Exploring Mysticism, and Parapsychology.This blog is also an attempt to promote awareness of a Modern Universal Paradigm known as Multi-Dimensional Science. It offers a "Scientific" testable Hypothesis for a more "objective" understanding of claimed Psychic and Spiritual Phenomena. A link to this subject should be found onsite or alternatively easily traceable via a word search. Please note that the Internet articles here may not reflect the views of the Blogger.
STANLEY KRIPPNER, Ph.D., is (in 1977 - JPH) program planning coordinator the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco. He also served as president of the Association for Humanistic psychology, as vice president for the western hemisphere of International Association for Psychotronic Research, and director, from 1964-73, of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center.
In 1972 he chaired the First West-Hemisphere Conference on Acupuncture, Kirlian Photography, and the Human Aura. Subsequently, he co-edited with Daniel Rubin) the proceedings as Galaxies of Life (later published in paperback as The Kirlian Aura). He is co-editor (with Daniel Rubin) of The Energies of Consciousness. He co-authored (with Montague Uliman) Dream Telepathy and (with Alberto Villoldo) of The Realms of Healing. His career in parapsychology is described in his own words in Song of the Sirens: A Parapsychological Odyssey. He has written more than three hundred articles appearing in psychological, psychiatric, educational, and scientific journals.
Stanley Krippner visited Robert Pavlita in Czechoslovakia in the 70's. Pavlita demonstrated his 'psychotronic generators'
In 1973, during the First International Conference on Psychotronic Research, I met Robert Pavlita a most enigmatic man. This controversial Czech inventor is the designer of the so-called "psychotronic generator," a device for storing and applying "biological energy."
I don't speak Czech, but with the help of a translator we had a long conversation, after which he demonstrated one of his generators to the people at the conference. His daughter participated by touching her hand to her head in a rhythmic way and then touching her hand to the generator. Within a few minutes the generator started to move. This is very difficult to explain in any conventional way, and I know one physicist who couldn't sleep all night trying to figure out how this happened.
During a more recent visit to Czechoslovakia (January 1974), I was privileged to see ten different demonstrations of psychotronic generators. Dr. Zdenk Rejdak and his staff drove me and my associate, Mark Rejdak, to Lazne Belohrad, a town famous for its spa. As we entered the building in which Mr. and Mrs. Pavlita, their daughter, and their son-in-law have their apartment, we noted a large sign. We asked for a translation and discovered that it read:
'This house was built, with the help of the Lord, for myself, for my relatives, for beauty, and for the needs of the city. Franz Chernoch, 1899'
We were given a hospitable greeting by Pavlita and his family. Within a short time he produced several of his devices and told us something of their history. Pavlita had been building psychotronic generators for more than thirty-five years. How did he become interested in generators? He studied alchemy books. (Czechoslovakia has always been a center for the study of alchemy. There is a whole street in Prague where alchemists used to live.)
The shape of the items that the alchemists used was very intriguing to Pavlita. What he did was to put together various materials of different shape by trial and error. From this he found that there were three components of the psychotronic generators similar to those that the alchemists used.
One is the shape of the device.
Another is the material from which it is made.
The third and most important is the biological rhythm - the means for getting the biological energy from the living organisms into the device.
He says that there are at least sixty-eight centers of biological energy in the human body, and he has invented a generator for each one. Each of these generators is fueled in a different way, and each of them performs a different task.
Pavlita stated that eventually he discovered that the body's biological energy field acts electromagnetically in some experiments, electrostatically in some experiments, and in still other experiments, it acts in ways that defy either an electromagnetic or electrostatic explanation.
What amazed me about Pavlita is that he has obtained all of his information from alchemy books or from trial-and-error experiments. He is not familiar with acupuncture, bio-energetic therapy, dowsing, structural integration ("rolling"), or any of the other procedures most parapsychologists know about and would naturally correlate with his work. He has gone very deeply into one specific area, and claims to have devised principles and laws by which he has produced these various devices.
According to Pavlita, any person can work with a psychotronic generator because all people possess biological energy fields. However, Pavlita himself was the subject in all but one of the experiments he attempted in our presence, his daughter serving as the subject in the other experiment.
We began to experience the most provocative part of Pavlita's work when we saw the very small and innocuous looking devices he uses. One appears to be a magician's wand - a small rod with a ball on the end. This was a generator that he claimed to be able to take into a distant part of his house to work on for an hour. He then would place the generator in a room where fruit flies were feeding on rotten fruit. He would aim the generator toward the flies and within a few minutes they would start to drop dead, or so he attested.
After hearing this descriptive account, I asked Pavlita about this device:
"If fruit flies drop dead when you point this generator at them, what do you think would happen with a large generator?"
Pavlita replied:
"This is a generator that has very dangerous implications. I'm too soft-hearted to kill anything but flies, but there is no doubt in my mind that one can kill a cat, a dog, even human beings, with a large enough generator."
In the early days of his work, he said, he and his daughter were working on one of these experimental generators when suddenly her arm became paralyzed. They couldn't decide what to do. If they had taken her to a doctor, Pavlita thought, he would have said that it was psychosomatic. What Pavlita did was to work around the clock for three days, inventing another generator that restored natural movement to her arm again.
