Kandinsky and the Russian Soul
Overview
by Vladimir Gulev
The Russian Museum invites you on a journey through the history of the human soul. The Russian soul. Isn't it perhaps similar to the Italian, French, German, English soul or, more in general, to that of Europe, Asia or America? But then is it possible, is it necessary, to confine the immortal soul in a straightjacket, in national or geographic frames? Do there really exist these racial discriminating factors for the enigmatic Slavonic soul, and are they really so relevant or essential?
It is not by chance that I, at the beginning of an official presentation, have allowed myself to ask so many questions. This show's aim is in fact to provoke questions rather than to give answers. The essence of artistic creation consists precisely in the pre-eminence of the process of research over that of supplying results.
Humanity has already written a multitude of histories: the history of the world, of the nation, political and geographical history, the history of religion, of philosophy, of art… The list could continue to infinity. Scholars have ordered, divided into periods, organised and firmly anchored them in the milestones of records and facts. But all these histories are the product of the all-embracing history of the spirit or of human spirituality because it is a fundamental attribute of the human community. And the basic documents of this history are works of art, to which it is difficult to apply criteria of classification. They are perfect in their imperfection, objective in their subjectivity. For this reason, from the enormous collection of the Russian museum it would have been possible to create many shows dealing with the same theme. And in fact what exactly is the link between works spanning more than a century and a half such as those of Aleksey Venetsianov and Il'ya Kabakov; between Vassily Perov's Lonely Guitar Player and Grigory Bruskin's Boy with a Portrait of Lenin as a Child? We could have made other associations. And why the title Kandinsky and...? Almost as though to resume and further develop the theme already tackled in collaboration with us in the exhibition Kazimir Malevich and the Sacred Russian Icons, recently held with great success in Palazzo Forti.
Yet more questions. The answer lies in the history of artistic form, the radical changes in which reflect the metamorphosis of the human soul which, in turn, reflects and expresses in a particularly clear manner in the art of so-called moments of transition. Russian culture experienced a similar moment - and no less dramatic than another critical period when icon painting was supplanted by secular works - between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX centuries. Two individuals, Malevich and Kandinsky, embody with their artistic enlightenment the frightening ambiguity of the knowledge and spirit of the times: from the aim of destroying the spiritual values of painting to the wish to instil a new, different and unprecedented life in it, and to create a disembodied, abstract and non-figurative form, in the most common meaning of these terms. A comparison between their works makes it easier to understand, or at least to follow, the changes that occur in our spiritual life.
And in what better place to reflect on the enigmas of the human soul and its manifestations than Verona, the city that showed the world pain and hope through the love story of Romeo and Juliet. The story of a inexplicable fusion between two souls that discovered how to overcome the ancient and equally inexplicable hatred between the Montagues and the Capulets.
Shakespeare sadly concluded that there was no sadder tale in the world. But, Pushkin was to say some centuries later, 'my sadness is luminous'. Which soul are they speaking about? The Slavonic soul or the Italian? Probably the united and divided soul about which that great artist Michelangelo wrote in one of his last poems:
If the bitter road keeps mountains and seas
Each distant from the other, spirit and zeal
Do not fear obstacles or snow or ice,
nor the wings of thought shackles or chains.