Validation by Touch in Kandinsky's Early Abstract Art

Validation by Touch in Kandinsky's Early Abstract Art
Author(s): Margaret Olin

Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 144-172
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Validation by Touch in Kandinsky's
Early Abstract Art
Margaret Olin
1. Stylistic Unity
"'What is a work?'" Michel Foucault has asked. "'Is it not what an au-
thor has written?'"" One could add, "is it not what an artist has
made?" For an important strain of modern criticism, the artist is the
principle that validates the work of art. Some critics identify the work
solely with its creator. Harold Rosenberg, an extreme example of this
tendency, thought the work of the "action painters" was "of the same
metaphysical substance as the artist's existence."2
According to Foucault, the principle of the author validates the
work by endowing it with "a certain unity." The author, however,
The research for this essay was funded in part by the American Council of
Learned Societies. Part of the argument was presented at the College Art Association
Annual Meeting in Boston, 1987. I am indebted to Robert von Hallberg, Joan Hart,
and Richard Shiff for perceptive readings and criticisms of various drafts of this essay.
I also wish to thank the students in my seminar on Kandinsky at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago in the Autumn of 1984 for discussions of topics relevant to this
paper.
1. Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?" trans. Josue V. Harari, in Textual
Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. Harari (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), p.
143.
2. Harold Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters," in Henry Geldzahler,

New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 (New York, 1969), p. 343; this essay origi-
nally appeared in Art News 51 (Dec. 1952): 22-23, 48-49.
Critical Inquiry 16 (Autumn 1989)
? 1989 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/89/1601-0003$01.00. All rights reserved.
144
Critical Inquiry Autumn 1989 145
cannot endow a work with something he or she does not possess.

Therefore, critics who identify the author with the work must study
all the works of an author and resolve any differences within an artis-
tic oeuvre through "principles of evolution, maturation, or influ-
ence." In the visual arts, the burden of such criticism usually devolves
on the concept of stylistic unity, the use of visual devices recognized as
compatible by the arbiter.4 Criteria of stylistic unity can be defined by
locating an artist's oeuvre along a continuum defined by polar oppo-
sites such as the use of abstract as opposed to representational strate-
gies, or "painterly" as opposed to "linear" surfaces. Or the critic may
simply attempt to identify an artist through characteristically individ-
ual compositions. Once an artistic act is pronounced unified, it may be
accepted as the authentic expression of a unified origin.5 The origin
may take diverse forms. An individual canvas, for example, can con-
note the unity of a painter's action or vision. The individual artist may
devote an entire career to a single, self-expressive style.6 The demand
for unity may even extend beyond the individual. A historian, for ex-
ample, may discern the existence of an all-encompassing "period
3. Foucault, "What Is an Author?" p. 151.

4. For an interesting selection of essays on the complex notion of style and a bib-
liography of the voluminous writing on the subject, see The Concept of Style, ed. Berel
Lang, rev. ed. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987). See also Willibald SauerlInder, "From Stilus to
Style: Reflections on the Fate of a Notion," Art History 6 (Sept. 1983): 253-70. The
question as to the legitimacy of the attempt to validate authorship by tracing it to a
subjective unity posited in the individual will not be directly addressed in this essay. The
principle of the unified individual, however, has been contested at least since the writ-
ings of Sigmund Freud, which began to appear not long after the first attempts at scien-
tific stylistic authentication in the late nineteenth century. On these beginnings, see
Richard Wollheim, "Giovanni Morelli and the Origins of Scientific Connoisseurship,"
On Art and the Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 177-201, and Henri Zerner, "Gio-
vanni Morelli et la science de l'art," Revue de l'Art 40-41 (1978): 209-15. The element
of psychoanalysis that questions individual unity has been emphasized and elaborated in
numerous writings of Jacques Lacan.
5. The expressive theory of art at issue here is not that of R. G. Collingwood,
for whom the step of authentication is unnecessary, since the expression and its origin
are identical. But Collingwood's conclusions, for example, regarding the repeal of copy-
right laws, are unusual in their ability to dispense with the notion of originality. See
Collingwood, The Principles of Art (New York, 1958). On the copyright law, see pp. 325-
26.
6. Both these ways of identifying stylistic unity with the concept of an origin
were applied to impressionism and abstract expressionism.
Margaret Olin is an assistant professor in the department of art

history and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She
is presently writing a book on the theories of Alois Riegl.
146 Margaret Olin Kandinsky's Early Art
style," governed by an anthropomorphized "spirit of the age."7

Whether on the individual or the collective level, stylistic unity guar-
antees the authenticity of the work.
The concept of stylistic unity, however, is problematic. Even as-
suming the acceptance of shared stylistic criteria, the reconciliation of
different levels still presents obvious problems." To be perceptible, the
unity of the individual must be distinct from the equally authentic
unity of the collectivity to which the individual belongs. Furthermore,
the demand for stylistic unity can already present a challenge at the
individual level. Few artists have adhered unswervingly to the same
stylistic principles throughout their careers. Many, therefore, feel obli-
gated to explain, or, like Arnold Schoenberg, simply to deny, the in-
evitable deviations.9 If they do not, the historian generally does. Art
historical accounts thrive on opportunities to attribute an "apparently
radical change of style" to a "purpose [that] remained constant."'1
The very frequency of such "opportunities" to redefine stylistic cri-
teria indicates the difficulties involved in burdening the concept of
stylistic unity with the authentication of works of art.
Some recent artists and critics have taken it upon themselves to
demystify the notion of stylistic unity. Their task has included the his-
torical reconception of a few "modernist" artists along "postmodern"
lines, usually as precursors of current semiotic strategies." These art-
ists may have used a set of incompatible styles to expose the artificial-
ity of competing stylistic conventions, or even to challenge the myth
that celebrates the authenticity of artistic expressiveness. Pablo Pi-
casso and Marcel Duchamp, otherwise very different artists, have both
been seen as having "deconstructed" the concept of authenticity by
7. Period styles follow one another with the logic of a historical development
that mimics the microcosmic development of the individual. In the most orthodox ver-
sions, this development follows a logical course. A unifying thread can be followed that
leads in the direction of the solution of a great underlying problem.
8. On the levels of the concept of style, see SauerlBnder, "From Stilus to Style."
9. Schoenberg explained seeming changes in his style by arguing that his public
reception merely changed as his style matured. He did not draw the potential conclu-
sion that the public creates an artist's style. See Schoenberg, "How One Becomes
Lonely," in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein (New York, 1975), pp. 30-53.
10. Robert Zaller, "Philip Guston and the Crisis of the Image," Critical Inquiry 14
(Autumn 1987): 75. Similar examples may be found in any of a large number of studies
of individual artists.
11. The terms "modern" and "postmodern" are used in a variety of ways in con-
temporary criticism. Here, "modern" refers to nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists
who embrace the notion of originality, and "postmodern" to those who would attack
the notion by exposing the conventionality at its center. Although some critics who pro-
fess "modernism" do not mention "originality" by name, most subscribe to it in some
form, often with the originality and self-sufficiency of the artist transposed to that of
the work. This is especially true of the criticism of Clement Greenberg and Michael
Fried.
FIG. 1.--Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 19, 1911. Sttdtische Galerie Len-
bachhaus, Munich.
problematizing basic means of artistic reference.12 But the desire to