After relating the story of his daughter's paralysis and recovery, Pavlita made it very clear that the reason he had not yet revealed his secrets is because he does not know if the world is ready for them. I don't know either, but there is one thing that is obvious: the day may come when psychotronic generators arc widely available. According to Pavlita, they are simple and inexpensive to make. Once more people use the generators, their true functions and possibilities can be more accurately assessed. The demonstrations
Demonstration 1Pavlita placed a compass directly in front of him on a table. He placed a psychotronic generator between himself and the compass. This generator consisted of a steel rectangle covered by a cone. After lifting off the cone and setting it aside, Pavlita passed the rectangular generator over the compass; the compass needle was not affected. Pavlita then began to touch the generator to his right temporal lobe, holding it in his right hand and making the contact with his head in a rhythmical manner. He explained he was "completing a circuit of human biological energy," thus permitting the generator to store the energy.
After about two minutes, Pavlita held the generator over the compass; the needle moved five degrees, from south to north. Pavlita then removed three fingers from the generator, placing them under the palm of his hand. As the generator approached the compass, the south-to-north movement of the needle exceeded 15 degrees. By altering the position of his fingers in the rectangular form in other ways, Pavlita was able to increase or decrease the effect upon the compass needle.Demonstration 2The second experiment was identical to the first experiment except that Pavlita held the rectangular generator with his left hand and touched it to his left temporal lobe. The compass needle, when approached by the generator, moved the same number of degrees as before, except in a north-to-south direction. Then Pavlita lifted the generator with his left hand and placed it in his right hand. The compass needle moved from south-to-north as the generator approached it. Pavlita moved to the opposite side of the table; trials with the left hand then were accompanied by a south-to-north movement of the compass needle and vice versa.
At one point, the movement of the compass needle was minimal. Pavlita touched the generator to his left temporal lobe several times; thereafter, the movement of the compass needle increased upon the next trial. In commenting on these two experiments, Pavlita said that human biological energy is analogous in some ways to the Earth's north and south magnetic poles. He also noted that the human biological energy field completely surrounded the body and exists within the body as well. Demonstration 3Pavlita placed a metal, scaffoldlike stand on the table which resembled an inverted letter "L." A string was tied to the protruding arm of the scaffold and a flat, lightweight bar magnet was tied to the string. A steel psychotronic generator was placed between Pavlita and the stand; the generator was cube shaped with a small protuberance at its top.
Pavlita left the room to demonstrate that he could activate the cube-shaped form from a distance. After about three minutes, he returned. He then brought the cube near the north pole of the bar magnet; the magnet moved toward the cube. However, the magnet was repelled when the cube approached the south pole of the magnet.
Pavlita faced south during the first half of this experiment. He then moved to the other side of the table and faced north. The experiment was repeated with the opposite results. This time he did not leave the room but touched the generator to his right temporal lobe with his right hand, using a different rhythm than in the earlier experiments. He stared intently at the magnet all the while. When Pavlita brought the cube near the north pole of the magnet, it was repelled. However, the magnet was attracted to the cube when the south pole was approached.
Pavlita commented that the eyes are important in this experiment and that the results demonstrate a brain "circuit" which is connected to the hands.Demonstration 4The same bar magnet and scaffoldlike stand were used for this experiment, but a different steel generator was utilized. This psychotronic generator was goblet shaped, but topped by a copper and bronze cover shaped like a holly leaf. Pavlita (facing south) touched his right thumb, first to his frontal lobes, then to the cover of the generator, making a rhythmic movement which lasted about one minute.
When he approached the bar magnet's north pole, it moved toward his thumb; when he approached the magnet's south pole, it was repelled by his thumbDemonstration 5All the materials were in the same position as for the fourth experiment. At this point, Pavlita (facing south) placed a mirror in back of the generator. Again he approached the magnet's north pole, placing his finger behind the mirror, but this time the magnet moved away from his thumb. When he approached the south pole, the magnet was attracted to his thumb.
Pavlita commented that the biological energy field exerted these effects by passing through the mirror. He stated the results were a function of the relationship formed between an object and its image.Demonstration 6For this experiment, the mirror was removed, but the stand and goblet-shaped generator remained. Pavlita placed a narrow steel bar on the table. The bar was about three inches long and was placed between Pavlita and the generator so that it touched the base of the generator.
Pavlita (facing south) touched his right thumb knuckle to his right temporal lobe. He then placed his knuckle on the end of the bar nearest to him. Immediately, the north pole of the magnet swung toward the generator. It hovered in the same position until Pavlita removed his knuckle from the bar. At this point, the magnet resumed its original position. Pavlita commented that the magnet resembled the needle of a compass and was reacting to the human body's biological energy field, amplified by this procedure.Demonstration 7Again, the scaffold-shaped stand was used. However, the bar magnet was replaced by a narrow, cylindrical-shaped piece of wood, about two inches in length. Before the wood was suspended from the stand, it was placed in a wide, cylindrical-shaped psychotronic generator. Diagonal marks could be seen on the outside of the generator; Pavlita remarked that a "biologically activated energy field" had been burned into the generator.
