Untitled, 1944

 Untitled, 1944, Watercolour, Indian ink and pencil on paper, 30.2 x 46cm.

I’m intrigued by the thought of works that Kandinsky left unfinished on his death, and this appears to be one – it’s taped to a drawing board, which adds to its look of incompleteness, though the date is only assumed. Apart from what might have happened to this work had it been completed, I wonder what the next one would have been.

Running diagonally from bottom left to top right is a series of lines, a kind of framework for the hieroglyphs (biomorphic and geometric) contained within; top right, a circle, lighter than the ground, containing its own forms but through which the hieroglyphic structure can be seen; directly below this, four lines of hieroglyphs without any framework; top left, a rectangle, another picture within the picture, this time containing the detail of a quite different composition; and running bottom to top, through the centre and dominating the whole, an energetic black line or whiplash.

The dominant compositional opposition is between the circle and the rectangle in the top right and left; the whiplash line mediates between the two. Two geometric forms, mediated by an organic form. Variations of this line recur throughout Kandinsky oeuvre. At one moment, it is the trailing gown of an angel (see for eg, St Gabriel, 1911 (R&B, 419)); then it is the horrific sound of trumpets described in the Revelation to St John (see Composition V, 1911 (R&B, 400)); then it is a purely abstract line (see, for eg, Reunited Surfaces, 1934, (VEB, 1162)). In this untitled, unfinished work, the line falls into the latter category. 

The Munich to which Kandinsky moved in 1896 was under the spell – like so many other European cities – of the arts and crafts movement, and of Jugendstil in particular. In 1902, Henry Van de Velde described ‘The line as a force […] it derives its power from the energy of him who drew it.’ (Weiss, p.8) In various theoretical writings of the time, the line was already conceived as an expressive force, a manifestation of the artist’s body and mind. Perhaps most important for Kandinsky in these early years was the work of August Endell, whose analyses of the psychological function of lines seem to have shaped Kandinsky’s own fairly directly (Weiss, p.34ff). [I’m trying to avoid academic referencing in these posts, but since I’m stealing these bits from Weiss’s Kandinsky in Munich, I feel I have to.] Anyway, Endell’s colleague, Hermann Obrist did this about 1895 (embroidery, entitled subsequently Whiplash (Cyclamen)):

What we wouldn’t want to do is see this work as the origin of Kandinsky’s line(s); rather, the embroidered line stands for a new understanding of the potential of line in art, and in abstract art in particular. Kandinsky’s variations of what we might call the ‘Jugendstil line’ make use of that expanded potential of the line, and draws on the visual and psychological qualities it made available.

In our untitled piece, the line suggests great movement and energy. It reminds me of one of those films about water snakes, not really having the bits to propel themselves through the water but making up for this by enormously strenuous writhing movements. (What looks like a snake hieroglyph appears in the diagonal framework, a motif quite common in certain of the later works.) The line contrasts the relatively static geometric forms to either side. Though it echoes the curve of the circle somewhat, it is quite at odds with them, speaking of dynamic, gestural and psychological human qualities. Further down, it writhes across the central hieroglyphic script that, as noted, consists of biomorphic forms, suggestive of microscopic life, and geometric forms, side-by-side. A fleeting gesture runs through an ancient script. Lower right, winding annelid-like forms (related to the dominant line) invade the space of some other organism, composed of tiny, strict circles. 

In a strictly non-art historical way, I find the work mind-blowing. It’s too much, too many things, in one. Ancient history, momentary expression, microscopic life, pure abstraction, figuration, writing, drawing, geometry. Yet compositionally, it coheres. It's somewhere between sublime and beautiful. 

Kandinsky manages to articulate his most fundamental principle 

the interconnectedness of all things, including those most radically at odds with each other 

as an aesthetic whole.

In this work, it's the expressive gesture of the artist, with all that that signifies, which calls the disparate pieces together. And in that, the line functions as a kind of signature, one that repeats throughout his oeuvre.