challenge conventions must not be misconstrued as an enduring ele-
ment of an iconoclastic artist's personality. Otherwise, the characteri-
zation is merely an updated version of the traditional argument for
authorial unity.
The appraisal of a stylistically eclectic artist who seriously es-
pouses the principles of authenticity, however, presents a more com-
plex problem. Historians tend to handle such cases diachronically by
incorporating them into a narrative of the artist's development. An
artist might well practice two or more styles consecutively in the
course of a search for a means of expression or in an effort to tackle
new artistic problems. This series of differences will in the end define
12. Rosalind Krauss rightly uses the semiotic complications of Picasso's art to ob-
ject to autobiographical interpretations of his work. In the course of the argument, she
refers to Picasso's semiotics as part of the "proto-history" of postmodernist art. See
Krauss, "In the Name of Picasso," The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist
Myths (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 38-39. Arguments for Duchamp's protopostmod-
ernism are much more common. For one example, see Krauss, "Notes on the Index:
Part 1," The Originality of the Avant-Garde, pp. 196-209.
a higher unity, tracing the single-minded pursuit of a goal. If the

styles are concurrent, they delimit a critical period characterized by
the assimilation of lessons learned from others, experiments with new
means of expression or techniques, or the search for the self. The cri-
sis ends with the gestation of a personal style that faithfully expresses
the artist's intent. The artist has "found himself."
One important artist to traverse such a period was Wassily Kan-
dinsky. In the years prior to World War I his production by most
standards was very diverse. He designed jewelry in the then-popular
"Jugendstil" and painted such varied works as the almost abstract
early Compositions and Improvisations, the glass paintings inspired by re-
ligious folk art, and landscapes suggestive of fauvism (figs. 1, 2, 3).
Since the period ended with the development of a consistently ab
stract style, it would seem easy to subsume differences within Kandin-
sky's output at this time into the above explanation. "History" show
that Kandinsky spent the years between 1909 and 1914 in search of
an abstract style. His representational work established iconography
that he would later incorporate into abstract compositions. After hi
triumphant breakthrough into pure abstraction, he abandoned the
styles that had helped him find or produce his unique artistic person-
ality.'3 Kandinsky himself makes credible this view of his development,
for he espoused the ideal of authenticity on which it is founded. Noth-
ing in his life or writings suggests that he practiced several styles in
order to expose and ridicule artistic conventions. Expressionism, the
artistic movement identified with him, extolled individuality in its very
name.'4 Kandinsky himself has come to be closely associated with the
concept of "inner necessity" [innere Notwendigkeit]. This term, already
entrenched in art theoretical discourse before Kandinsky's time, ap-
pears to locate the source of the work within the artist.'5 His essay
"Riickblicke" ["Reminiscences"], published in 1913, narrates the
search for an abstract means of expression, describing his background
13. Most accounts of Kandinsky's progression into abstraction consider it as a

gradual concealment of representational thematic material derived primarily from his
involvement with theosophical thought. Hence they account for Kandinsky's represen-
tational art iconographically. See Sixten Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos: A Study in the
Spiritualism of Kandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract Painting (Abo, 1970), and Rose-Carol
Washton Long, Kandinsky, the Development of an Abstract Style (Oxford, 1980). Peg
Weiss's more convincing explanation of Kandinsky's abstraction, however, takes into ac-
count Kandinsky's encounter with early twentieth-century theories of abstraction. See
Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: The Formative Jugendstil Years (Princeton, N.J., 1979). Weiss
does not, however, address the matter of Kandinsky's stylistic diversity.
14. Kandinsky never identified himself as an "expressionist." The label, as is the
case with most artists, was applied to him only by others.
15. Kandinsky did not invent the term innere Notwendigkeit, evocative of Arthur
Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. It was already well established, even in relation
and experiences as if they formed the higher unity an art historian

might make of his life.
Yet even while he praised "inner necessity" as the only source of
art, Kandinsky not only practiced more than one style, he failed to
demand uniformity of style on any level. He reported with admiration
that Picasso's need for expression led him to "throw himself from one
external means to another" (UG, p. 51; OS, 1:152). Although he be-
lieved in a spirit of the age, he remained aloof from the frequent calls
for a new style to express it, ascribing them to mere temporal con-
cerns (UG, p. 80; OS, 1:173). The greater the age, he wrote, the more
diverse its art.'6 Critics of the mid-twentieth century often found in-
consistencies in the surfaces of Kandinsky's own abstract paintings,
complaining, for example, of their "disfiguring black lines."'7 He him-
self celebrated these differences in his own works using more pl!easing
phrases such as "symphonic" compositions or "counterpoint" (UG, pp.
79, 139; OS, 1:171, 215).
Did Kandinsky's slogan "inner necessity," then, not apply to all
art? The interpretation of inner necessity that might prompt such a
question rests on the identification of style and abstraction. American
critics of the mid-twentieth century often conflated these categories
because they saw external subject matter as an obstacle to the (stylis-
tic) expression of the self. In accordance with this notion, Kandinsky's
desire to rid himself of subject matter is tantamount to the search for
a uniform signature style. This interpretation, however, forces him
retrospectively to play an artistic role conceived in the mid-twentieth
century.
The argument that follows uses Kandinsky's theoretical writings
to propose a different interpretation of his styles. To that end, it views
to the source of style, at least by the mid-1890s, when the notion had filtered down to
the classroom. For example, the Viennese professor Alois Riegl was able to refer in his
classes to "was man Stil nennt: naimlich die innere kiinstlerische Notwendigkeit welche
den Griffel und den Pinsel fiihrt" (Kolleg on Kunstgeschichte des Mittelalters nordlich der
Alpen [1895-96], Riegl Nachlafi, Institut fiir Kunstgeschichte, University of Vienna, car-
ton 3, p. 84). For Kandinsky's use of the term, see his iber das Geistige in der Kunst
(1912; Bern, 1952), p. 64 and passim; trans. and ed. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter
Vergo, under the title On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, 2 vols.
(Boston, 1982), 1:114-219; hereafter abbreviated UG and OS.
16. See Kandinsky, "Uber die Formfrage," Essays ifber Kunst und Kiinstler, ed.
Max Bill, 3d ed. (1955; Bern, 1973), p. 23; trans. and ed. Lindsay and Vergo, under the
title "On the Question of Form," Complete Writings, 1:239; hereafter abbreviated "UF"
and "OF." In some quotations from this and other German texts I have slightly altered
the translation.
17. Hilton Kramer, "Kandinsky," Artforum 1 (May 1963): 24. Another critic to re-
ject Kandinsky along similar lines was Greenberg; see his "Kandinsky," Art and Culture
(Boston, 1961), pp. 111-14.
FIG. 2.-Kandinsky, Sancta Francisca, 1911. Painting on glass. The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David Heald.
FIG. 3.-Kandinsky, Landscape with Two Poplars, 1912. Oil on canvas. Arthur Je
? 1988 The Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved.
Kandinsky's theory not as a straightforward explanation of his abstrac-

tions, but as an attempt to validate them. Section two reexamines the
notion of authenticity that appears in his writing and calls into ques-
tion the necessity of stylistic uniformity to validate it. The third sec-
tion examines connotations Kandinsky attached, in his writings, to
certain stylistic devices. These connotations, widely accepted well be-
fore Kandinsky, can be illuminated with reference to their history and
their connections with thinkers in other fields of interest. The final
section will show that authenticity, although it is the ostensible topi
of Kandinsky's writings, is less important to them than representati
Kandinsky's theory, which seems to validate art internally, through
origin in individual experience, actually accounts for stylistic var
tions through the notion of an art that validates itself externally
through its referential ability. Kandinsky employed stylistic diff
ences, within individual paintings and from one painting to anoth
to create an abstraction that would seem to represent directly a u
versally acknowledged reality.
2. Art and Crime
Kandinsky's essay "Riickblicke," a wide ranging account of the

development of his art, contains a remarkable passage that confronts
the artistic problem of authenticity. In it, he adopts a theme wide-
spread in the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies: that of the criminal. Thinkers of that era frequently sought to
identify and account for distinct activities and predilections through
the notion of human types. In the course of such investigations, it was
not uncommon to associate the "artistic" and the "criminal" types as
similarly deviating from the norm.'" At first sight, Kandinsky's argu-
ment seems to fit this mold. The passage concerns Russian peasant
18. The assumption of the existence of a criminal-or artistic-type was common