After the wood was placed in the generator, it protruded slightly; a narrow, rectangular steel bar was placed against the wood so that one end rested on the table and the other end rested on the wood itself. Pavlita called this procedure "closing the circuit." After about three minutes, the wood was taken from the generator and suspended by string, from the metal stand.
Pavlita picked up a ferret magnet and brought it toward one end of the piece of wood. The wood was repelled. He brought the magnet toward the other end of the wood; it was attracted. In other words, the piece of wood gave every appearance of having been magnetized. Some observers would claim that the generators are "electrets" which create electrostatic fields, but others would claim that a new energy form is involved.Demonstration 8Once again, the scaffoldlike stand was used. Again, a narrow, cylindrical-shaped piece of wood was used that was approximately two inches in length. Pavlita produced a psychotronic generator shaped something like a flashlight. There were holes in the bulbous top of the generator; Pavlita inserted the wood into these holes, first one end of the wood and then the other.
He then inserted the entire piece of wood into a long hole on the top of the generator and moved both hands in front of the generator in a rhythmic up-and-down movement with fingers outstretched. After about two minutes of these movements, the wood was suspended to the stand.
As Pavlita held a ferret magnet and approached the wood, one side of the stick was repelled and one was attracted. Again, a piece of wood had apparently been magnetized. Pavlita commented that the hand movements are not absolutely necessary, but accelerate the speed at which the wood is affected.Demonstration 9Pavlita's daughter produced a psychotronic generator shaped something like a microphone. A point protruded from the top half of the generator and she touched this to her frontal lobes in a rhythmical manner for about three minutes. The generator was then placed in front of a semicircular solid copper screen. A light metal cone was placed on the top of the generator. She then touched the table lightly with the fingers of her left hand. It began to revolve from left to right.
When Pavlita removed her fingers, the cone stopped its motion; when she again touched the table, the cone resumed its movement. She called this procedure "completing the circuit."
After its motion stopped completely, Pavlita's daughter again touched the generator to her frontal lobes. The cone was again placed on top of the generator and once more revolved for a short period of time.
Pavlita commented that this was an "accumulating type" generator. He said that all his generators were "purpose specific" and corresponded to various "biocircuits" of the body of which he claims to have identified sixty-eight.Demonstration 10Again the metal stand was used and a flat, rectangular piece of wood (resembling the bar magnet in size and shape) was suspended from it. Pavlita produced a rectangular psychotronic generator which fit easily into the palm of his hand. He held the generator with his thumb on the bottom and the other four fingers on top. As it approached the stand, the wood turned to the right. Pavlita then held the generator between his thumb and forefinger. This time when he approached the wood, it turned to the left.
This phenomenon did not seem to be preceded by any type of body rhythm which would activate the generator.
DISCUSSION
Biological energy...Pavlita told us that he has recorded his experiments in great detail in twenty handwritten volumes, none of which has been published. When he first began his research some thirty-five years ago, he worked by trial and error. Now, however, he knows the basic principles involved. For example, he is aware of the basic bodily biocircuits and how each can be used in a generator. Once the biological energy field is brought into a generator, it stays there permanently. However, a special induction procedure must be used to activate many of the generators. This induction utilizes various bodily codes."
Pavlita told us that voltmeters and electrometersdo not pick up biological energy. During human transmission of this energy, however, some psychophysiological differences were noted. One's heartbeat rate slows down and breathing becomes irregular.
No material has been found by Pavlita which can insulate against the effect of biological energy. Furthermore, it can affect any type of matter to some extent.Insects...Pavlita says he is too "soft-hearted" to work with any type of living creature but insects. When insects are exposed to his lethal generator, their antennae quiver first. Then their feet and legs shake. Soon they appear stunned or paralyzed. Then they collapse and die. However, the effects can be reversed if the insect has not yet collapsed.Plants...Pavlita has done some work with plants, having "shaken" or "physically transported" leaves and flowers at a distance. One type of generatorworks automatically by absorbing energy from the living organisms around it; this type stimulates growth of plants and enhances seed germination in experiments with pea and lentil seeds. The other type of generator must have biological energy directed into it; this type stunts the growth of plants.
The first generator has purportedly been able to purify waste water from a dye factory in small amounts. For this purpose small pieces of stainless steel were treated by the generator, then put into the polluted water- which became clean again. Pavlita has thought of trying to treat stones instead of steel, then attempting to depollute a lake or a river.
Uses...Pavlita sees a number of practical uses for his generators. These include:
biological communication (when other communication systems are nonoperable)
medical diagnosis (of the body's biocircuits)
the magnetization of material (he claims that any material can be magnetized)
testing the contents of unknown material
assessing the healing rate of an injured or sick person (the stronger the field, the better one's health)
assessing the deterioration rate of a dying organism
determining how long an organism has been dead
General...Pavlita told us that the right-hand side of the body usually attracts, that the left-hand side usually repels, and that left-handed people are not observably different than right-handed people. He speaks of "plus" and "minus" impulses in terms that remind one of the oriental concepts of yang and yin. From time to time, Pavlita must utilize special procedures to produce the desired balance between "plus" and "minus" impulses; an overabundance of the latter is not uncommon and is not desirable.
