Kandinsky’s Composition VI: Heideggerian Poetry in Noah’s Ark

Introduction

I will begin my investigation of Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Composition VI with Kandinsky’s own commentary on the painting. I will then turn to the analysis of Kandinsky and the Compositions in John Sallis’s book Shades. Using this analysis as my point of departure, I will consider how Composition VI resonates with Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” particularly with regard to the role of language in art. Principally through the “theme” of Composition VI, namely the Deluge, I will examine the interconnections

Figure 1.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Composition VI. Oil on canvas. 195×300 cm. Inv. no. GE-9662. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg and Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.

among the painting, its theme, and their poetic dimensions. I will then conclude with a brief look, in this light, at Kandinsky’s own poetry.

The most important implication of understanding Composition VI as a kind of poetry develops out of its suggestion that more than one artwork from more than one genre can open up new worlds (in Heidegger’s sense) that are even richer and more interesting than the world opened up by any one individual artwork. This opportunity could, in turn, motivate artists in any one genre to seek inspiration not only from other artworks in their own genre (in which genre their own community might currently possess a particularly rich tradition) but also from artworks in other genres, which might widen the search to include artworks born from other communities (whose cultural traditions at some point in time are richer in some other genre). For example, perhaps an Italian librettist, in seeking inspiration for an opera, might seek inspiration from dance or architecture, and might thereby turn to nineteenth-century Russian or medieval Islamic culture for the inspiration. A tendency in this direction, finally, could inspire cross-cultural communication, and thereby tolerance and appreciation, in our increasingly global world. In this respect, the theme of the Deluge seems particularly appropriate, given that the deluge myth, though most well-known in its Jewish form, is one that is shared by cultures from around the world.

Kandinsky on the Painting

In his commentary on Composition VI, Kandinsky first describes the glass painting that served as the impetus and study for the Composition. In beginning this glass painting, Kandinsky writes, “My starting point was the Deluge.”¹ Kandinsky took various “objective forms, which are in part amusing,” and “enjoyed mingling serious forms with amusing external expressions: nudes, the Ark, animals, palm trees, lightning, rain, etc.” But in attempting to turn this glass painting into one of his Compositions, Kandinsky experienced multiple failures. He explains these failures as follows: “I was still obedient to the expression of the Deluge, instead of heeding the expression of the word ‘Deluge.’” In other words, Kandinsky’s focus on painting (in which German culture possessed a particular prowess at that time) as opposed to poetry (in which the Jewish tradition possesses a particular prowess) initially obscured his painting’s potential. Instead of depicting an actual event, Kandinsky was attempting to capture what he calls “the inner sound” of the event. But even a year and a half later, he tells us, “that element that was foreign to my inner picture of that catastrophe called the Deluge still stuck to me.” Then, after taking some time away from the glass painting, and then returning to it, as it were, afresh, Kandinsky remarks that he “was struck, first by the colors, then by the compositional element, and then by the linear form itself, without reference to the objects.”² By attending to what painting and poetry share, he was able to transcend certain restrictive dimensions of conventional painting; and doing so in this case involved moving from his Germanic base of inspiration to the Hebraic tradition, thereby potentially facilitating further rapport and communication between the two, as for example in this very essay.

Kandinsky begins the actual description of the finished Composition with an...