Kandinsky and Old Russia - Peg Weiss

Vasilii Kandinsky, whom many consider to be the father of abstract painting, was also a trained ethnographer with an abiding interest in the folklore of Old Russia. In this work, Peg Weiss provides an interpretation of Kandinsky's art by examining how this commitment to his ethnic Russian heritage influenced the painter's work throughout his career.;Weiss describes Kandinsky's university training in ethnography, his expedition to Russia's Vologda province in 1889, his involvement as a student with the country's most influential ethnographic group - the Imperial Society of Friends of the Natural Sciences, Anthropology, and Ethnography - and the literature he read while writing reviews for the society's journal, "Ethnographic Review". Weiss shows that Kandinsky's knowledge of Finno-Ugric, Lapp and Siberian shamanism and folklore provided him with an indelible palette of iconographic references that resonated in his work - from his earliest paintings to his last. Identifying specific ethnographic and folkloristic motifs in his iconography, Weiss argues that despite numerous stylistic changes, Kandinsky's paintings consistently reflected an underlying message: his belief in the shamanist calling of the artist to provide a means of cultural healing and regeneration.