By combining several generators, Pavlita can also combine their functions. Some experiments have involved as many as seven generators for a given purpose. The speed at which a function operates depends upon the conduction of biological energy from the organism to the generator. The principle that "form follows function" is basic to the design of the generators, many of which are built to channel energy from two poles to a narrow point.
Psychotronic generators have not yet been used in experiments with the Kirlian photography device, with voltage gradients, with acupuncture points, with altered states of consciousness, with hemispheric brain differences, or with "psychic" healing. However, Pavlita does claim that he can alter a person's movements with his generators, such as making a person pick up an object with the left hand instead of the right hand.
Pavlita claims that he has been able to produce generators which calibrate so well with a person's "biocircuits" that they can be activated at a distance. Once, a generator in Karisbad was activated by a person in Bradoc Kralove, a distance of over 150 miles. For this type of experiment to be successful, the generator must be calibrated with a person's biological energy field, a process which takes from two to three hours.
Pavlita's current project involves the transfer at a distance of biological energy itself. He believes he can make this transfer at a distance of several miles, and may demonstrate it at some point in the future.
After spending three hours with Pavlita, and enjoying the hospitality so lavishly offered by him and his family, I was impressed by his devotion to his work. I am aware that alternative explanations to his demonstrations exist (hidden magnets, electrostatic effects, etc.).
It is also possible that Pavlita and his daughter unwittingly have used their own psychokinetic abilities to create the effects, rather than tapping sources of "biological energy" common to everyone. Only future research will indicate whether the psychotronic generators are the scientific breakthrough that his supporters suspect.
Vassily Vassilyevich Kandinsky (/kænˈdɪnski/; Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский, Vasiliy Vasil’yevich Kandinskiy, pronounced [vaˈsʲilʲɪj kɐnˈdʲinskʲɪj]; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was an influential Russianpainter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Communist Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity; it was a central aspect of his art.
Early-period work, Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula (1908)
Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant.[1][2] Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. Later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew. In 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. This experience, and his study of the region's folk art (particularly the use of bright colours on a dark background), was reflected in much of his early work. A few years later he first likened painting to composing music in the manner for which he would become noted, writing, "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul".[3]
In 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in art school in Munich. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the impressionistic style of Haystacks; this, to him, had a powerful sense of colour almost independent of the objects themselves. Later, he would write about this experience:
“
That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me. I could not recognize it. This non-recognition was painful to me. I considered that the painter had no right to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting was missing. And I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.[4]
”
— Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky was similarly influenced during this period by Richard Wagner's Lohengrin which, he felt, pushed the limits of music and melody beyond standard lyricism.[citation needed] He was also spiritually influenced by H. P. Blavatsky (1831–1891), the best-known exponent of theosophy. Theosophical theory postulates that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a single point. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles and squares. Kandinsky's book Concerning the Spiritual In Art (1910) and Point and Line to Plane (1926) echoed this theosophical tenet. Illustrations by John Varley in Thought Forms (1901) influenced him visually.[5]
Wassily Kandinsky, 1908, Murnau, Dorfstrasse (Street in Murnau, A Village Street), oil on cardboard, later mounted on wood panel, 48 x 69.5 cm, The Merzbacher collection, Switzerland
Wassily Kandinsky, 1911, Reiter (Lyrishes), oil on canvas, 94 x 130 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Wassily Kandinsky, 1912, Landscape With Two Poplars, 78.8 x 100.4 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago
Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was during this time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter. The number of his existing paintings increased at the beginning of the 20th century; much remains of the landscapes and towns he painted, using broad swaths of colour and recognizable forms. For the most part, however, Kandinsky's paintings did not feature any human figures; an exception is Sunday, Old Russia (1904), in which Kandinsky recreates a highly colorful (and fanciful) view of peasants and nobles in front of the walls of a town. Riding Couple (1907) depicts a man on horseback, holding a woman with tenderness and care as they ride past a Russian town with luminous walls across a river. The horse is muted while the leaves in the trees, the town, and the reflections in the river glisten with spots of colour and brightness. This work demonstrates the influence of pointillism in the way the depth of field is collapsed into a flat, luminescent surface. Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Colours are used to express Kandinsky's experience of subject matter, not to describe objective nature.
Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s was The Blue Rider (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider's cloak is medium blue, which casts a darker-blue shadow. In the foreground are more amorphous blue shadows, the counterparts of the fall trees in the background. The blue rider in the painting is prominent (but not clearly defined), and the horse has an unnatural gait (which Kandinsky must have known). Some art historians believe[citation needed] that a second figure (perhaps a child) is being held by the rider, although this may be another shadow from the solitary rider. This intentional disjunction, allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork, became an increasingly conscious technique used by Kandinsky in subsequent years; it culminated in the abstract works of the 1911–1914 period. In The Blue Rider, Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colours than in specific detail. This painting is not exceptional in that regard when compared with contemporary painters, but it shows the direction Kandinsky would take only a few years later.
