Der Blaue Reiter Almanac : August Macke

Magdeburg Cathedral, 13th Century

Masks - by August Macke

A sunny day, a cloudy day, a Persian spear, a holy vessel, a pagan idol and a wreath of everlasting flowers, a Gothic cathedral and a Chinese junk, the bow of a pirate ship, the word “pirate” and the word “holy,” darkness, night, spring, the cymbals and their sound and the firing of armored vessels, the Egyptian Sphinx and the beauty spot stuck on the pretty cheek of a Parisian cocotte.


The lamplight in Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the paintings of village streets and ruins, the mystery plays in the Middle Ages and children frightening each other, a landscape by Van Gogh and a still life by Cezanne, the whirring of propellers and the neighing of horses, the cheers of a cavalry attack and the war paint of Indians, the cello and the bell, the shrill whistle of the steam engine, and the cathedral-like quality of a beech forest, masks and stages of the Japanese and the Greeks, and the mysterious, hollow drumming of the Indian fakir.

Is life not more precious than food and the body not more precious than clothing?

August Macke was 24 when he wrote this youthful celebration of life as he knew it. . Sadly, he would die three years later on a battlefield in France.

I share his relative disinterest in food --- he's obviously not a gourmet --- but  did he really feel that clothing was  more precious than the body that it covers ?

August Macke, (not in the Almanac)

He did paint nudes - apparently from life or from life drawings - though this one seems more contemplative than sensual.

Incomprehensible ideas express themselves in comprehensible forms. Comprehensible through our senses as star, thunder, flower, as form.

Form is a mystery to us for it is the expression of mysterious powers. Only through it do we sense the secret powers, the “invisible God.”

The senses are our bridge between the incomprehensible and the comprehensible. 

To behold plants and animals is: to perceive their secret.

To hear the thunder is: to perceive its secret. To understand the language of forms means: to be closer to the secret, to live.

To create forms means: to live. Are not children more creative in drawing directly from the secret of their sensations than the imitator of Greek forms? Are not savages artists who have forms of their own powerful as the form of thunder?

Thunder, flower, any force expresses itself as form. So does man. He, too, is driven by something to find words for conceptions, to find clearness in obscurity, consciousness in the unconscious. This is his life, his creation.

As man changes, so do his forms change.

The relations that numerous forms bear to one another enable us to recognize the individual form. Blue first becomes visible against red, the greatness of the tree against the smallness of the butterfly, the youth of the child against the age of the old man. One and two make three. The formless, the infinite, the zero remain incomprehensible. God remains incomprehensible.

Man expresses his life in forms. Each form of art is an expression of his inner life. The exterior of the form of art is its interior.

Each genuine form of art emerges from a living correlation of man to the real substance of the forms of nature, the forms of art. The scent of a flower, the joyful leaping of a dog, a dancer, the donning of jewelry, a temple, a painting, a style, the life of a nation, of an era.

The flower opens at sunrise. Seeing his prey, the panther crouches, and as a result of seeing it, his strength grows. And the tension of his strength shows in the length of his leap. The form of art, its style, is a result of tension. 

Styles, also, may perish from inbreeding. The crossbreeding of two styles results in a third, a new style. The renaissance of antiquity and of Durer, the disciple of Schongauer and Mantegna. Europe and the Orient.

In a world full of forms, he doesn't talk much about what kind of forms he prefers to others -- other than the notion of "power" - the form of a panther is more powerful when he is crouching to attack than when he is sleeping.

Cameroons

Easter Island

This essay is accompanied by the above images, taken from pieces in the Munich Museum of Folk Art.

Invariably, the pieces are mediocre - but that might reflect the limitations of what was available. Presumably they qualify for inclusion only because they are not naturalistic. .



In our time the impressionists found a direct connection with natural phenomena. Their rallying cry was to depict nature’s organic form bathed in light, enveloped in atmosphere. It changed under their hands.

Peasant, Italian primitive, Dutch, Japanese, and Tahitian art forms became as stimulating as nature’s own forms. Renoir, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, Beardsley, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin. They are all no more naturalists than El Greco or Giotto. Their works are the expressions of their inner lives; they are the forms of these artists’ interior world in the medium of painting. This does not necessarily indicate that there is a culture, a culture that would mean to us what the Gothic style meant to the Middle Ages, a culture in which everything has form, form born from our lives—only from our lives. Self-evident and strong as the scent of a flower. 