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The notion was reassuring because
presumably the establishment of a criminal type could be used to forestall the commit-
ment of actual crimes. Photography was among the devices used to establish features
characteristic of criminal and other human types. See Allan Sekula, "The Body and the
Archive," October, no. 39 (Winter 1986): 3-64. Nietzsche's comments on criminals
reflect similar assumptions about criminal types and, like Kandinsky's comments, seem
to identify the criminal and the crime. In The Will to Power, for example, he writes the
following:
On the denaturalization of morality. To separate the action from the man; ... to
believe there are actions that are good or bad in themselves.
Restoration of "nature": an action in itself is perfectly devoid of value: it all
depends on who performs it.
(Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Kauf-
law. According to Kandinsky, the provincial Russian peasants he

studied during his years as a law student meted out justice in an un-
usually equitable way. They punished "minor guilt severely and major
guilt lightly or not at all." They did so because the judge did not dole
out punishment on the basis of the crime but "according to the man."
"The man" meant the inner man; for this "free and flexible form" of
law "was determined not by the external but exclusively by the internal."19
A passage that contrasts "heathen Roman law" to the "Christian" law
of Russian peasants suggests the subtlety of this judicial code.
In the case of this person, this deed is not a crime, even if in gen-
eral it would be considered a crime in the case of other people.
Therefore: in this case a crime is not a crime. And further: abso-
lute crime does not exist .... And finally: every act is indifferent.
It balances on the edge. The will gives it the push. ["Rii," p. 48n
"Re," 1:379n]
The reference to the criminal's manner of being, rather than the

act of the crime, would seem simply to imply that when administerin
justice, peasant judges took into account the factor of motivation. Mo
tivation, however, does not enter into Kandinsky's argument. Instead
it centers on contrasting legal structures. He conjectures that the for
eigner accustomed to the "cold formal logic" of Roman law would r
gard the form of Russian law as "unruliness." This perception wou
be inaccurate because superficial. In peasant law, "inner precision l
at a depth" ("Rii," p. 48n; "Re," 1:380n).
Kandinsky uses the example of the criminal to address the pro
lem of artistic validation-that is, the problem of how one recogniz
the true work of art. The parallel between Russian peasant law an
Kandinsky's own unruly and free-form Russian art is inescapable, and
he must have expected the reader to make the association. But ho
specifically, is one to judge Kandinsky's art? If the heathen Roma
looks at the criminal act coldly and formally in isolation, then presum
ably the Christian critic is to look at the work in the opposite fashion
warmly, and in a context. Although Kandinsky says nothing about th
context, it must explain the work's recondite "inner precision." If
really intended the critic to consider a work's context, then his argu-
ment has implications for the unity of the work of art. The work
mann [New York, 1967], sect. 292). Elsewhere, Nietzsche discusses the relationship
tween the criminal type and the "great" and artistic human types. See ibid., sects. 7
864.
19. Kandinsky, "Riickblicke," Autobiographische, ethnographische und juristische

Schriften, vol. I of Die Gesammelten Schriften, ed. Hans K. Roethel and Jelena Hahl-Koch
(Bern, 1980), p. 31n; trans. and ed. Lindsay and Vergo, under the title "Reminis-
cences," Complete Writings, 1:362n; hereafter abbreviated "Rii" and "Re."
not self-contained, and judgement of it must make reference to some-

thing external, probably the "will" that gives it the "push," in other
words, the criminal. Indeed, if, as Kandinsky argues, an act would be
considered a crime when committed by one person but not another,
then it would appear that judgement of crimes is judgement of crimi-
nals. Applied to artists, the consequence would be that the art critic is
a critic of artists. But how is the judge or critic to identify the true art-
ist, like the true criminal, other than through the results of a criminal
or artistic act? A judgement that failed to take these acts into account
would entail a curious determinism. The criminal has no opportunity
to redeem his or her character through good works.20 Conversely,
however heinous the offense, one cannot make oneself a criminal by
committing it. Acts are always judged by the inherent character of
the actor.
But perhaps it is possible to salvage both free will and stylistic
unity. In practice a judge recognizes the criminal from a series of
criminal acts, if not from a single act. Kandinsky seems to pay tribute
to this fact in his early essay, in Russian, on peasant law, where he re-
ports that the judge, in determining the punishment, considers
whether the criminal is a first offender or constantly runs afoul of the
law.21 Similarly, one assumes that an artist's reputation rests on his or
her oeuvre. An artist consistently commits those acts "that would be
considered [art] if committed by other people." From this point of
view, unity of style might be the criterion of an artist. Yet Kandinsky
does not offer this escape route. Even as a Russian lawyer writing on
criminal law he differentiated the oeuvre of the criminal from his
criminal essence. The judge considers not only whether the offend
is often in conflict with the law, but also "the kind of person he is."2
Apparently, the mere commission of criminal acts will never suffice
make one a criminal.
Up to this point we have assumed that a parallel between the art-
ist and criminal espoused by other thinkers of the era underlies Kan-
dinsky's argument. But Kandinsky refuses to draw the expected
analogy. Instead, he draws a different one. "It is not the deed (real),
but its root (abstract) that constitutes evil (and good)" ("Rii," p. 48n;
"Re," 1:379n). The statement compares the criminal not to the artist,
but to the "abstract" root of art, his crime to the element of the
"real." One could still contend that the artist, like the criminal, is the
20. For a relevant discussion of determinism, see Alasdair MacIntyre, "Hegel on

Faces and Skulls," in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. MacIntyre (New York,
1972), pp. 219-36.
21. See Kandinsky, "Uber die Strafe in den Urteilen der Bauerngerichte im Be-
zirk Moskau" ["O nakazanijach po revenijam volostnych sudov Moskovskoj Gubernii"],
Die Gesammelten Schriften, 1:75-87. This work has not been translated into English.
22. "Was er iTberhaupt fir ein Mensch ist" (Ibid., 1:75).
abstract root, his painting the real crime. But in an essay that records
the path to abstraction another interpretation is more likely. If a crim-
inal act has both an abstract root and a real existence, an artistic act
probably contains an abstract and real component as well. Neither one
need be a person. Kandinsky suggested as much in another essay, writ-
ing that "form is the material expression of abstract content.'"23 If this is so,
then the problem of authenticity resolves itself into the excavation of
the abstract root, or content, of art. The artists' answer ("conscious or
unconscious") to Socrates's dictum "know thyself" is to "turn to their
material ... to weigh spiritually the inner value of the elements out of
which their art is suited to create" (UG, p. 54; OS, 1:153). The respon-
sibility for art lies not with the artist but with the material. "Inner ne-
cessity" is within art itself.
3. Grasping Reality
In an essay of 1912, Kandinsky explored the interrelation be-

