At Tate Modern 
Peter Campbell
The Kandinsky exhibition at Tate Modern until 1 October is subtitled ‘The Path to Abstraction’. As he stripped his work down, Kandinsky believed he was removing obstacles on the way to deeper experience. To look for goals beyond those defined by his Fauvish landscapes of the early 1900s was as much an intellectual decision as an aesthetic one. A new sensibility that communicated emotions and spiritual truths through form and colour alone would take the place of narrative content. Theosophy, folk art and folk traditions, children’s paintings and a specifically Russian take on the renewal of society, which had its roots in political as well as religious ideas, would all contribute to it.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
Peter Campbell is the London Review’s resident designer and art critic.
Other articles by this contributor:
At the Saatchi Gallery · The Triumph of Painting
At the National Gallery · Gentile Bellini
At Tate Britain · gardens
At Tate Britain · Howard Hodgkin
At Victoria Miro · Sarah Sze’s Art of Arrangement
At the Wallace Collection · Anthony Powell’s artists
At the National Gallery · Ingres-flesh
In Auvergne · sketching out of doors
print layout
tell a friend