Perhaps it's the fault of the translation - but the above seems  so confusing.  What did the Gothic Style mean to the Middle Ages ?  What forms have not been  born from the lives of those who made them? But isn't it possible for artifacts to  express  social conventions more than someone's inner life?  Isn't it possible for some artifacts to be like street signs -- and be intended to communicate like a written text ?



In our complicated and confused era we have forms that absolutely enthrall everyone in exactly the same way as the fire dance enthralls the African or the mysterious drumming of the fakirs enthralls the Indian. As a soldier, the independent scholar stands beside the farmer’s son. They both march in review similarly through the ranks, whether they like it or not. At the movies the professor marvels alongside the servant girl. In the vaudeville theater the butterfly-colored dancer enchants the most amorous couples as intensely as the solemn sound of the organ in a Gothic cathedral seizes both believer and unbeliever.

"Enthralls exactly the same way" ?   I would doubt it -- though the  professor and the servant girl might be  enthralled just as intensely by the same performance  up on stage. I would be surprised if  even two servant girls would be enthralled exactly the same way.



Forms are powerful expressions of powerful life. Differences in expression come from the material, word, color, sound, stone, wood, metal. One need not understand each form. One also need not read each language.


What about forms - and lives - that are not so very powerful ? Macke does not allow for many kinds of differences.

Van Gogh, "Portrait of Dr. Gachet"

The contemptuous gesture with which connoisseurs and artists have to this day banished all artistic forms of primitive cultures to the fields of ethnology or applied art is amazing at the very least.
What we hang on the wall as a painting is basically similar to the carved and painted pillars in an African hut. The African considers his idol the comprehensible form for an incomprehensible idea, the personification of an abstract concept. For us the painting is the comprehensible form for the obscure, incomprehensible conception of a deceased person, of an animal, of a plant, of the whole magic of nature, of the rhythmical.
Does Van Gogh’s portrait of Dr. Gachet not originate from a spiritual life similar to the amazed grimace of a Japanese juggler cut in a wood block

Yashima Gakutei , "Monkey Juggler", c. 1812

I have no idea which grimacing Japanese juggler Macke had in mind -- above is the first one I found. Neither it, nor the Van Gogh, were reproduced in the Almanac.

If these two pieces exemplify a similar spiritual life -- I wonder where Macke would have  recognized spiritual lives that were dis-similar.

Ceylon, disease-demon mask

(not in Almanac)

 The mask of the disease demon from Ceylon is the gesture of horror of a primitive race  by which their priests conjure sickness. The grotesque embellishments found on a mask have their analogies in Gothic monuments and in the almost unknown buildings and inscriptions in the primeval forests of Mexico. What the withered flowers are for the portrait of the European doctor, so are the withered corpses for the mask of the conjurer of disease. The cast bronzes of the Negroes from Benin in West Africa , the idols from the Easter Islands in the remotest Pacific, the cape of a chieftain from Alaska, and the wooden masks from New Caledonia speak the same powerful language as the chimeras of Notre-Dame and the tombstones in Frankfurt Cathedral.

Everywhere, forms speak in a sublime language right in the face of European aesthetics. Even in the games of children, in the hat of a cocotte, in the joy of a sunny day, invisible ideas materialize quietly.
The joys, the sorrows of man, of nations, lie behind the inscriptions, paintings, temples, cathedrals, and masks, behind the musical compositions, stage spectacles, and dances. If they are not there, if form becomes empty and groundless, then there is no art. 

With this listing of things from around the world that have something very powerful in common, this concluding paragraph sounds a lot like Malraux in the La Psychologie de l'Art from 1947.  And like Malraux, he's not going to tell us much about that mysterious something that apparently defies European aesthetics - even if it can be found in celebrated European art as well. Nor does  Macke  offer any examples of form that is empty and groundless.

This writing is so empty-headed, one wonders why Kandinsky, or anyone, would wish to include it in a collection of essays.

But fortunately, the power and clarity that are absent from his writing can easily be found in his painting.

1909

1913

1914

In these three paintings, Macke seemed to be moving away from whatever naturalism he had.

I wonder how he would painted had he survived the war.