tween the abstract and real components of art in the context of a dis-
cussion of stylistic diversity. "Uber die Formfrage" ["On the Question
of Form"], published in the Blaue Reiter Almanac, offered a justifica-
tion for the use of more than one artistic style as an expression of the
same historical era. His argument divided artistic practice into dia-
metrically opposed but equally valid poles. One pole, the Great Real-
ism, attempts to banish all artistry and represent the simple, hard
object by means of its external shell. The other, the Great Abstrac-
tion, annihilates the "real" and seeks to embody content in non-
material form. Different as the two means may seem, they have the
same objective. The use of contrasting means to reach the same goal
is a central theme of the Almanac. Its illustrations, as Kandinsky as-
serts, present a highly eclectic assortment of artistic styles and periods,
including the art of the avant-garde, children, peasants, and exotic
peoples as well as different historical styles (OF, 1:256).24 "One should
not, therefore, seek salvation in any one form" ("UF," p. 20; "OF,"
1:237).
The relativism implied in Kandinsky's opposition between the real
and the abstract did not deter him from characterizing realism, not as
23. Kandinsky, "Malerei als reine Kunst," Essays iiber Kunst und Kiinstler, p. 64;
trans. and ed. Lindsay and Vergo, under the title "Painting as Pure Art," Complete Writ-
ings, 1:350.
24. The passage is not included in the edition of Kandinsky's essays edited by Bill.
Weiss argues persuasively that the illustrations in the Almanac, as diverse as they are, all
contribute, through an iconography of healing, to the same task set for the Almanac, the
identification of art as a "universal medicine for the human soul" (Weiss, "Kandinsky in
Munich: Encounters and Transformations," in Kandinsky in Munich: 1896-1914
[exhibition catalog, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1982], p. 76).
intrinsically inferior, yet certainly as less sophisticated than abstrac-

tion. "Realism" is not, as one might expect, the goal of "painting
modern life" that inspired the nineteenth-century painter to monu-
mentalize humble-or merely humdrum-subjects in the work of
"naturalists." Rather, it is the portrayal of whatever subject is chosen
with a pristine clarity that has the character of the naive. Children,
whose drawings are well illustrated in the Almanac, are realists because
they represent the object without regard for practical necessities, art,
and other extraneous considerations ("UF," p. 40; "OF" 1:250-51).
The "father of this Realism" is not Gustave Courbet but Henri Rous-
seau, whom Kandinsky regarded as the starting point for his ref
tions ("UF," p. 42, UG, p. 127 n.1; "OF," 1:252, OS, 1:207n).
Illustrations of Rousseau's paintings appear throughout Kandinsky's
essay in the Almanac. Their clarity and simplicity, hard outlines, few
forms, and flat areas of color identify them as aspirants to the simplic-
ity of children's art (fig. 4). A similar painter of the Real was Arnold
Schoenberg, whose Self-Portrait (1911) Kandinsky used to illustrate the
affinity between the artist and the child. A third artist whose work in-
corporated the Real was Kandinsky's companion Gabriele Miinter. In
the Almanac, Kandinsky cited her painting Still Life with St. George to il-
lustrate the employment of more than one type of form in the same
work, but elsewhere he commented on her "simple" stylistic charac-
teristics and "innocent" worldview and compared her work to that
seen in "old German stained glass, paintings on glass, and in primitive
German masters."25 The childlike block houses of her Village Street in
Winter (1911) suggest the Real (fig. 5), and Kandinsky's own land-
scapes of Murnau are often painted in the same spirit. His Landscape
with Two Poplars (1912) aspires to Reality through the use of clear, toy-
like structures, emphasized outlines, and flat areas of color (fig. 3).
But what of the Great Abstraction? In the Almanac, Kandinsky
discloses little about its precise nature, except to mention Vincent van
Gogh as an artist who "used line as such with particular power, with-
out at all wishing to delineate subject matter." Such nonrepresenta-
tional use of line allows it to take on a "purely pictorial [malerische]"
significance, enabling its "inner sound" to be heard ("UF," p. 34 and
n; "OF," 1:247 and n). The essay "Riickblicke" provides a further
clue to the meaning of abstraction. There he relates how deeply
moved he was, during a visit to an exhibition in Moscow, by a painting
whose subject he failed to recognize. Only the catalogue identified it
as a haystack (fig. 6).26 The unintelligibility of the image by Claude
25. From the German manuscript of Kandinsky's essay, "Om Konstniren" (Stock-
holm, 1916), cited in Gabriele Miinter, 1877-1962 (exhibition catalog, Stidtische Galerie
im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1962).
26. Daniel Wildenstein identifies the Zurich Meule au soleil (1891) as the painting
Kandinsky saw in Moscow in 1896. See Wildenstein, Claude Monet: biographie et catalogue
raissonne, 4 vols. (Lausanne and Paris, 1974-1985), 3:144.
FIG. 4.-Henri Rousseau, Myself" Portrait Landscape, 1896. ? National Gallery,

Prague.
Monet only added to the extraordinary power of its palette. This

youthful experience gave Kandinsky his first inkling of the expressive
possibilities of an art without objects ("Rii," p. 32; "Re," 1:363). It
may be tempting to doubt whether Kandinsky really had this experi-
ence. To modern eyes, the image seems about as difficult-or easy-
to decipher as Miinter's landscape. There seems no reason to proclaim
one more "real" than the other. And why regard Rousseau's fanciful
jungle and dream scenes as examples of realism when contrasted with
FIG. 5.-Gabriele Miinter, Village Street in Winter, 1911. StUdtische Galerie Len-
bachhaus, Munich.
Monet's always painstakingly observed landscapes? Did some obscure

barrier stand in the way of visual recognition in the early twentieth
century?
The barrier, if one existed, was not perceptual, but stylistic and
theoretical. Kandinsky thought he could depict reality not through
painstaking observation but through the deployment of specific for-
mal devices associated with the real. These devices, and the corre-
sponding ones associated with the unreal, could be subsumed under
the stylistic terms "optical" and "tactile." While the terms are famil-
iar, the underlying assumptions that relate them to reality have nearly
vanished and are no longer even widely known. The terminology and
its interpretation, however, existed well before Kandinsky and in-
formed most contemporary discourse on artistic perception. Its signifi-
cance and obscurity necessitates a detailed discussion in the present
context.
The art historian Wilhelm Worringer argued in Abst

Empathy (1908) that when "man became a biped, and a
dependent upon his eyes," a "fear of extended space" en
27. Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the

Style, trans. Michael Bullock (1908; New York, 1953), p. 16; hereafter ab
FIG. 6.-Claude Monet, Haystack in the Sun, 1891. Kunsthaus, Zurich.
assumption that anyone dependent on the visual sense alone would

develop a "fear of space" was so widespread that Worringer did not
feel the need to explain the passage in great detail. It depends on cer-
tain beliefs concerning the relation between the optical and tactile
senses. Not only theorists of perception but most educated people
imagined that our eyes offer us nothing more than indecipherable
lights and colors. A judgement of reality presupposes the association
of these optical forms with the sensations of the more reliable sense of
touch. Optical sensations become signs for tactile sensations. Armed
with a knowledge of these signs, one can begin to judge visually,
through past experience, the size and shape of objects one has never
touched. To imagine a human state previous to the thorough knowl-
edge of such signs is to imagine someone lost in a mist of optical sensa-
tions.
Even objects that cannot be touched are in principle open to vis-
ual interpretation through prior experience with touch. Over 350
years before Neil Armstrong touched the moon, for example, George
Berkeley argued that we judge its size through tactile experience. His
Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) offered an empirical expla-
nation for the so-called moon-illusion, which makes the moon at its
zenith seem smaller than the moon near the horizon. Rather than re-
spond directly to the immediate data of vision, color, and light, he
wrote, we translate the objects of sight into the better-known objects
of touch. For example, we learn to associate certain qualities that de-
pend on touch, such as distance (how far we must walk in order to
touch an object), with qualities of vision, such as the confusion in the
outline of a close object, and the faintness of an object seen through a

