Volume One

In the first of two volumes Kandinsky's temperas, gouaches and watercolours from the Munich years and the Russian period are definitively catalogued and discussed in chronological order (including those known only from documentary evidence). Many previously unknown pictures are published for the first time. The artist's earlier works, his bold abstractations from 1911 to 1914, and his little-known watercolours painted in Russia from 1915 to 1921 are fully documented and illustrated. Vivian Barnett also provides complete provenance, exhibition history and reference for more than 500 watercolours and gouaches, plus an addendum to the Catalogue of Oil Paintings (1982, 1984). The original essays, complete list of exhibitions, selective biography and extensive colour illustrations make this volume essential for collectors and scholars.

Kandinsky's theory of art has usually been treated as little more than a guide to help our understanding of his paintings. In contrast, this book attends primarily to the artist's writings on art; thus his art theory is treated on its own terms. Drawing on the diverse literature that has been written on Kandinsky's art and theory, the author demonstrates that while many different perspectives on his work have been identified, none holds the 'key' to that work. Instead, the book shows Kandinsky's method in his writings to be highly eclectic, resulting in an exciting and challenging variety of content (a description that also applies, as a postscript to the book shows, to his method in painting). Kandinsky, however, transcended this diversity and consistently sought evidence of the unity of all things: something that would be realised through his understanding of the term 'synthesis'. The book follows Kandinsky's fascinating attempts to establish synthesis (not only in art but also in other disciplines including science, mathematics, law and politics) in his key theoretical publications: On the Spiritual in Art (1911) and Point and Line to Plane (1926). The result is a new and innovative understanding of both Kandinsky's art theory and his art.

This new edition of 'a book that offers the best available grounding in its huge subject,' as the Sunday Times called it, includes color plates and a revised and expanded bibliography. Professor Hamilton traces the origins and growth of modern art, assessing the intrinsic qualities of individual works and describing the social forces in play. The result is an authoritative guide through the forest of artistic labels-Impressionism and Expressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, etc.-and to the achievements of Degas and Cezanne, Ensor and Munch, Matisse and Kandinsky, Picasso, Braque, and Epstein, Mondrian, Dali, Modigliani, Utrillo and Chagall, Klee, Henry Moore, and many other artists in a revolutionary age.

The historic encounter around 1911 between the composer Arnold Schönberg and the painter Wassily Kandinsky occurred at a moment when the first wild revolts against traditional art, Dada and Futurism, had just manifested themselves. Independently of those sometimes spectacular activities, both Schönberg and Kandinsky had already concluded that the material and the compositional methods they had relied on in the past were exhausted and did not satisfy the development of their artistic ideas. Both artists had already submitted their modes of production to a critical analysis which resulted in Schonberg's Theory of Harmony and Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art , both of 1911 - indeed the two artists had already been putting their self-criticism into practice for some time. In Schönberg's case this led to breaking with tonality; Kandinsky effected the transition to abstract painting. This book is a collection of the papers presented at the conference on Schönberg and Kandin

Essay by Magdalena Dabrowski. Foreword by Richard E. Oldenburg.