Der Blaue Reiter Almanac : David Burliuk

David Burliuk, "Horses", 1908

David Burliuk, "Head" (of the artist's mother), 1910

THE SAVAGES OF RUSSIA

This next essay was written by David Burliuk (1882-1967).  He may have outlived the other contributors to the Almanac by at least a decade, but he is also the least well known -  at least in America, even though he lived in the New York art world  for 45 years.  (the Met owns 2 paintings and 2 drawings - none are currently on display)

The above black-and-white reproduction was included in the Almanac -- but the original has vanished - so above it I posted a color reproduction of a painting he did in the same year -- possibly under the influence of his fellow Blue Riders.

David Burliuk, "Illustration for the Almanac, A trap for judges", 1913

I don't know whether this piece was intended for the next edition of the Almanac -- but that's what the date and title would lead one to believe.

********

Here is the complete text of Burliuk's  contribution:

                         


Realism changes itself into impressionism. Remaining completely realistic in art is unthinkable. In art everything is more or less realistic. But it is impossible to found a school on the “more-or-less” principles. “More-or-less” is not aesthetics. Realism is nothing but a species of impressionism. But impressionism, i.e., life seen through the prism of an experience, is a creative form of life. My experience is a transformation of the world. Becoming absorbed in an experience leads me to creative activity. Creating is at one and the same time creating experiences and creating creations. The laws of creation are the only aesthetics of impressionism and at the same time the aesthetics of symbolism. “Impressionism is a superficial form of symbolism” (Andrei Bely).’


I don't know whether the first person pronoun appears this dramatically in the original language of this text --- but the version above is centered on "My experience"  that "leads me to creative activity".

Franz Marc's essays addressed  knowledge and the power of ideas --  Burliuk's is more about his own prodigal self.   His "laws of creation" proceed from "I am alive"

           



“I have no doubt that from a study of the works of Raphael or Titian a more complete set of rules can be drawn than from the works of Manet or Renoir, but the rules followed by Manet and Renoir were suited to their artistic temperaments and I happen to prefer the smallest of their paintings to all the work of those who have merely imitated the Venus of Urbino or the Madonna of the Goldfinch. Such painters are of no value to anyone because, whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, preferences, and delusions”    (Henri Matisse - "Notes of a Painter", 1908)






“A renaissance is caused not primarily by perfect works but by the power and uniformity of the ideal in a generation full of life” (Maurice Denis).



The congress of Russian artists, planned for December, must try above all to create an atmosphere necessary for such a uniformity. This objective, if it can be accomplished, will also unite the young artists who are not self-satisfied, but who search for new ways in art and prefer the ideal aims of international art to national and pecuniary interests.


A hundred years later, it seems odd that all three of these profoundly different, self-driven, creative individuals (Burliuk, Matisse, Denis) would have been so enthusiastic for "uniformity of the ideal"

Burliuk might have thought differently about such  uniformity after state terrorism enforced it in the Soviet Union.

Russian folk sculpture (possibly from collection of Kandinsky)

Art is something special. If a congress were to meet for the benefit of some technical interest—aviation, navigation, auto racing, etc—all its members would certainly admit unanimously that “we are lagging
behind other nations,” that “compared with Western Europe, Russia lags far behind.” And it would still be stated today, just as it was during the time of Peter the Great, that Western European culture should be the desirable goal for us.

Things are different in each of the spiritual disciplines and thus in painting as well. In the latter, the visible evidence of a flying airplane is lacking. Art, after all, is no Krupp cannon, which has a great deal of argumentative force. Every theoretical conceit  is silenced here. And, unfortunately, conceit is a characteristic Russian quality—the less culture, the greater this delusion. This delusion is naturally very comfortable: it eliminates the restless search, the restless creating, which are the greatest enemies of “Oblomovism.” The art critic Alexander Benois  has already observed correctly that “Russian artists distinguish themselves by a dreadful laziness—yes! Russian artists are suffering from Oblomovism —and in this case they are truly national !“


I can't follow the second paragraph at all - especially the following assertions: "Every theoretical conceit is silenced there, and unfortunately conceit is a characteristic Russian quality"

Ilya  Repin, "Ivan the Terrible", 1885

(not included in the Alamanac)

Aside from this criticism, other sad aspects of contemporary Russian painting are to be observed. The earlier leaders of the World of Art gradually reached  the deathlike silence of the Federation, which finally sank to the level of the Wanderers. (It is known that the term “Wanderer” is used today as an invective.) 
In the l890s Repin even sneered at Puvis de Chavannes and Degas, whom we find overly saccharine today. 