thick layer of atmosphere. Since our vision of the moon at the horizon
is intercepted by more atmosphere than the moon at its zenith, it ap-
pears fainter than the latter. Faintness is associated with distance;
therefore the moon at the horizon looks farther, and hence larger
than it does at its zenith.28
Berkeley implied that the messages of the tactile sense arise from
more direct contact with reality than the illusory ones of the optical
sense. Much of what we think we see, he contended, is a learned re-
sponse based on our acquired tendency to identify the objects of vi-
sion with those of touch. We have more interest in the latter objects,
since they have a greater capacity to "benefit, or injure our own Bod-
ies." He doesn't say the objects of touch are the only "real" objects,
but he does supplement the term "tangible" with the adjective
"real."29 Followers of Berkeley took the cue. Indeed, Etienne Bonnot
de Condillac stated explicitly that touch is "the only sense which of it-
self can judge of externality."30
The cooperation between touch and vision to provide an image of
the world continued to fascinate thinkers throughout the nineteenth
century."A It spawned, for example, the assumption that the child
learns vision through touch, a phenomenon that for a time enjoyed
scientific acceptance in the writings of the pioneering psychologist
Hermann Helmholtz. Helmholtz thought the child originally de-
pended on touch to perceive actual objects. He conceived vision as
originating in a series of "unconscious judgements" the child learns to
make as he or she uses the knowledge gained from touch to order the
undifferentiated plane of colors afforded by the visual sense. Touch
serves vision as plain fact serves fantasy, as a check on arbitrariness. A
"trustworthy and experienced servant," touch's "limited range" al-
28. George Berkeley, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (Dublin, 1709), para-
graphs 67-71.
29. Ibid., paragraphs 59, 74.
30. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Treatise on the Sensations, trans. Geraldine Carr
(1754; Los Angeles, 1930), p. 73; see also pp. 144-85.
31. Speculation about the identity of the objects of perception of touch and vision
dates to at least John Locke, who speculated on whether a congenitally blind person
would, on recovering his sight, be able to distinguish a cube from a sphere on the basis
of vision alone. See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nid-
ditch (1690; Oxford, 1975), pp. 143-49. In the eighteenth century, such speculations
were often fueled by observations of the congenitally blind after successful operations
to remove cataracts. The most well known among early analyses is Denis Diderot, Letter
on the Blind, Diderot's Early Philosophical Works, trans. and ed. Margaret Jourdain (1749;
Chicago and London, 1916), pp. 68-141. For an account of the later history of these
speculations, see Nicholas Pastore, Selective History of Theories of Visual Perception: 1650-
1950 (New York, 1971), and Michael J. Morgan, Molyneux's Question: Vision, Touch, and
the Philosophy of Perception (Cambridge, 1977).
lows vision the scope to "rival the boldest flights of fancy in penetrat-
ing to illimitable distances."32
At the end of the eighteenth century, the opposition between vi-
sion and touch had already begun to infiltrate artistic discourse. Usu-
ally, vision was the preferred sense, since it was traditionally more
intellectual than touch. Goethe, one of the eye's most eloquent de-
fenders in the modern period, pronounced vision the "noblest sense,"
as distinguished from the baser, coarser sense of touch, and Schiller
projected this contrast onto history: The intellectual and imaginative
senses, vision and hearing, developed later than the primitive "animal
senses" that depend on contact with materials."3 The early nineteenth-
century theorist Carl Gustav Carus used the distinction to promote
landscape painting in the early 1800s. He labeled painting optical, and
proclaimed that it constituted progress over sculpture: "The more
subtle senses of hearing and seeing emerge only when the organism
perfects itself.'""34
Although vision's flights of fancy captured the imagination of
most art theorists, touch had champions as well. Johann Gottfried
Herder was the first to defend the physicality of touch as an artistic
advantage over the "most philosophical" but also "coldest" sense of
vision. For him, beauty of form was "not a visual, but a palpable
[fihlbarer] concept.""35 Sculpture was more real and subject to fewer
limitations than painting. A few late nineteenth-century theorists also
centered artistic theories on the stable sense of touch. Drawing on the
child's tactile experience, Bernhard Berenson lauded the sense of
touch for a "higher coefficient of reality" that allowed the beholder
to "realise form" and thereby acquire a "heightened sense of capac-
ity."36
32. Hermann Helmholtz, "The Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision," Helm-
holtz on Perception: Its Physiology and Development, ed. R. M. Warren and Roslyn P. War-
ren (New York, 1968), p. 108.
33. See Herbert von Einem, Goethe-Studien (Munich, 1972), pp. 11-24. According
to Schiller, nature provided man with two senses (vision and hearing) that distance man
from the object that the animal senses "contact immediately [unmittelbar beriihren]"
(Schiller, Uber die fsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, Sa*mtliche
Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. G6pfert, 5 vols. [1795; Munich, 1958-60],
5:657). The prejudice that places the eye above the other senses dates at least to antiq-
uity; it was revived in the Renaissance, as von Einem points out.
34. Carl Gustav Carus, quoted in E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the
Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton, N.J., 1960), p. 20.
35. Johann Gottfried Herder, Herders Saimtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, 33
vols. (Berlin, 1877-1913), 4:45, 52.
36. Bernhard Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (New York,
1896), pp. 10-11. Also: "This intimate realisation of an object comes to us only when
we unconsciously translate our retinal impressions of it into ideated sensations of touch,
pressure, and grasp-hence the phrase 'tactile values"' (Berenson, The Central Italian
Painters of the Renaissance [New York, 1897], p. 33).
The Viennese art historian Alois Riegl, Berenson's contemporary,

