.910 --> 00:09:43.660
Female voiceover: ... and
sort of primal emotion

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and the apocalypse might restore
that to human beings, ...

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm, absolutely.

00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:51.402
Female voiceover: ... what culture,
in a way, has stolen from us.

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It's a very primitivist idea.

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Female voiceover: Mm-hmm.

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Female voiceover: I find this
idea, the colors, the ...

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Male voiceover: The movement.

00:09:57.861 --> 00:09:58.831
Female voiceover: ... the
connections of everything,

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the things moving apart
and coming together,

00:10:01.778 --> 00:10:04.279
I mean, it's ... you know.

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When I allow myself to have
colors and lines and shapes

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just sort of suggest feelings
and tastes and smells,

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then I think this painting
becomes really enjoyable.

00:10:16.506 --> 00:10:19.365
Male voiceover: There's a kind
of incredible freedom here

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that, you used the word expressionist,

00:10:20.633 --> 00:10:24.256
it's so different from later
Kandinsky, where things become

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so much more systematized
in a way, and clarified.

00:10:28.466 --> 00:10:32.669
There's a wonderful
sense of invention here.

00:10:32.669 --> 00:10:34.900
Female voiceover: It's large, so it
would have been really immersive.

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Male voiceover: Yeah.

00:10:35.670 --> 00:10:37.965
Female voiceover: One wonders
at the extent to which

00:10:37.965 --> 00:10:41.148
he was trying to give us
a kind grand statement of.

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Male voiceover: A symphony.

00:10:41.927 --> 00:10:43.765
Female voiceover: I guess
the longer that I look at it,

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I can understand more of it,

00:10:45.630 --> 00:10:50.595
but I have a hard time really enjoying it.

00:10:50.595 --> 00:10:51.398
Male voiceover: It's a tough painting.

00:10:51.398 --> 00:10:52.293
Female: It's a tough painting.

00:10:52.293 --> 00:10:53.259
Female voiceover: It is a tough painting.

00:10:53.259 --> 00:10:54.527
Female voiceover: I think
it's meant to be tough.

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Maybe that's ...

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Male voiceover: That's a tough moment.

00:10:56.398 --> 00:10:58.147
Female voiceover: It's
interesting that it's still tough.

00:10:58.147 --> 00:11:00.898
Female voiceover: Duchamp and Warhol

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and the whole century of modernism
and post modernism have passed

00:11:05.126 --> 00:11:07.409
and this is still a difficult art.

00:11:07.409 --> 00:11:08.266
Male voiceover: Schoenberg is still tough.

00:11:08.266 --> 00:11:09.300
Female voiceover: Yeah,
Schoenberg is still tough.

00:11:09.300 --> 00:11:09.743
Male voiceover: Yeah.

00:11:09.743 --> 00:11:10.491
Female voiceover: That says a lot.

00:11:10.491 --> 00:11:11.159
Male voiceover: It does.

00:11:11.159 --> 00:11:12.203
Female voiceover: There's
still a lot of power.

00:11:12.203 --> 00:11:16.304
(upbeat piano music)