Ilya Repin, "Demonstration of 17 October 1905", 1911

( not included in the Almanac)

It appears that Burliuk had some difficulty organizing the variety of sometimes conflicting emotions that were swirling around in his head.  Is Repin to be disparaged along with the other Wanderers -- or to be admired for sneering at Degas and Puvis ?

Though you might notice that Burliuk has the  Wanderers disparaged here with a passive verb - so he does not take full responsibility.

It's unlikely  that Kandinsky or Marc dared  edit his manuscript -  thereby preserving  it's 'savage' quality.

(note: Repin painted the above crowd scene the same year that the Almanac was published - depicting the same enthusiastic confusion that Burliuk exemplified)

Vladimir Burliuk, portrait, 1911

This painting by Burliuk's brother was included in this section of the Almanac-- but since the original was lost, I included another portrait from the same year to show something in color:

Vladimir Burliuk, portrait of Benedikt Livshits, 1911

(not in the Almanac)

At this point the World of Art was still completely liberal, eagerly reproducing the French impressionists, whom I would call intimists. They are representatives of a sweet art without principles, of an art which lost ground and advanced only as far as the idea of exterior beauty and harmony of color spots.

Konstantin Somov, portrait of Diaghilev, 1893

(not in the Almanac)

Konstantin Somov, portrait of his father, 1897

( not in the Almanac )

Valentin Serov, portrait of Diaghilev, 1904

(not in the almanac)

As the editor notes, The World of Art   (Mir iskusstva) was a  circle of artists including, among others,  Konstantine Somov and Valentine Serov.  Sergei Diaghilev was the  chief editor of it's  magazine that he co-founded in 1899.






 This enthusiasm for French art, however, suddenly came to an end in Russia, after which there developed a movement that paralleled French painting. In the more delicate, pure, talented minds there arose a divine light and a more conscious relationship to art. Around this light an incredible dispute developed, a veritable Walpurgis Night! The academicians were joined in this dispute by groups that earlier had been, at least outwardly, in opposition to the academy.

The academic principles: “values,” coloring, belief in the “realistic,”“right” drawing, in a “harmonious” tone (these parts of the law are rejected by some, who, however, consider the rest to be holy all the same), construction, proportion, symmetry, perspective, anatomy (the rejection of these principles is most important, primary, most characteristic—not without good reason have even Cezanne and Van Gogh, if remotely, pointed to the necessity of liberation from this slavery!).

This dispute produced enough noise to drown out many troublesome questions (being asked by the thin-skinned): “Am 1 right after all?

If only we knew which paintings had provoked so  much controversy.


Is Apollo to be worshiped as I do? Is it really right to paint the same pictures year after year, only changing their names ?“ Now the game is out in the open.


The thing is so widespread, and Russian art is so far behind that Muther, for one, ignored it; but Benois “made up” for this omission. Even Maurice Denis, despite his tact, despite his more than modest encouragement, smiled rather coolly when he was shown Russian works of art.

Richard Muther (1860–1909) was a German art historian. Alexander Benois (1870-1960) was a painter, set designer, art critic, and historian.



For the followers of academic “art” the free search for beauty is nothing but “making grimaces.” A patriotic success of their “genuine” Russian art would offer them the best opportunity to put their untalented “works” on the market. They are a veritable nightmare of art, the death of art. Some of them openly bare their teeth and wear their hides with dignity. They are not the most dangerous ones. The truly evil ones are the others—the wolves in sheep’s clothing. 0 these false sheep! They are the real danger, which means—watch out!

Mikhail Larionov, self portrait, 1910

Mikhail Larionov, 1912

Mikhail Larionov, portrait of Natalia Goncharova, 1915

Natalia Goncharova, Self Portrait, 1907

Natalia Goncharova, 1911

Pavel Kuznetsov

Martiros Saryan, self portrait, 1909

Martiros Saryan, "Heat, Running Dog", 1909

Vasily Denisov, 1904

Pyotr Konchalovsky, self portrait, 1912

Pyotr  Konchalovsky, portrait of Georgy Yakulov,  1910

 Ilya Mashkov, self portrait, 1911

Ilya  Mashkov, Self Portrait with Konchalovskly, 1910

Illya Mashkov, "Two Nudes", 1908

Ilya Mashkov, Still Life with Fruit, 1910

Georgy Yakulov, "Street"

Marianne Von Werefkin, "Country Road", 1907

 Marianne Von Werefkin, "Skaters", 1910

Marianne Von Werefkin, self portrait, 1910

Alexej Von Jawlensky, self portrait, 1912

Alexej Von Jawlensky, Head in Blue, 1912

(note : none of the images of the "new art" shown above were included in the Almanac)

The academicians are the real enemies of the new art, which, fortunately, does exist in Russia and which has different basic principles.


