Language and the arts

Seeking to explain the equivalence between language and painting, Wolfgang Wildgen gives the example of Composition VII (1913). It seems to depict Jesus and his disciples around the table in a schematic manner similar to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. The origins of the plot of the Last Supper are literary and are told in the Bible. If, in our search for the overall shape of the complex structure that links the different arts, we go beyond strict artistic boundaries, we will find ourselves on the interartistic periphery of the phenomenon. On this occasion, recent historical research on the relationship between these phenomena asserts that they are at the origin of proto-language, cf. Wildgen, Wolfgang,” Human language, Scenarios, principles, and cultural dynamics”, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphie, 2004 and the theoretical study “From grammar to discourse, A morphodynamic approach”, Peter Lang, 1999. One of the highlights of his research is Cassirer’s symbolic relationship between language, art and science.

Composition VII, 1913

Oil paint/plate,

200 x 300 cm (6′ 6 3/4″ x 9′ 11 1/8″);

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

• L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019

ISBN‏: ‎ 978-8825521108, p. 108

• Text presented to the Session of the Annual Central South-East Seminar in Semiotics at the New Bulgarian University at Sofia, presentation of the text “The Intersemiotic Sonority of the Theory and the Drawings of Kandinsky “, April 2003

The plastic language

Instead, we are looking for abstract ‘content’ that changes appearance according to the specific point of view of the viewer. According to Göran Sonnesson in “Notes on Kandinsky’s Macchia, The Problem of Plastic Language”, http://www.arthist.lu.se/kultsem/sonesson/, which establishes the autonomy of plastic language, it is rich in meaning because it adds something to iconic language. This is an idea that he develops in his book “Pictorial concepts”, Chartwell-Brat Publishing & Training Ltd, psychological methodology, 1989. Plastic language is capable of multiple transformations in both directions – form-content and content-form. Sonnesson believes that a plastic sign expresses meaning even if it is intrinsically an expression of form. If it manifests itself in multiple images, as with Kandinsky, a plastic sign can take on the character of a content. This is a matter of personal interpretation. In painting, as in the other arts, we cannot know what the true artistic reality will be when two intertextual contents meet and can refer to the same object, (Wildgen, Wolfgang, “Cross-cultural dynamics of picture and text”, Contribution to the round table organised by Martina Plümacher à Lyon 2004.doc). It all depends on our interpretation. It can be literary (figurative) or pictorial (abstract) and therefore interartistic or also interpictorial. The plastic sign will be repeated in two or more paintings, and we speak of interpictoriality when two or more paintings are juxtaposed.

Composition IX, 1936

Oil painting/canvas,

113.5 x 195 cm (44 5/8 x 76 3/4)

National Museum of Modern Art,

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

• Text presented to the 75^th ACFAS Congress, Trois-Rivières University, in cooperation with Students Forum of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre, edition 2007, 7 May 2007, “Seeing the Text, Reading the Image: the Intermediality in Work/« Voir le texte, lire l’image : de l’intermédialité à l’œuvre”, Exploring the Interartistic Boundaries/Explorer les frontières interartistiques, “Kandinsky’s Interpictorial Compositions/ ”Les Compositions interpicturales de Kandinsky”, New Bulgarian University, Canada

https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/science/142185/75e-congres-de-l-acfas-l-excellence-pour-une-region

Interference between text and image

Text-image interference can be studied in terms of purely mental perception, since Peirce describes thoughts as signs. Interpreting Peirce’s conception of abstract art, Nöth contrasts his theory of iconicity, in particular that of the pure icon (a sign that is inseparable from its object, to the point of becoming unreal) with that of the hypoicon (a similar sign).  He translated Malevich’s paintings as examples. In this sense, a painting by Kandinsky can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, and unfolds in a whole constellation of mental perceptions, real or imaginary – this is interpictoriality in painting, depending on how it is interpreted. This is why Nöth concludes that abstract paintings are complex signs.

 Composition IV, 1911

Oil paint/plate,

159.5 x 250.5 cm (62 7/8 x 98 5/8)

Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf

• The Interartistic Concept in Kandinsky’s Paintings The Image/Text problem in Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology, autumn, N 4 2007, http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/a07_kolarova.htm

The revelation

If the world is a book, it can also be a painting. The microcosm of Creation and the creative power of art appear in the painting that gives the revelation of the artist who invented abstract painting in 1908 in Munich: ” It was twilight. I was returning home with my paint box after a study, still immersed in my dreams and lost in my thoughts about the work I had just finished, when suddenly I saw a painting of ineffable beauty, full of an extraordinary inner charge. I remained indifferent for a moment, then moved towards this strange painting in which I could only see shapes and colours and whose subject was incomprehensible. Suddenly I discovered the mystery: it was one of my paintings, hanging upside down on the wall. The next day, in the light of day, I tried to experience the same sensation in front of the previous day’s painting. But I was only half successful. Even upside down, I could recognise the objects, but the subtle light of the sunset was missing. I realised then that the subject was detrimental to my paintings.” Kandiinsky, Wassily, “A look back at the past”; translation J.-P. Bouillon, Editions Hermann, 1974, p.169, quoted by Alain Bonfand, “Abstract art”, PUF, Paris, 1994. The idea of abstraction gradually matured in Kandinsky’s spiritual world. His painting went through many stages, navigating between the abstract and the figurative, before and after the creation of his first abstract painting in 1910. The timing of its creation is still controversial. Kandinsky says he painted his first abstract picture in 1911. Was it because it was a watercolour in 1910, a minor genre, rather than an oil painting as in 1911?

Composition VI,

The Flood, 1913.

Oil painting/canvas,

194,9 x 300 cm

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

• «The revelation», L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019, ISBN‏: ‎978-8825521108, p. 108, p. 113

The Compositions

The “Compositions” are the expression of inner states. They were produced slowly and meticulously between 1910 and 1936. They reflect a culminating moment in the recreation of pure abstract painting. Kandinsky’s aim was to establish a spiritual communication between the viewer and the artist through pure forms. Forms are the fruit of the spiritual, which he considered to be the most important aspect of any work of art. The term ‘composition’ has an interartistic relationship with the term ‘music’ and ‘architecture’ too, as Zheleva-Martins Dobrina suggests., “Tectonics as a Theory of Form and Formation”, Academic Publishing House “Prof. Marin Drinov”, Sofia, 2000, p. 37. Kandinsky was intoxicated by the emotional power of music. Music expresses itself through sound in time, allowing the listener to give free rein to his or her imagination. Only abstract painting is capable of such suggestion. The representation of the visible world cannot convey the feeling itself. Music responds most directly to the call of the “inner sound”. The desire to bring painting closer to the purity of music is probably also expressed in the search for a ‘temporal’ perception of painting. Composition in the broadest sense has a highly interartistic significance for the arts and sciences in general. Eero Tarasti analyses the movement of images in the music of Composition VIII, studied in the critical work “Music and the Visual Arts, Images and Walks – A Peircian Excursion into Mussorgsky’s Semiosis”, p.215-p.215 et aussi X ” Toward the modern scene ” 10.1 Debussy’s Impressionism in the Prelude “…La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune “, p.267 in ” A Theory of musical semiotics “, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, USA, 1994.

Composition VIII, 1923

Oil paint/plate,

140 x 200,1 cm

Solomon R. Guggenheim,

New York

L’interférence intermusicale et interpicturale est manifeste en peinture.

• « Interférences musicales et interpicturales », inL’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019, ISBN‏: ‎ 978-8825521108, 115-118.