"Blue Rider" at Tate Modern

 

Wassily Kandinsky liked riders, Franz Marc liked horses, both loved blue. The name Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter) was coined by the two artists over coffee at Marc's summerhouse in Sindelsdorf according to Kandinsky. The seemingly casual encounter became historic as the name intended for the title of a publication and related exhibitions, would eventually designate a tightknit group of artists based in Munich and their transnational connections from France, Italy, East Europe to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Preceded by the N. K. V. M. ( Neue Künstlervereinigung München), the Blue Rider's gestation was marred by broken friendships and reputations in the midst of a turbulent pre-war period, a flourishing time for German expressionism. The publication of the almanac in 1912 concretized the ideas behind the inclusive Blue Rider reaching to painters, sculptors, musicians, composers, poets, dancers, art critics, writers and ensured its posterity. Gabriele Münter, a pillar of the group, became the guardian of its legacy hiding documents and works of art considered degenerate during two world wars. Upon her 80th birthday in 1957 she donated one thousand pieces to the Lenbachhaus. Most of the one hundred and thirty rarely seen works gathered for the exhibition Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider are drawn from the collection. Paintings, photographs, documents, sculptures and personal objects fill twelve spacious rooms at Tate Modern in London.

Wassily Kandinsky was forty years old when he painted Couple on a Horseback (1907). Glowing in the dim light, the enchanting work illustrates an early period of the painter who drew his themes from Russian folklore and his memories from a previous trip in a Northern Province of the Russian Empire. Nearby, Gabriel Münter's black and white photographs document her voyage to the South of the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. If the initial display appears quite bare, it is followed by an abundance of paintings in the next rooms, offering a glimpse into the life of a small circle of friends. We can see a candid portrait of Kandinsky in short pants and leg warmers in deep conversation with Erma Bossi over coffee (Kandinsky and Erma Bossi at the Table, 1912), or having pastries and coffee (Man at the Table (Kandinsky)), 1911, both works by Gabriele Münter. She also depicts Alexej von Jawlensky, Olga von Hartmann, or catches an intimate moment between the couple Jawlensky-Werefkin during an excursion in the mountains. Wassily Kandinsky paints a portray of Gabriele Münter (Kallmunz-Gabriele Münter Painting II, 1903), Franz Marc of Maria Franck,  August Macke paints Elizabeth Epstein who paints herself, so does Marianne von Werefkin. The artists become familiar as they pose for each other and also share pictures of their surroundings. Fauves and Matisse are not far when Wassily Kandinsky paints his dining room and his bedroom in Munich's Schwabing neighborhood. Five of his paintings side by side made in Murnau between 1908 and 1910 about a garden, a street, a church or a cow, reveal the subtle path of the artist from expressionism to abstraction as a yellow horse (With a Yellow Horse, 1909) appears nearby. Their international connections are not forgotten and Robert Delaunay, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, are featured with two or three paintings each, scattered among the show. 

The exhibition takes a surprising turn as the joyful, colorful display abruptly turns black and white. A series of photographs from Gabriele Münter, memories of  her trip to Tunisia, triggers comments about colonialism, orientalism and exoticism to label artists most likely looking for new colors under new skies. "Performing Gender" in Room 5 features two artists, the androgynous dancer Alexander Sakharoff and the painter Werefkin who made his portrait, bringing up comments about sexuality, gender, the "third sex", but failing to mention that he was happily married for more than thirty years to Clotilde von Derp, herself a famous dancer and the couple was known as "The Sakharoffs". We are told that Werefkin who stated "I am not a woman, I am not a man, I am I" was "resenting gender binaries". She was an artist, longtime companion, soulmate, lover of Jawlensky. Lining up a dark passage, behind glass like in a curios cabinet, a selection of heteroclite personal objects and art pieces reveal the artists' broad interests and sources of inspiration. 

Following the interlude, the exhibition goes back on track reuniting Kandinsky, Marc and his wife Maria Franck-Marc in the next room where the noticeably larger works project an explosion of colors. Three paintings side by side from Franz Marc made in 1912 reflect his mystical quest (Doe in the Monastery Garden, 1912) and his technical mastery. Merging cubism, orphism, futurism, In the Rain (1912) represents a lively domestic scene of Marc's wife and dog under sheaths of rain surrounded by nature while Tiger (1912) and later in the show Cows, Red, Green, Yellow (1911), Deer in the Woods II (1912), illustrate his higher goals born from years of studying theology and Eastern religions, driving him to look for a natural order within the animal kingdom and the "underlying mystical design of the visible world". His life was unfortunately cut short on the battle field in Verdun in 1916. Kandinsky's religious paintings (St George III (1911), All Saints (1911), Improvisation Deluge (1913) or On the Theme of the Deluge (1913-14) ) are a step toward his ultimate search defined in his book On the Spiritual in Art, realized through a process of abstraction on the canvas. Objects "become immaterial" melting in a chaos of colors and shapes, as perspective becomes irrelevant in an infinite cosmic world. Schoenberg's music fills the next room and we can listen to his early atonal works (Second String Quartet op.10 and Three Piano Pieces, op.11) while looking at Impression III (Concert), 1911. It is a unique experience filled with emotions (at least for me) as we go back in time to the night of January 2, 1911, and connect with the artists. A brief  overview of color theory by Goethe, Chevreul, is outshined by a display of Marc's personal tool in a glass case. He used a prism to find "pure colors". A modern version is made available for the visitor to look at Deer in the Snow II, 1911. Color and light are inseparable and Lichtdecker Kandinsly, an environmental light installation from Olafur Eliasson  premiered at the Lengenhaus in 2006, offers variations of Improvisation Gorge, 1914, from Kandinsky under white light and shows its effect on our perception of colors. For a grand finale, a collection of works seems randomly hung on the walls. It represents artists closely or loosely associated with the Blue Rider, well known or less known, like a reunion of friends, the Delaunays, Klee, Bloch, Burliuk and of course Kandinsky, Münter, Marc, Werefkin, Macke. Twenty paintings to be savored one at a time. 