From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky spent a great deal of time travelling across Europe (he was an associate of the Blue Rose symbolist group of Moscow), until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. The Blue Mountain (1908–1909) was painted at this time, demonstrating his trend toward abstraction. A mountain of blue is flanked by two broad trees, one yellow and one red. A procession, with three riders and several others, crosses at the bottom. The faces, clothing, and saddles of the riders are each a single colour, and neither they nor the walking figures display any real detail. The flat planes and the contours also are indicative of Fauvist influence. The broad use of colour in The Blue Mountain illustrates Kandinsky's inclination toward an art in which colour is presented independently of form, and which each colour is given equal attention. The composition is more planar; the painting is divided into four sections: the sky, the red tree, the yellow tree and the blue mountain with the three riders.
Kandinsky's paintings from this period are large, expressive coloured masses evaluated independently from forms and lines; these serve no longer to delimit them, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Kandinsky sometimes used musical terms to identify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and described more elaborate works as "compositions."
Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II), 1912, oil on canvas, 47 3/8 x 55 1/4 in. (120.3 x 140.3 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show.
In addition to painting, Kandinsky was an art theorist; his influence on the history of Western art stems perhaps more from his theoretical works than from his paintings. He helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artists' Association), becoming its president in 1909. However, the group could not integrate the radical approach of Kandinsky (and others) with conventional artistic concepts and the group dissolved in late 1911. Kandinsky then formed a new group, the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with like-minded artists such as August Macke and Franz Marc. The group released an almanac (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held two exhibits. More of each were planned, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 ended these plans and sent Kandinsky back to Russia via Switzerland and Sweden.
His writing in The Blue Rider Almanac and the treatise "On the Spiritual In Art" (which was released around the same time) were both a defence and promotion of abstract art and an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching a level of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting as something autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or other form.
These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact, particularly in the English-speaking world.[6] As early as 1912, On the Spiritual In Art was reviewed by Michael Sadleir in the London-based Art News.[7] Interest in Kandinsky grew apace when Sadleir published an English translation of On the Spiritual In Art in 1914. Extracts from the book were published that year in Percy Wyndham Lewis's periodical Blast, and Alfred Orage's weekly cultural newspaper The New Age. Kandinsky had received some notice earlier in Britain, however; in 1910, he participated in the Allied Artists' Exhibition (organised by Frank Rutter) at London's Royal Albert Hall. This resulted in his work being singled out for praise in a review of that show by the artist Spencer Frederick Gore in The Art News.[8]
Sadleir's interest in Kandinsky also led to Kandinsky's first works entering a British art collection; Sadleir's father, Michael Sadler, acquired several woodprints and the abstract painting Fragment for Composition VII in 1913 following a visit by father and son to meet Kandinsky in Munich that year. These works were displayed in Leeds, either in the University or the premises of the Leeds Arts Club, between 1913 and 1923.[9]
The sun melts all of Moscow down to a single spot that, like a mad tuba, starts all of the heart and all of the soul vibrating. But no, this uniformity of red is not the most beautiful hour. It is only the final chord of a symphony that takes every colour to the zenith of life that, like the fortissimo of a great orchestra, is both compelled and allowed by Moscow to ring out.
From 1918 to 1921, Kandinsky dealt with the cultural politics of Russia and collaborated in art education and museum reform. He painted little during this period, but devoted his time to artistic teaching, with a program based on form and colour analysis; he also helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow. In 1916 he met Nina Andreievskaya, whom he married the following year. His spiritual, expressionistic view of art was ultimately rejected by the radical members of the Institute as too individualistic and bourgeois. In 1921, Kandinsky was invited to go to Germany to attend the Bauhaus of Weimar by its founder, architect Walter Gropius.
Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. The development of his works on forms study, particularly on points and line forms, led to the publication of his second theoretical book (Point and Line to Plane) in 1926. Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in both his teaching and painting—particularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves. This period was intensely productive. This freedom is characterised in his works by the treatment of planes rich in colours and gradations—as in Yellow – red – blue (1925), where Kandinsky illustrates his distance from the constructivism and suprematism movements influential at the time.
The two-meter-wide Yellow – red – blue (1925) consists of several main forms: a vertical yellow rectangle, an inclined red cross and a large dark blue circle; a multitude of straight (or sinuous) black lines, circular arcs, monochromatic circles and scattered, coloured checkerboards contribute to its delicate complexity. This simple visual identification of forms and the main coloured masses present on the canvas is only a first approach to the inner reality of the work, whose appreciation necessitates deeper observation—not only of forms and colours involved in the painting but their relationship, their absolute and relative positions on the canvas and their harmony.
Kandinsky was one of Die Blaue Vier (Blue Four), formed in 1923 with Klee, Feininger and von Jawlensky, which lectured and exhibited in the United States in 1924. Due to right-wing hostility, the Bauhaus left Weimar and settled in Dessau in 1925. Following a Nazi smear campaign the Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932 for Berlin, until its dissolution in July 1933. Kandinsky then left Germany, settling in Paris.