offered a more subtle and suggestive reading of touch. This reading
underlies Worringer's reference to the "fear of space"; hence Worrin-
ger quotes Riegl in detail as an authority on the relation between the
tactile and the optical. Riegl saw his task as a defense of art's represen-
tational ability against the philosophical threat posed by the subjectiv-
ity of impressions. He tried to validate representation by means of the
association between objective reality and palpability. The sense of
touch isolated objects in order to validate their separate material ex-
istence. The viewer who feels capable of touching an object is con-
vinced it exists. Riegl sought to harness this verifiability for artistic
representation. Without claiming that the work of art represented ex-
ternal objects directly, he nevertheless thought that art could repre-
sent internal perceptions, that is, the impressions made on the senses
by external objects. Art could validate its representation within per-
ception itself, through reference to the most objectively valid sense.
In order to show how touch could achieve this goal, Riegl devel-
oped a formal iconography of palpability from nineteenth-century
theories of ornament. In Spaitro-mische Kunstindustrie (1901), he identi-
fied as signs of touch elements that architects of the nineteenth cen-
tury thought symbolized the solidity and flatness of surfaces, among
them hard outlines, flat planes of color, and such elements of "styliza-
tion" as repetition and symmetry.37 Arts and crafts theorists thought
the laws of flat patterning represented the external laws of material."
Riegl regarded them as representations of the internal laws of percep-
tion. To theorists of ornament, Egyptians who covered their walls
with flat patterns simply described the surface. To Riegl, they charac-
terized the surface as flat through reference to the sense of touch.
Symmetry characterizes the "uninterrupted tactile coherence" of a
surface, hence its flatness. The "tectonic separation between inner
field and border," another slogan of the arts and crafts movement, is
the sign of a "tactile conception.""9 Such representational devices
characterize surfaces as flat whether they are or not. Like the moon-
illusion, they give one perceptual knowledge that is valid regardless of
the external facts. Thus formal signs of the tactile sense, not naturalis-
tic representation, became markers of artistic validity, or the refer-
ence of art to externality.
37. For a detailed discussion of Riegl's use of this theory in Spdtrdmische Kunstin-
dustrie, see Margaret Olin, "Alois Riegl and the Crisis of Representation in Art Theory,
1880-1905," Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1982, pp. 438-55.
38. For further discussion of this theory of representation in the work of architec-
tural theorists of the nineteenth century, see Olin, "Self-Representation: Resemblance
and Convention in Two Nineteenth-Century Theories of Architecture and the Decora-
tive Arts," Zeitschriftflir Kunstgeschichte 49, no. 3 (1986): 376-97.
39. Riegl, Spitroimische Kunstindustrie, 2d ed. (Vienna, 1929), pp. 33, 317.
Like most theorists, Riegl regarded the visual sense as more intel-
lectual than the naive and immediate sense of touch.40 The signs of
visibility to which it responds are the well-known signs of impression-
ism. The German interpretation of impressionism emphasized ephem-
eral qualities of light and color.41 Broad brushstrokes were thought to
evoke atmosphere. To interpret them requires intellectual effort; yet
these subjective, optical devices are matters of "sensory deception." If
not pinned down by tactile references, they threatened to dwindle
into arbitrariness and subjectivity. While Riegl welcomed the increas-
ing use of such optical signs in art, his concern for objectivity caused
him to worry about the modern preponderance of opticality in art and
to look for signs of the reemergence of palpable elements.42
The relation between the senses of touch and sight had far-
reaching implications, for, in a strategy later repeated by Worringer,
Riegl projected it into history and extended it beyond the artistic
realm. According to his view, primitive man learned to handle objects
one by one. Only gradually did man learn the (optical) connections be-
tween things, first mechanical, then chemical. By the end of the nine-
teenth century, these connections exceeded the objects themselves as
the focus of intellectual attention. Yet the basis in primitive tactile fact
secured the validity of the vast generalizations of more sophisticated
thinkers. Riegl's historical narrative is in effect a statement about
learning. It naturalized his own "synthetic" method by projecting it
into history and anchoring it to the facts of sensory perception.43
Other scholars assumed a similar historical progression, although
not always sharing Riegl's evaluations of the respective sensory facul-
ties. Analyses of perceptual epistemology were far from the purpose
of Heinrich W61fflin's Principles of Art History, for example, yet even
he introduced the concept of a tangible design that isolates objects,
40. For a discussion of Riegl's associations with the sense of touch, see Olin,
"Spditrdmische Kunstindustrie: The Crisis of Knowledge in fin de siecle Vienna," in Wien
und die Entwicklung der kunsthistorischen Methode, vol. 1 of Akten des XXV. Internationalen
Kongresses fir Kunstgeschichte, ed. Hermann Fillitz and Martina Pippal (Vienna, 1984),
pp. 29-36.
41. See, for example, Richard Muther, The History of Modern Painting, 3 vols. (Lon-
don, 1895-96), 2:718-96. Muther emphasizes the light effects of impressionism.
42. For example, he told a popular audience in 1902 that "palpable physicality
and firmly adhering color" would rescue art from the arbitrary will of the individual
(Riegl, "Uber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde," Gesammelte AufsAtze, ed. Karl M.
Swoboda [Vienna, 1929], p. 205).
43. For Riegl's defense of the "synthetic" method over the groundless generaliza-
tions of the "analytic" method, see "Eine neue Kunstgeschichte," Gesammelte Aufsdtze,
pp. 46-48; for the historical argument, see "Die Stimmung als Inhalt der modernen
Kunst," Gesammelte Aufsaitze, pp. 28-39; "Der moderne Denkmalkultus, seine Wesen
und seine Entstehung," Gesammelte AufsAitze, pp. 144-93; and Spdtrdmische Kunstindustrie,
pp. 400-405.
marking them as solid, tangible bodies, and an optical perception that

apprehends the world as a "shifting semblance."44 Clear boundaries,
he wrote, give the spectator a "feeling of security, as if he could move
along them with his fingers" (PAH, p. 21). But because the optical
style signaled a greater maturity than the tactile, it suggested a higher
order of mental engagement: "Just as the child ceases to take hold of
things in order to 'grasp' them, so mankind has ceased to test the pic-
ture for its tactile values. A more developed art has learned to surren-
der itself to mere appearance" (PAH, p. 21). Wl51fflin's reference to
the child has significance for the iconography of the tactile. The sym-
bols of clarity architects demanded of ornament, transferred into the
representational arts, were and are frequently identified with chil-
dren's art, not only the art of children, but art for children, which
uses such devices as symmetry and hard outlines to appeal to what the
child knows-the sense of touch. By the time Wdlfflin published his
Principles, the assumptions they contained about the respective artistic
roles of vision and touch, already abandoned by psychologists, had be-
come common property of art theorists.45 Indeed, they remained cur-
rent at least until the middle of the century, when a critic could still
write that the goal of Jackson Pollock's Cut-Out was to achieve figura-
tion through the eyesight alone, and not "in terms that imply even the
possibility of verification by touch."46
Through the lens of perceptual theory in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, the identification of Monet's Haystack does indeed pose prob-
lems. If one ignores its indexical element, as did Kandinsky (along
with most German critics), its style, and that of van Gogh, whom Kan-
dinsky associated with impressionism, provides only visual clues, the
transcription of effects of light and atmosphere.47 The clues of im-
44. Heinrich Wblfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of
Style in Later Art, trans. M. D. Hottinger (1915; New York, 1950), p. 14; hereafter ab-
breviated PAH. Kandinsky may have met W*lfflin in Munich. See Weiss, Kandinsky in
Munich: The Formative Jugenstil Years, p. 82.
45. No indication of a hierarchy of touch and sight, for example, can be found in
the writings of the great German psychologist of the time, Wilhelm Wundt.
46. Fried, Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella
(exhibition catalog, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass., 21 Apr.-30 May 1965),
p. 17.
47. Although Kandinsky identified van Gogh with impressionism, he also saw him
as constituting a bridge to what would later be known as "expression" (UG, p. 96 n.1;
OS, 1:185n). The term "index" was used by the nineteenth-century philosopher C. S.
Peirce to differentiate types of signs. An index is a sign "which refers to its object not
so much because of any similarity or analogy with it ... as because it is in dynamical (in-
cluding spatial) connection both with the individual object, on the one hand, and with
the senses or memory of the person for whom it serves as a sign, on the other hand"
(Peirce, "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs," Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed.
Justus Buchler [New York, 1955], p. 107). Examples of such signs are a footprint, for a
foot, or the brushstroke of the impressionist painter, for the self-expression of that
painter.
pressionism do not help to identify objects because they make no ref-