Kandinsky and Marc come out as the stars of the show, the former with more than twenty works of his pre-war career during which he had a huge impact on the birth of abstraction and the latter with six paintings rarely seen in one venue. The closest I have come so far with Marc's paintings is at The Phillips Collection where Deer in the Forest I, 1913, is hung in the children's room. Gabriele Münter overshadows the exhibition with paintings, woodcuts, reverse glass paintings, photographs, but her influence appears to be as a material and emotional support for the members of the Blue Rider, so is her friend Maria Franck Marc.

Wall texts are the backbone of an exhibition, leading the viewer throughout the show. Here the box-ticking about imperialism, colonialism, racism, neurodivergence, gender fluidity..., becomes tedious and off subject as the texts provide definitions of polytheism or theosophy, belittling the viewer.

Enjoy! It might be a while until we see another reunion of the Blue Rider's members.  

photographs by the author:

Wassily Kandinsky "Murnau with Church I", 1910

Franz Marc "Doe in the Monastery Garden", 1912

Gabriele Münter "Jawlensky and Werefkin", 1909

Escape at the UNO Gallery

Kyle Bravo: Drawing on the Wall, the latest exhibition at the UNO Lakefront Campus Gallery, starts with a site specific work, a giant self-portrait, iconic for the artist who has livened up diverse spaces in New Orleans in the past, most recently The Front in the Saint-Claude Art District. Three massive white pedestals or separation boxes become a background for the cartoonish personage outlined in black, dressed in blue pants, loose T-shirt and wearing tennis shoes. Childish, "cool", he brings us on another adventure. This time, the playful hero takes a big jump, floating in space, disappears, sucked into another dimension. The last panel is white, empty. The rest of the story is on the other side where we can see him fall, head first, like a modern Icarus without wings, his  escape thwarted by... the laws of gravity.
Further, Kyle Bravo depicts landscapes of lines arranged in plaid like motives, in secondary warm yellowish colors or primary red and blue. The works are flat, without visual effects unlike Op art, but create an overwhelming, suffocating illusion of confinement. The obsessive pieces provide no way out, and the eyes cannot find a focal point to rest on.  One can take a step back and look at it as a plaid version of works from the Pattern and Decoration movement well represented in New Orleans by Robert Gordy.
Two portraits complete the exhibition, digitized drawings rendered in a larger scale, the male and female sitting on opposite side of a skiff surround the viewer who becomes the subject they are both drawing....unless they are drawing each other.
The piece again conveys a sense of confinement and could refer to the inescapability of life or loneliness, the personage appear so close in the same boat, but so distant with their lowered gaze.
The exhibition which appears lighthearted at first gains in depth as it progresses, bringing a thread to a conversation which includes also time. The drawings on the wall will disappear covered with white paint at the end of the show.
"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk." said Paul Klee...
and more adventures with Kyle Bravo.

photographs by the author

Rediscovering Klee

Finding Tate Modern is easy along the South bank of the Thames. Getting there can be trickier and the day of my visit involved a walk through a tunnel and back streets filled with construction sites. Real estate is booming in London.