Living in a small apartment in Paris, Kandinsky created his work in a living-room studio. Biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines appear in his paintings—forms which suggest microscopic organisms but express the artist's inner life. Kandinsky used original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popular art. He also occasionally mixed sand with paint to give a granular, rustic texture to his paintings.
This period corresponds to a synthesis of Kandinsky's previous work in which he used all elements, enriching them. In 1936 and 1939 he painted his two last major compositions, the type of elaborate canvases he had not produced for many years. Composition IX has highly contrasted, powerful diagonals whose central form gives the impression of an embryo in the womb. Small squares of colours and coloured bands stand out against the black background of Composition X as star fragments (or filaments), while enigmatic hieroglyphs with pastel tones cover a large maroon mass which seems to float in the upper-left corner of the canvas. In Kandinsky’s work some characteristics are obvious, while certain touches are more discrete and veiled; they reveal themselves only progressively to those who deepen their connection with his work.[11] He intended his forms (which he subtly harmonized and placed) to resonate with the observer's soul.
Composition VII—according to Kandinsky, the most complex piece he ever painted (1913)
Writing that "music is the ultimate teacher," Kandinsky embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions. The first three survive only in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend Gabriele Münter. While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly of Composition II), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in the confiscation of Kandinsky's first three Compositions. They were displayed in the State-sponsored exhibit "Degenerate Art", and then destroyed (along with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists).
Influenced by theosophy and the perception of a coming New Age, a common theme among Kandinsky's first seven Compositions is the apocalypse (the end of the world as we know it). Writing of the "artist as prophet" in his book, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediately preceding World War I showing a coming cataclysm which would alter individual and social reality. Raised an Orthodox Christian, Kandinsky drew upon the Jewish and Christian stories of Noah's Ark, Jonah and the whale, Christ's resurrection, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation, Russian folktales and the common mythological experiences of death and rebirth. Never attempting to picture any one of these stories as a narrative, he used their veiled imagery as symbols of the archetypes of death–rebirth and destruction–creation he felt were imminent in the pre-World War I world.
As he stated in Concerning the Spiritual In Art (see below), Kandinsky felt that an authentic artist creating art from "an internal necessity" inhabits the tip of an upward-moving pyramid. This progressing pyramid is penetrating and proceeding into the future. What was odd or inconceivable yesterday is commonplace today; what is avant garde today (and understood only by the few) is common knowledge tomorrow. The modern artist–prophet stands alone at the apex of the pyramid, making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow's reality. Kandinsky was aware of recent scientific developments and the advances of modern artists who had contributed to radically new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. Composition IV and later paintings are primarily concerned with evoking a spiritual resonance in viewer and artist. As in his painting of the apocalypse by water (Composition VI), Kandinsky puts the viewer in the situation of experiencing these epic myths by translating them into contemporary terms (with a sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion). This spiritual communion of viewer-painting-artist/prophet may be described within the limits of words and images.
As the Der Blaue Reiter Almanac essays and theorizing with composer Arnold Schoenberg indicate, Kandinsky also expressed the communion between artist and viewer as being available to both the senses and the mind (synesthesia). Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that (for example), yellow is the colour of middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the colour of closure, and the end of things; and that combinations of colours produce vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played on a piano. Kandinsky also developed a theory of geometric figures and their relationships—claiming, for example, that the circle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human soul. These theories are explained in Point and Line to Plane (see below).
During the studies Kandinsky made in preparation for Composition IV, he became exhausted while working on a painting and went for a walk. While he was out, Gabriele Münter tidied his studio and inadvertently turned his canvas on its side. Upon returning and seeing the canvas (but not yet recognizing it) Kandinsky fell to his knees and wept, saying it was the most beautiful painting he had ever seen. He had been liberated from attachment to an object. As when he first viewed Monet's Haystacks, the experience would change his life.[citation needed]
In another episode with Münter during the Bavarian abstract expressionist years, Kandinsky was working on his Composition VI. From nearly six months of study and preparation, he had intended the work to evoke a flood, baptism, destruction, and rebirth simultaneously. After outlining the work on a mural-sized wood panel, he became blocked and could not go on. Münter told him that he was trapped in his intellect and not reaching the true subject of the picture. She suggested he simply repeat the word uberflut ("deluge" or "flood") and focus on its sound rather than its meaning. Repeating this word like a mantra, Kandinsky painted and completed the monumental work in a three-day span.[citation needed]
Kandinsky's analyses on forms and colours result not from simple, arbitrary idea-associations but from the painter's inner experience. He spent years creating abstract, sensorially rich paintings, working with form and colour, tirelessly observing his own paintings and those of other artists, noting their effects on his sense of colour.[12] This subjective experience is something that anyone can do—not scientific, objective observations but inner, subjective ones, what French philosopher Michel Henry calls "absolute subjectivity" or the "absolute phenomenological life".[13]
Published in 1912, Kandinsky's text, Du Spirituel dans l’art, defines three types of painting; impressions, improvisations and compositions. While impressions are based on an external reality that serves as a starting point, improvisations and compositions depict images emergent from the unconscious, though composition is developed from a more formal point of view.[14] Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid—the artist has a mission to lead others to the pinnacle with his work. The point of the pyramid is those few, great artists. It is a spiritual pyramid, advancing and ascending slowly even if it sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoring spiritual forces.[15]