erence to the sense by which one learns to know the world. It
therefore takes significant intellectual sophistication to recognize
them. Miinter's landscape is "clear" because it provides outlines that
speak to the tactile sense. Any child can recognize it.
4. Validation by Touch
When Kandinsky affirmed the validity of both the real and the
abstract provided they emanated from inner necessity, he did not in-
tend thereby to confine the individual artist to one or the other style.
He himself practiced representational and nonrepresentational art at
the same time for years. Moreover, even his nonrepresentational art
was not the optical art of Monet. Rather, Kandinsky worked with asso-
ciations offered by both the "abstract" and the "real" styles, whatever
the dominant mode of a given work. The story of the Lady in Moscow
(1912), for example, is narrated both on the "real" and "abstract"
levels (fig. 7). The contrast between the two abstract splotches is usu-
ally interpreted as signifying the conflict between good and evil
"thought forms." According to theosophy, thoughts create forms in a
nonmaterial sphere, visible only to clairvoyants. Annie Besant and
C. W. Leadbeater published many of these in 1905 in their book
Thought Forms, where Kandinsky may have become acquainted with
them.48 Even if Kandinsky did intend his splotches as thought forms,
however, the interpretation does not explain the style in which he rep-
resented the "real." It is not a straightforward narration, but a "great
reality." The hard outlines of the lady, the reverse perspective of the
table, the exaggerated perspective of the street, and even the peculiar
juxtaposition of lady and street suggest "naive" art. Each object in the
picture exists for itself, a sign of direct perception as pure in its own
way as are the splotches that represent thought forms. The pink
flower in the lady's hand tells the same message in "reality" as the
pink splotch tells in abstraction. The two forms equate the two styles.
Many of Kandinsky's abstract paintings of 1911-13 using the
landscape format suggest the topos of realistic illusionism rather than
the decorative surface effects of the tactile. Nevertheless, they often
contain a curious arrangement of childlike line drawings that floats,
48. See Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos, pp. 94-102. Ringbom interprets Lady in
Moscow as a representational testing ground for Painting with Black Spot, in a process ac-
cording to which representational forms were gradually abstracted using forms based
on theosophical models. Felix Thiirlemann disputes the relation between the two paint-
ings, and with it iconography as a determining factor in the development of Kandinsky's
abstraction. See Thiirlemann, "Kandinskys Analyse-Zeichnungen," Zeitschrift fir Kunst-
geschichte 48, no. 3 (1985): 370-77. The relation between Kandinsky and theosophy is a
much disputed issue into which it is unnecessary to delve in the present context.
FIG. 7.-Kandinsky, Lady in Moscow, 1912. Stidtische Galerie Lenbachhaus, Munich.
disembodied, over a blurry, optical field below. In Improvisation No. 30

(1913), an indistinct landscape of color drifts behind schematic ren-
derings of a cannon, towers, and hill that recall children's drawings
(fig. 8).49 In Improvisation No. 19 (1911), hard black lines lend an eerie
"reality" to an abstract opticality (fig. 1). Indeed, Kandinsky's argu-
ment that the Great Realism and the Great Abstraction converge rests
on his conviction that lines are things. "Are things driven out of
painting along with subject matter?" asks Kandinsky. "No. Line is, as
we said above, a thing" ("UF," p. 34; "OF," 1:247). True to the per-
49. Jonathan Fineberg has recently confirmed the reference to children's art by
tracing a number of motifs in Kandinsky's paintings, similar to the ones in Improvisation
No. 30, to samples of children's art that were collected by Miinter and Kandinsky. See
Fineberg, "'Making a Horse out of a Stick': Children's Art in Kandinsky's Prewar Ab-
straction," lecture delivered at the College Art Association Annual Meeting, Boston,
1987. A version of this paper comprises part of a forthcoming book and exhibition cata-
logue.
FIG. 8.-Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 30, 1913. Oil on canvas. Arthur Jerome
Eddy Memorial Collection. ? 1988 The Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved.
ceptual theory of his time, he does not try to argue that colors are
things. To make reference to touch through line is to make reference
to the real without necessarily making reference to any specific "real"
object.
Kandinsky was not the only painter to manipulate tactile and opti-
cal modes. The Austrian painter Gustav Klimt was another. As a
member of the Austrian Secession, he took part in the organization's
fifth exhibition (December 1899). The catalogue for the exhibit dis-
tinguished between ornament and representation, preserving for each
its own sphere. It stated that ornament must confirm, while represen-
tational art [das Bild] must suspend, the surface.50 Many of Klimt's
50. Die Principien der Fl~chendecoration und jene des Bildes sind die ausge-
sprochensten Gegensatze. Wihrend die Flkichendecoration uns keinen Au-
FIG. 9.-Gustav Klimt, Philosophy, 1900, destroyed.
works of the late 1890s sought to fulfill this demand of painting, in-
cluding his Philosophy, painted on commission for the Aula of the Uni-
versity of Vienna and exhibited in the Secession's seventh exhibition,
early in 1900 (fig. 9). The unsuitability of its ambiguous, optical style
genblick im Zweifel lassen darf, dass wir eben eine Flache vor uns haben,
ist es dagegen wesentlich flir den Charakter des Bildes, dass der Eindruck
der Flaiche aufgehoben und wir an eine Raumwirken glauben miissen.
(Josef Engelhart et al., Katalog der V. Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Kiinstler Oster-
reichs [Vienna, 1899], pp. 5-6). For further discussion of this and related issues, see
Olin, "Self-Representation."
to represent philosophy was a factor in the heated opposition to the

painting that eventually forced Klimt's withdrawal from the commis-
sion. While the professors objected to its use of "vague forms to rep-
resent vague thoughts,"51 the critic Karl Kraus jokingly identified its
"green fog" as a representation of the unresolvable Austrian language
problem. In his opinion, Klimt might more properly show his viewers
"how his eye sees a field with chickens after a rain," a theme asso-
ciated with impressionism.52
A few years later, Klimt combined the style of Philosophy with an-
other, inspired by the ornamental motifs from which Riegl derived his
category of palpability. In some paintings, flat ornamental patterning
fills the background, accessories, and clothing while the flesh is
painted in the filmy style regarded as impressionistic. In such works as
his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the distinction appears to comment on
the respective reality or unreality of the woman over her decorative
surroundings (fig. 10). The flat, ornamental patterning of the back-
ground and clothing makes the optically rendered flesh all the more
illusory and subjective. The man-made ornament, product of art, is
more real than the physical human being, product of nature, but fig-
ment of the painter's imagination.
Why did Kandinsky behave like Klimt instead of emulating Monet
by contenting himself with the power of the palette alone? The reason
was not to represent "philosophy," if by that one means theosophy.
Theosophists did think of color as internal, subjective, and conse-
quently formless. But for them, color and light were therefore the
true reality; to represent it would have demanded no tactile refer-
ences.5 References to a transcendent reality, however, were also pres-
ent in Worringer's work, the thinker whose interpretation of
palpability comes closest to Kandinsky's own. Worringer, in appropri-
ating Riegl's historical narrative, beginning with a primitive "fear of
space," gave Riegl's theories a new twist. Whereas for Riegl the physi-
cal fear of space sent early peoples to the consoling solidity of mate-
rial, Worringer thought nonliving forms connoted a transcendent
escape from the this-worldly. The "material" for Riegl was therefore
the transcendent for Worringer's peoples, suffering from "spiritual
dread." Worringer further embroidered on the fear of space by ex-
tending it metaphorically to include a "spiritual dread of space in rela-
tion to the extended, disconnected, bewildering world of phenomena"
51. Alice Strobl, "Zu den Fakultfitsbildern von Gustav Klimt," Albertina Studien 2
(1964): 153. For a political analysis of the controversy, see Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle
Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1980), pp. 225-44.
52. Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, no. 36 (Mar. 1900): 18-19.
53. See Ringbom, "Transcending the Visible: The Generation of the Abstract Pi-
oneers," in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985, ed. Edward Weisberger
(New York, 1986), p. 134.
FIG. 10.-Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907. Osterreichische Galerie,