Tate presents a retrospective of Paul Klee's works and the exhibition organized in chronological order starts with a brief review of Klee's life and the display of a handwritten catalogue by the artist who kept records of his works in a meticulous way.
This short introduction is followed by an abrupt plunge into Klee's adult life in 1912-1913. Then thirty three years old, he had matured from an adventurous young man playing violin to a married painter supported by his wife, lived in Munich and was a member of Der Blaue Reiter founded in 1911. The paintings on display in the next seventeen rooms represent his legacy, allowing the visitor to retrace the artist's path and his brush with Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, Pointillism or Abstract. His search for color underlines his work and his skills for drawings which he developed early on, are displayed in his satirical pieces, referring to the absurdity of wars and governments. His caricatures could be categorized as Dadaist but his statements stay measured, he was not a provocateur. Each room concentrates on a particular event and its repercussion on Klee's works from the subject to the palette of colors. A series of abstract watercolors follow a trip in Tunisia, carpet inspired motives and variations in brown a trip to Egypt. Profoundly touched by the war and its atrocities, he produces a series of caricatural drawings alluding to its horrors. His poor health overshadowed the last years of his life and the progression of scleroderma left him unable to swallow or play the violin, however, he kept painting and his drawings became purified, "bare to the bones", like skeletons to support the colors.
Klee experimented with new material for his paintings on  burlap or new techniques developing his "oil-transfer" method. He was also a respected teacher nicknamed the "Bauhaus Buddha".
The visit confirms that Klee was Klee, an independent artist, involved in different movements, but who did not embrace fully any. Klee did shine in small, intimate paintings or watercolors and drawings. Some periods are more narrative, others pure geometric abstract. Rarely using primary colors, he invents new colors, by mixing them and making them bleed on each other, finding half-tones and creating a palette of chromatic colors.
What is missing in the exhibition is the human side of the painter, an aspect well presented in 2011 at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. Photographs of Klee with his students, his teaching tools at the Bauhaus... This may have been a distraction for this superb exhibition gathering works from Le Menil in Houston (with my preferred Gaze on Silence, 1932), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum Folkwang or the Kunstmuseum Basel and more. A small informative booklet was published for the exhibition and is provided with the purchase of the ticket.

The conclusion after the visit comes from Klee himself. In 1902, a defiant young artist, he stated "I am my style". True to himself, he developed his style over the next  forty years.

Coming back from the museum was even trickier. The Thames went over its banks during my visit (a few hours!) and, under a torrential rain, I had to climb fences to reach the bridge!

photographs
View of Tate Modern by the author
"Flora on Sand", 1927 and "Fire at Full Moon", 1933 from Flickr photo sharing

book review: "Paul Klee: Life and Work", Boris Friedewald, Prestel, 2011

Bauhaus Buddha

Paul Klee's nickname gives a hint about the artist's influence when he was on the Staff at the prestigious institution.

"Paul Klee: Life and Work " by Boris Friedewald is a book filled with details and pertinent anecdotes about the artist's life. It includes also numerous quotes and reproductions of his major works. All this material is presented in a chronological order to build the story of the painter.

During his childhood and youth in Switzerland (1879-1898) near Bern, he started to draw with colored pencils, a gift from his grandmother. He developed a fondness for the "Images d'Epinal" and other French popular prints. However, his father and mother were musicians and he was brought up to become a violinist. After much hesitation, Klee decided that music was a "downward path" and concentrated on drawing. From 1898 till 1906, the young artist moved to Munich where he led a free-spirited life, attending concerts, carousing with some debauchery, all this considered part of growing up: "Put simply, first and foremost, I had to become a person; art would follow." He spent a few months in Italy, visited Paris and produced mainly drawings, etchings and disappointing paintings.
The years 1906-1920 would see the artist mature and his reputation grow in Europe. First he married Lily, a pianist who supported the couple for a while and had a son Felix. Klee enjoyed his domestic life and at the same time, he met Kandinsky and became a member of Der Blaue Reiter. Klee stayed independent from other artists and followed his own artist's path. He visited galleries, discovered the works of French artists and made a short trip to Tunisia in 1911 with August Macke. It proved to be a turning point in his career: the artist discovered color.

Klee's career accelerated with his move to Weimar in 1921, due to his professoral appointment at the Bauhaus. He mingled with painters, architects, musicians, composers and established theories about art, creativity, movement, forms, colors.... His classes became so popular that students had to be turned away. The book gives a great insight in the daily life of the school. Klee with his cool demeanor and humor knew how to defuse the tension between the Staff members. His moral authority earned him the nickname Bauhaus Buddha.

But teaching was taking a toll on Klee and he moved to the Academy in Dusseldorf in 1931 for a short period. The Nazis were rising in power and in March 1933, his works were confiscated then returned after his protest. The artist moved back to Swizerland where he died in 1940. His final years were overshadowed by the symptoms of scleroderma, a disease which precluded him from playing violin. However, it did not slow down his creativity and the artist who had developed a sparse style produced more than 1200 drawings, some colored and 43 paintings the year before is death. At that time, the artist had reached fame and Picasso met him during a trip to Switzerland.

A pleasant way to browse the book is by looking only at the numerous illustrations. By doing so, the reader can acquire a visual memory of the artist's work.

As a footnote, the children's book of a the month at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in March was "Paul Klee for Children" from Silke Vry. I found ironical that the book cover is Der Bayrische Don Giovanni (The Bavarian Don Giovanni), 1919. In this work, Klee represents himself on a ladder loooking for new erotic adventures and the names printed on the canvas amid the colors and shapes representing windows are the first name of his mistresses!

Klee was interested in children and challenged individuals. He wrote:" There also exist the primal beginnings of art as found in the ethnographic museum or at home in the nursery...for children are equally capable...The more helpless these children, the more revealing their art."

An exhibition of Paul Klee's work "Polyphonies" took place at La Cite de la Musique from October 2011 till January 2012 in Paris.

photographs from Wikimedia Commons, public domain

"Twittering Machine" 1922

"Burg and Sonne", 1932

"Ohne Titel" 1939-40