BLUE RIDERS: A FIRST GLANCE
“Every
work of art is the child of its time.
Often it is the mother of our emotions.”-- Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the
Spiritual in Art, 1912
Munich (and Vienna) rarely leap to the
forefront of consciousness in the minds of most Americans when the phrase “art
capital of Europe” is spoken. Why this
is may simply be an unfortunate aftermath of two World Wars triggered by madmen
in that part of the world, an attempt by the victors to marginalize the
defeated by trivializing their artistic contributions…
 |
| Wassily Kandinsky: The Last Judgment, 1912 |
Yet the truth remains that in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, both cities attracted brilliant writers
and artists from both sides of the Atlantic.
Thomas Wolfe, born in North Carolina, was among those who traveled to
Munich. He began writing Look Homeward, Angel, while in
Europe. While the most likely source of
the novel’s title are lines from a poem by John Milton carved onto a tombstone
near Wolfe’s childhood home, some say young Tommy Wolfe found himself on the
losing end of a fist fight in Munich.
This more romantic version has it that his (married, rich, and much
older) lover gently whispered “Look homeward, angel” as she tended his bruised
face…
 |
| Franz Marc: The Tower of Blue Horses, 1913 |
It was a bruising of another sort that
inspired a group of German and Russian artists living in Munich circa 1911 to
form a short-lived circle of painters calling themselves “The Blue Riders”…
Critics thought Wassily Kandinsky’s The Last Judgement too outrageous to be
included in a serious exhibit.
Emotionally bruised by the rejection, Kandinsky and his friend Marc
Franz gathered a circle of like-minded painters around themselves and garnished
their works with dashes of fauvism and cubism, adding a sprinkle of
expressionistic emotion to vitalize the work…
 |
| August Macke: View into a Lane, 1914 |
This group’s name may have been inspired by
the title of one of Kandinsky’s earlier pieces (dating to about 1903) but
Kandinsky later wrote that both he and Franz Marc loved the color blue and both
found equines and equestrian sport fascinating.
For Kandinsky, especially, blue had a profound spiritual meaning as it
linked man to the divine. The darker the
blue, the closer to God…
 |
| August Macke: Rokoko, 1912 |
[Kandinsky trained as an economist and
lawyer, incidentally, and did not move toward a career in the arts until he was
thirty years of age. The son of a tea
merchant, he grew to spiritual maturity in the Russian Orthodox Church.]
No artistic manifestos were ever produced by
this group of painters, although it did produce an “Almanac” in 1912. (The outbreak of World War One prevented
publication of a second edition of the almanac.) Each held differing views
about what art should emphasize. What
bonded them was a deep and abiding faith that art must not ignore the spiritual
and that art should be spontaneous and intuitive…
 |
| Alexej von Jawlensky: Head in Blue, 1912 |
Rarely does very much good come of the
carnage of battle. World War brought an
end to the Blue Riders. Franz Marc and
August Macke, two of the Blue Riders, died in the trenches in military
service. Kandinsky and the other Russian
members were driven from Munich because men who led their homelands preferred
to settle differences with bullets…
 |
| The Blue Rider Almanac, 1912 |
THE
MARKETPLACE
An easy and inexpensive
way to build a collection of work by today's finest painters, sculptors, and
photographers-- Greeting cards from Fine Art America. Easier still: just browse the Louis R Nugent
gallery at Fine Art America. Choose from
hundreds of unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday
cards for yourself or that special someone.
Individual cards cost less than $5.
Wall prints start at only $22.
 |
| Louis Nugent: Desert Voodoo |
We’re also on Facebook: Louis
R Nugent Photography on Facebook @
louisnugent22.
Other Fine Art America
sites for discriminating collectors:
http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.htmlhttp://fineartamerica.com/groups/all-natural-scenic-landscapes.html
CREDITS
Note: Information for this essay is taken primarily from readily available sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and almanacs. When other sources are employed they are credited either in the text or as follows: None. All photographs are taken from Wikipedia or Google Images without source or authorship credits available, except as noted: None.
No comments:
Post a Comment