Colours on the painter's palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an "inner resonance"—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.[16]
"Inner necessity" is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficient contact of the form with the human soul.[17] Every form is the delimitation of a surface by another one; it possesses an inner content, the effect it produces on one who looks at it attentively.[18] This inner necessity is the right of the artist to unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes licence if it is not founded on such a necessity.[19] Art is born from the inner necessity of the artist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject, animated by a spiritual breath.[20]
The obvious properties we can see when we look at an isolated colour and let it act alone; on one side is the warmth or coldness of the colour tone, and on the other side is the clarity or obscurity of that tone.[21] Warmth is a tendency towards yellow, and coldness a tendency towards blue; yellow and blue form the first great, dynamic contrast.[22] Yellow has an eccentric movement and blue a concentric movement; a yellow surface seems to move closer to us, while a blue surface seems to move away.[23] Yellow is a typically terrestrial colour, whose violence can be painful and aggressive.[24] Blue is a celestial colour, evoking a deep calm.[25] The combination of blue and yellow yields total immobility and calm, which is green.[26]
Clarity is a tendency towards white, and obscurity is a tendency towards black. White and black form the second great contrast, which is static.[23] White is a deep, absolute silence, full of possibility.[27] Black is nothingness without possibility, an eternal silence without hope, and corresponds with death. Any other colour resonates strongly on its neighbors.[28] The mixing of white with black leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose tonality is near that of green. Gray corresponds to immobility without hope; it tends to despair when it becomes dark, regaining little hope when it lightens.[29]
Red is a warm colour, lively and agitated; it is forceful, a movement in itself.[29] Mixed with black it becomes brown, a hard colour.[30] Mixed with yellow, it gains in warmth and becomes orange, which imparts an irradiating movement on its surroundings.[31] When red is mixed with blue it moves away from man to become purple, which is a cool red.[32] Red and green form the third great contrast, and orange and purple the fourth.[33]
In his writings, Kandinsky analyzed the geometrical elements which make up every painting—the point and the line. He called the physical support and the material surface on which the artist draws or paints the basic plane, or BP.[34] He did not analyze them objectively, but from the point of view of their inner effect on the observer.[35]
A point is a small bit of colour put by the artist on the canvas. It is neither a geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form and colour. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or something more complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placement on the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. It can be isolated or resonate with other points or lines.[36]
A line is the product of a force which has been applied in a given direction: the force exerted on the pencil or paintbrush by the artist. The produced linear forms may be of several types: a straight line, which results from a unique force applied in a single direction; an angular line, resulting from the alternation of two forces in different directions, or a curved (or wave-like) line, produced by the effect of two forces acting simultaneously. A plane may be obtained by condensation (from a line rotated around one of its ends).[37]
The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: a horizontal line corresponds with the ground on which man rests and moves; it possesses a dark and cold affective tonality similar to black or blue. A vertical line corresponds with height, and offers no support; it possesses a luminous, warm tonality close to white and yellow. A diagonal possesses a more-or-less warm (or cold) tonality, according to its inclination toward the horizontal or the vertical.[38]
A force which deploys itself, without obstacle, as the one which produces a straight line corresponds with lyricism; several forces which confront (or annoy) each other form a drama.[39] The angle formed by the angular line also has an inner sonority which is warm and close to yellow for an acute angle (a triangle), cold and similar to blue for an obtuse angle (a circle), and similar to red for a right angle (a square).[40]
The basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square. therefore, it is composed of horizontal and vertical lines which delimit it and define it as an autonomous entity which supports the painting, communicating its affective tonality. This tonality is determined by the relative importance of horizontal and vertical lines: the horizontals giving a calm, cold tonality to the basic plane while the verticals impart a calm, warm tonality.[41] The artist intuits the inner effect of the canvas format and dimensions, which he chooses according to the tonality he wants to give to his work. Kandinsky considered the basic plane a living being, which the artist "fertilizes" and feels "breathing".[42]
Each part of the basic plane possesses an affective colouration; this influences the tonality of the pictorial elements which will be drawn on it, and contributes to the richness of the composition resulting from their juxtaposition on the canvas. The above of the basic plane corresponds with looseness and to lightness, while the below evokes condensation and heaviness. The painter's job is to listen and know these effects to produce paintings which are not just the effect of a random process, but the fruit of authentic work and the result of an effort towards inner beauty.[43]
This book contains many photographic examples and drawing from Kandinsky’s works which offer the demonstration of its theoretical observations, and which allow the reader to reproduce in him the inner obviousness provided that he takes the time to look at those pictures with care, that he let them acting on its own sensibility and that he let vibrating the sensible and spiritual strings of his soul.[44]
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"The 'Pioneer' [Kandinsky] did not just produce a body of work whose sensuous magnificence and rich inventiveness eclipse even the most remarkable of his contemporaries. He also provided an explicit theory of abstract painting, exposing its principles with the utmost precision and clarity. So, the painted work is accompanied with a group of texts that at the same time clarify his work and make Kandinsky one of the main theorists of art. Facing the hieroglyphs of the last canvases of the Parisian period (which are said to be the most difficult), they provide the Rosetta stone on which the meaning of these mysterious figures is inscribed".[45]
