NEW YORK.- The first American museum exhibition to concentrate on the friendship and intellectual dialogue between the visionary painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and the revolutionary composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) opens on October 24, 2003 at The Jewish Museum. With their fascinating relationship as a focal point, Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider illuminates a pivotal moment in the early 20th century when artists and musicians embraced radical ideas and created new modes of expression. Works by Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and German Expressionists in the Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter) group - Franz Marc, August Macke, Gabriele Münter, Alexi von Jawlensky, and Albert Bloch - as well as archival documents, will be included. The exhibition remains on view through February 12, 2004.
On January 2, 1911, Wassily Kandinsky attended a concert in Munich of the music of the revolutionary Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg. Deeply struck by what he heard, the Russian artist captured his response to the performance in a remarkable oil painting, Impression III (Concert) . Sensing an affinity between his own work and the composer’s atonal compositions, Kandinsky wrote to Schoenberg shortly thereafter, initiating an extraordinary exchange between two visionary artists and two fields - music and painting - that is at the heart of Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider.
Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider will place on view 60 paintings, including major works by Kandinsky and members of the German Expressionist Blue Rider group, as well as a significant number of paintings by Schoenberg. More than 40 rare documents, including letters, photographs, concert programs and musical manuscripts, will underscore the excitement of the personal relationships and artistic discoveries of the time. Works are being loaned from major museums and private collections in Austria, Germany, Russia, and the United States.
In a dozen boldly colorful paintings that depart from traditional perspective, visitors will see how Kandinsky freed art from the restraints of representation. A number of paintings related to the artist’s major series (with notably musical names) - Impressions, Improvisations and Compositions - are a highlight of the show.
"This is an especially revealing story of the synergy between art and music, ideas and individuals, in the early 20th century," said Fred Wasserman, Associate Curator at The Jewish Museum, who with Esther da Costa Meyer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, is co-curator of the exhibition. Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider is based on an exhibition organized by the Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna, that was curated by its Director, Christian Meyer.
Kandinsky first encountered Schoenberg’s music at a time when artists and musicians were exploring innovative modes of expression. Schoenberg had already entered the world of tonality, a new musical concept of harmony in which "emancipated" dissonance no longer required resolution, while Kandinsky was moving toward abstraction, an art freed from the constraints of representation. Both men sought to communicate the immediacy of experience with radically new formal means - and for Schoenberg this included turning to painting to express things he felt he could not convey in music.
In addition to being excited by Schoenberg’s music, Kandinsky was also impressed with the composer’s paintings and chose to include four of them in the landmark Blue Rider exhibition that he organized with Franz Marc in Munich in December 1911. This show by an international group of artists, and the Blue Rider Almanac that followed, explored many of the artistic and musical issues that concerned Kandinsky and Schoenberg in the years before World War I. Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider will feature a striking group of the composer’s many self-portraits and an outstanding collection of portraits by Schoenberg of his fellow Viennese composers, including his mentor Gustav Mahler and his student Alban Berg. "These works offer illuminating insights into the man, his music, his intellectual concerns, and his identity as a Jew," observed da Costa Meyer.
Paintings by members of the Blue Rider - Franz Marc, August Macke, Gabriele Münter, Alexei von Jawlensky, and Albert Bloch - will capture the dynamism of their first exhibition in 1911. The group was especially interested in the symbolic, spiritual and psychological effects of color. Several paintings from that groundbreaking exhibition including, most notably, Marc’s Yellow Cow (1911) will be reunited at The Jewish Museum for the first time since 1911.
A student of ethnography and law, Kandinsky had gone to Munich in 1896 to study art. Echoes of his Russian Orthodox background and interest in Russian folklore continued to inform his work as a leading member of the Munich avant-garde. Schoenberg, largely self-taught, had begun composing as a child and embarked on a musical career in the 1890s. Raised in a Jewish family, he converted to Protestantism in 1898 at the age of 24 (and later converted back to Judaism in 1933). By the early 1900s he had established a reputation as a talented and controversial composer.
Music also plays an integral part in the experience of the exhibition through a specially created audio guide including pioneering works by Schoenberg and the other prominent exponents of new music in Vienna - Gustav Mahler, Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker (all of whom, like Schoenberg, were Jewish) as well as his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Produced by The Jewish Museum, in association with Antenna Audio, the audio guide will be available to exhibition visitors for free. Together, the paintings and music vibrantly portray a defining moment in 20th-century modernism.
An illustrated catalogue, published by The Jewish Museum in association with Scala Publishers and edited by Esther da Costa Meyer and Fred Wasserman, contains essays by the curators and other scholars, and 175 illustrations (125 in full color and 50 duotones). The 208-page book will also include a bonus CD with over one hour of music by Schoenberg from the 1911 concert that so inspired Kandinsky, performed by Glenn Gould, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, the Juilliard String Quartet, and others. The book will sell for $39.95 at The Jewish Museum’s Cooper Shop and for $49.95 at bookstores everywhere.
The exhibition was designed by Tsao & McKown. Our thanks to The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation for its leadership grant in support of Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider. Major support is also provided by The Starr Foundation, The Andrea & Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, Anne and Bernard Spitzer, Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder Holdings, Inc., and the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Vienna. Additional support is provided by Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Kravis, Austrian Cultural Forum, Joseph Alexander Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, New York Council for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Norman & Rosita Winston Foundation, and other generous donors. The exhibition audio guide is sponsored by Bloomberg. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
