Kandinsky compared the slow but steady devolution, dissolution and near disappearance of the object in Impressionism to the modern discovery that the atom was not a solid, one-dimensional object but a complex structure of vibrating particles. And he was right: Art and science were on the same exciting wavelength. Representation could no longer be taken for granted, for objects could no longer be taken for granted: They were soft not hard, implying that representation could never again be as solid it was in traditional art. It was always "compromised" by unruly sensations. It could never be more than ironically valid because it was never more than conditionally cohesive and coherent, that is, never more than a slippery configuration of provocative sensations. Every representation was flawed by the sensations that undermined its integrity and perfection even as they gave it an uncanny vitality. They seemed to have an inner necessity of their own, to use Kandinsky’s term. The matrix of sensations was other-worldly and immediate at once.

The modernist esthetic point is that there is no such thing as passive vision, as seemed to be the case in traditional art. There is only active envisioning, that is, the creative construction of a vision from a certain perceptual perspective. It is invariably informed by a certain Weltanschauung, however unconscious. It is this active envisioning or configuring -- a tentative imposition of "conformity" upon "iconoclastic" sensations -- that makes a work of art seem "original" and inspiring rather than matter-of-fact and inert. The ironical unification of the matrix of sensations in a work of art gives it a kind of depth, which is why we often experience it as a living subject rather than a dead object.

love this painting on your link

Giacomo Balla
The Street Light-Study of Light
1909

- Skinny 12-08-2009 2:07 pm [add a comment]

thats at moma skin.
- bill 12-08-2009 2:42 pm [add a comment]

another reason to go:>)
for sure will get to the Gug for Kandinsky before it closes, saw the O'keffe last week
- Skinny 12-08-2009 2:51 pm [add a comment]