Vienna.
(AE, p. 16). This mystical version of Riegl's theories probably ap-

pealed to the occultist in Kandinsky. Indeed, Worringer's name come
up several times in the correspondence between Kandinsky and Fran
Marc during the preparations for the Blaue Reiter Almanac." In appre-
ciation of the Oriental heritage with which Kandinsky identified, Wor-
ringer added that the "profound world-instinct" of the peoples of the
East opposed the attempt to master their fear rationalistically. They
54. It is clear from the context of Kandinsky's references to Worringer that the
two men were in contact. For example, Kandinsky mentioned writing to Worringer,
and referred to Worringer's enthusiastic response to Uber das Geistige in der Kunst. Marc
read Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy during this period and commented on it en-
thusiastically to Kandinsky. See Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Briefivechsel: mit Briefen
von und an Gabriele Miinter und Maria Marc, ed. Klaus Langheit (Munich, 1983), pp. 30
173, 136.
consequently turned to abstraction, removing the object from the flux

of experience and "eternalising" it by approximation to abstract
forms (AE, p. 16). Worringer thus subtly shifted the "reality" in
Riegl's abstract forms from the earthly to the spiritual world.
Kandinsky's styles seem calculated to gain entrance to the spirit-
ual-abstract-world, but not to enter it alone. He wanted therefore
to claim it as the real one. Since the spectator cannot see the artist's
"thought forms" to know whether his art is borrowed or authentic, he
must certify the reality of the world in order to join the artist within
it. Hence Kandinsky combined the inner, formless reality of subjectiv-
ist thinkers, which he called abstraction, with the transcendent reality
of the sense of touch to create a form of external reference whose va-
lidity he must have considered unassailable. In this sense the critic was
right to call Kandinsky's black lines "disfiguring." The black lines o
Improvisation No. 19 (fig. 1) dis-figure it because their link with reality
prevents the abstraction from deteriorating into a mere conventional
figure. They can do this, however, only by a doubled re-figuring o
the canvas. They add a metaphoric reference to the sense of touch
which itself refers metaphorically to reality. The distance the refer
ence must travel justifies the hope that the beholder will regard it as
he does his own vision: not as a sign for the sense of touch, but as real
ity, itself. Kandinsky wished by these means to save nonrepresenta
tional art from dwindling into a mere problem of color and light or,
alternatively; a subjective world inhabited by the artist alone.
The mention of subjectivity returns us to the issue of authenticity.
I have tried to argue that Kandinsky validated art not from the point
of view of the artist, but from that of external reference. A final ex-
ample from his theory bears out this conclusion. Kandinsky effectivel
dodged the issue of authenticity exactly where he might have been
expected to introduce it: in reference to the sense of touch. When dis-
cussing his paintings, he wrote only about the abstract forms repr
sented and their relation to one another; he completely ignored th
indexical possibilities of his prominent brushwork. Two interpreta
tions of "touch" come into conflict here. One interpretation reads a
"tactile" those works in which the stroke of the brush indexes the
touch of the artist's own hand. Kandinsky's own early abstraction
would seem to be "tactile" in this sense, as would the "abstract" works
of Monet and van Gogh. Yet these signs of the artist's hand are n
"tactile"' at all, but rather exactly that which German critics term
"optical" and Kandinsky termed "abstract." Insofar as a work repr
sents the artist, it effaces its representational subject, and vice versa.
The meaning of the terms "optical" and "tactile," like C. S. Peirce
terms "icon" and "index" to which they respectively correspond, a
therefore relative to that which they pretend immediately to repr
sent. In reference to the artist, prominent brushstrokes are tactile; in
reference to the object, they are optical. Kandinsky suppressed refer-

ences to indexicality and mentioned only external reference because
to interpret brushstrokes as palpable marks of the hand would have
reintroduced the individual and subjective, threatening the validity of
his art. Thus van Gogh's line, although freed from traditionally repre-
sentational significance, does not therefore "index" van Gogh. It be-
comes the "painterly [malerisch]," or optical, representation (the
"icon") of a line, a "thing" whose inner sound can be heard.
Despite its seeming elusiveness, nonobjective art has generally
been used to take hold of something that escapes representational art.
Soon after the turn of the century, abstraction was introduced, like
Riegl's theory of touch, to avoid the pitfalls of representation. Yet it
had to justify itself in externally referential terms. Kandinsky's advo-
cacy of inner necessity thus masks a theory of art that verifies itself
through references to external reality, even though that "reality" is
not the world of objects, but the spiritual world of abstraction. Most
of us know of that world not directly, through our eyes or our hands,
but only as we know the moon, through the "tactile experience" of
other objects that relates the sense of touch to visual signs. Like the
child, we must be convinced of that world by validating its optical ex-
perience with the grasp of our hands. For its originators, abstract art
was an attempt, like that of a child, to touch the moon.

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Validation by Touch in Kandinsky's Early Abstract Art

Author(s): Margaret Olin

2. Harold Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters," in Henry Geldzahler,

Critical Inquiry 16 (Autumn 1989)

? 1989 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/89/1601-0003$01.00. All rights reserved.

cannot endow a work with something he or she does not possess.

3. Foucault, "What Is an Author?" p. 151.

Margaret Olin is an assistant professor in the department of art

style," governed by an anthropomorphized "spirit of the age."7

problematizing basic means of artistic reference.12 But the desire to

a higher unity, tracing the single-minded pursuit of a goal. If the

13. Most accounts of Kandinsky's progression into abstraction consider it as a

and experiences as if they formed the higher unity an art historian

Kandinsky's theory not as a straightforward explanation of his abstrac-

2. Art and Crime

Kandinsky's essay "Riickblicke," a wide ranging account of the

18. The assumption of the existence of a criminal-or artistic-type was common

law. According to Kandinsky, the provincial Russian peasants he

The reference to the criminal's manner of being, rather than the

19. Kandinsky, "Riickblicke," Autobiographische, ethnographische und juristische

not self-contained, and judgement of it must make reference to some-

20. For a relevant discussion of determinism, see Alasdair MacIntyre, "Hegel on

In an essay of 1912, Kandinsky explored the interrelation be-

intrinsically inferior, yet certainly as less sophisticated than abstrac-

FIG. 4.-Henri Rousseau, Myself" Portrait Landscape, 1896. ? National Gallery,

Monet only added to the extraordinary power of its palette. This

Monet's always painstakingly observed landscapes? Did some obscure

The art historian Wilhelm Worringer argued in Abst

27. Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the

FIG. 6.-Claude Monet, Haystack in the Sun, 1891. Kunsthaus, Zurich.

assumption that anyone dependent on the visual sense alone would

outline of a close object, and the faintness of an object seen through a

The Viennese art historian Alois Riegl, Berenson's contemporary,

marking them as solid, tangible bodies, and an optical perception that

pressionism do not help to identify objects because they make no ref-

FIG. 7.-Kandinsky, Lady in Moscow, 1912. Stidtische Galerie Lenbachhaus, Munich.

disembodied, over a blurry, optical field below. In Improvisation No. 30

FIG. 9.-Gustav Klimt, Philosophy, 1900, destroyed.

to represent philosophy was a factor in the heated opposition to the

FIG. 10.-Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907. Osterreichische Galerie,

(AE, p. 16). This mystical version of Riegl's theories probably ap-

consequently turned to abstraction, removing the object from the flux

reference to the object, they are optical. Kandinsky suppressed refer-

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