Their representatives, Larionov, P. Kuznetsov, Saryan, Denisov, Konchalovsky, Mashkov, Goncharova, von Wisen, V. and D. Burliuk, Knabe, Yakulov, and, living abroad, Sherebtsova (Paris), Kandinsky,
Werefkin, Jawlensky (Munich), revealed in their works new principles of beauty, as did the great French masters (such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, Derain, Le Fauconnier, and to some extent Matisse and
Rousseau).

That's quite a list!  Only one of them, Von Wisen, has fallen into total obscurity. A piece by Gondharova currently holds the world's record auction price for paintings done by women, and Mashkov's still-life, shown above, sold in 2013,  setting an auction record  for paintings done by Russians.

I wish these artists were shown more often in American museums.



BTW - Henri Le Fauconnier has not found favor in American museums either.    I can find nothing currently on display. According to Wikipedia: At the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, Le Fauconnier published a theoretical text in the catalog of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (Munich, 1910).



Let the enemies of this art be convulsed with laughter. The disguised sheep shall favor us as they willingly favor a member of the World of Art.  There is nothing else they can do!  In order to understand the works of the artists mentioned, you have to throw the academic stuff completely overboard. Feeling must be purged, which is not so easy for those who are crammed with all sorts of “knowledge.”
It is always the same old story. Even the greatest draftsmen of the nineteenth century—Cezanne, Van Gogh—had to listen to the refrain.







Our Secessionist painters are convinced to this day that Cezanne was not a bad artist, but mainly lacked the ability to draw. (note: a few years back, I examined this issue here )



The newly discovered law of all the artists just mentioned is nothing but an upstanding tradition whose origin we find in the works of “barbaric” art: the Egyptians, Assyrians, Scythians, etc. This rediscovered tradition is the sword that smashed the chains of conventional academicism and freed art, so that in color and design (form) it could move from the darkness of slavery toward the path of bright springtime and freedom.
What we first thought to be the “clumsiness” of Cezanne and the frantic “handwriting” of Van Gogh is something greater after all: it's the revelation of new truths and new means.




And these truths and means are:

From the Papyrus of Ani, 1250 BC (not in the Almanac)

1. The relation of painting to its graphic elements, the relation of the object to the elements of plane (which we see signs of already in Egyptian “profile painting”).
2. The law of displaced construction—the new world of construction drawing! Connected with it:



I have no idea how the "law of displaced construction" may be kept or broken - or how Burliuk considered it different from the law that follows.

Mikhail Larionov, 1909 (not in the Almanac)

3. The law of free drawing (main representative: Kandinsky; also to be found in the best works of Denisov and especially clear in Larionov’s Soldiers). 

Yarulov, "Cafe Chantant", 1910 (not in Almanac) 

4. The application of several viewpoints (which in architecture has long been known as a mechanical law), the combination of perspective presentation with the basal planes, that is, the use of more planes (Yakulov’s Café Chantant).
5. The treatment of the plane and its intersections (Picasso, Braque; in Russia, V. Burliuk).

6. The equilibrium of perspectives, which replaces mechanical composition.



7. The law of color dissonance (Mashkov, Konchalovsky).





Unfortunately, internet images are utterly hopeless for color - so this law of dissonance must remain a mystery to me.

And with no idea of how the other laws might be kept or broken,  they might  as well  be replaced by only one law:   the  prohibition of realistic pictorial space.


These principles are inexhaustible sources of eternal beauty. Much may be obtained here by those who have eyes to see the hidden meaning of lines, of colors. It beckons, allures, and attracts man!


Thus the chain that, because of various rules, had fettered art to the academy was shaken off: construction, symmetry (anatomy) of proportions, perspective, etc.—laws that are eventually mastered easily by the untalented—the pictorial kitchen of art!
All our expert as well as amateur critics should be the first to understand that it is high time to pull up the curtain and to open the window of true art!