Many-Coloured Ensemble

Many-Coloured Ensemble, 1938, Mixed media on canvas, 116 x 89 cm. 

Living in Paris at the time this was painted, Kandinsky had by then explored for several years a vocabulary influenced by the Surrealists he’d met there (and whose work he’d influenced before his move to Paris in 1933/ 34), and which now contained forms derived from microscopic life forms depicted in popular scientific publications. We see both in this painting. 

Just what, if anything, the overall shape refers to is unclear, but it’s in keeping with other works done in Paris that we should consider it reminiscent of a cellular form, populated with the components of a single organic cell, or perhaps an organism composed of such cells. Contained within its membrane (more or less – it is breached at four points) is cytoplasm containing innumerable ribosomes (the tiny circles running throughout), punctuated by larger lysosomes (larger circles and the occasional quadrangle). Within this environment, certain motifs compete for the status of nucleus, and the single-cell model begins to fall apart. 

To the right, a complete organism resembling a foetus faces right, toward one of the membrane ‘exits’, and the whole form begins perhaps to resemble a womb. It’s a curious creature, with one eye clearly visible, body containing smaller ‘cells’ (strict circles) from which limbs point right, and a tail. To the left of the whole, we find a form resembling a lyre which has, integrated to its design, a bird-like shape reminiscent of those found in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Between them, occupying the central position in the structure, is a Miróesque, foot-like form (I’m reminded of his Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird, 1926: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79341), reconfigured in rectilinear and curvilinear blocks of colour. Beside the foetus’s tail, a shamanic mushroom, again reconfigured in more regular geometrical forms. Numerous other abstract forms, some purely abstract, some reminiscent of microscopic life, vie for position in this crowded, colourful space. 

The painting is a world, possibly a universe, in nascent form, waiting to evolve and create a new order of things.

After yesterday's effort, I decided to ditch the 'first work I see' approach, and instead open a catalogue randomly, search that area and then write about the first painting I see that interests me.