"Kandinsky was fascinated by the expressive power of linear forms. Lyricism is the pathos of a force whose triumphant effort enters into action and encounters no obstacle. Because the straight line results from the initiative of a single, unopposed force, its domain is that of the lyric. When two forces are present and thus enter in conflict, as this is the case with the curve or the zigzag line, we are in domain of drama".[46]
"Kandinsky calls abstract the content that painting must express, that’s to say this invisible life that we are. In such a way that the Kandinskian equation, to which we have alluded to, can be written in reality as follows : Interior = interiority = invisible = life = pathos = abstract".[47]
"Like the final climax of a giant orchestra, Moscow resounds victoriously".[48]
In 2012, Christie's auctioned Kandinsky's Studie für Improvisation 8 (Study for Improvisation 8), a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-hued village, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by the Volkart Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swiss commodities trading firm Volkart Brothers. Before this sale, the artist's last record was set in 1990 when Sotheby's sold his Fugue (1914) for $20.9 million.[49]
Note: Several sections of this article have been translated from its French version: Theoretical writings on art, The Bauhaus and The great synthesis artistic periods. For complete detailed references in French, see the original version at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassily_Kandinsky
Jump up ^Lindsay, Kenneth C. (1982). Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art. G.K. Hall & Co. p. 363.
Jump up ^Sixten Ringbom, The sounding cosmos; a study in the spiritualism of Kandinsky and the genesis of abstract painting, (Abo [Finland]: Abo Akademi, 1970), pgs 89 & 148a.
Jump up ^See Michael Paraskos, "English Expressionism," MRes Thesis, University of Leeds, Leeds 1997, p103f
Jump up ^Michael Sadleir, Review of Uber da Geistige an der Kunst by Wassily Kandinsky, in "The Art News," 9 March 1912, p.45
Jump up ^Spencer Frederick Gore, "The Allied Artists' Exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall (London)", in "The Art News," 4 August 1910, p.254
Jump up ^Tom Steele, "Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club 1893-1923" (Mitcham, Orage Press, 2009) 218f
Jump up ^Kandinsky, by Hajo Duchting, Taschen, 2007, pg 7
Jump up ^Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 38-45 (The disclosure of pictoriality)
Jump up ^Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 5-11
Jump up ^Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 27
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 61-75
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, pp. 105-107
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 112 et 118
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 118
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 199
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 197
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 142
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 142-143
^ Jump up to: abKandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 143
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 148
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, pp. 149-150
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 150-154
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 155
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 156
^ Jump up to: abKandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 157
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 160
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 162
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, pp. 162-163
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, pp. 163-164
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 143
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art, éd. Denoël, 1989, p. 45 : "Les idées que je développe ici sont le résultat d'observations et d'expériences intérieures" c'est-à-dire purement subjectives. Cela vaut également pour Point et ligne sur plan qui en est "le développement organique" (avant-propos de la première édition, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 9).
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 25-63
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 67-71
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 69-70
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, pp. 80-82
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 89
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 143-145
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 145-146
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, p. 146-151
Jump up ^Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, éd. Gallimard, 1991, Appendice, p. 185-235
Wassily Kandinsky, M. T. Sadler (Translator), Adrian Glew (Editor). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. (New York: MFA Publications and London: Tate Publishing, 2001). 192pp. ISBN 0-87846-702-5
Wassily Kandinsky, M. T Sadler (Translator). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Dover Publ. (Paperback). 80 pp. ISBN 0-486-23411-8. or: Lightning Source Inc Publ. (Paperback). ISBN 1-4191-1377-1
Wassily Kandinsky. Klänge. Verlag R. Piper & Co., Munich
Wassily Kandinsky. Point and Line to Plane. Dover Publications, New York. ISBN 0-486-23808-3
Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80570-7
John E Bowlt and Rose-Carol Washton Long. The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian art: a study of "On the spiritual in art" by Wassily Kandinsky. (Newtonville, MA.: Oriental Research Partners, 1984). ISBN 0-89250-131-6
Magdalena Dabrowski. Kandinsky Compositions. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002). ISBN 0-87070-405-2
Hajo Düchting. Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944: A Revolution in Painting. (Taschen, 2000). ISBN 3-8228-5982-6
Hajo Düchting and O'Neill. The Avant-Garde in Russia.
Will Grohmann. Wassily Kandinsky. Life and Work. (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc., 1958).
Thomas M. Messer. Vasily Kandinsky. (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1997). (Illustrated). ISBN 0-8109-1228-7.
Margarita Tupitsyn, Against Kandinsky (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2006).
Wassily Kandinsky papers, 1911-1940 The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. Russian-born artist considered to be one of the creators of abstract painting. Papers document Kandinsky's teachings at the Bauhaus, his writings, his involvement with the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (RAKhN) in Moscow, and his professional contacts with art dealers, artists, collectors, and publishers.
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