Kandinsky eye candy

June 22, 2012 1:00 PM

Where to see Kandinsky in the world's museums. Each museum page links to images, including many early works. Eye candy.

(Caution - there is a buy posters link on this page as well, but the commercial side of this site seems quite secondary.)

posted by Listener (20 comments total)

Fantastic! Loves me some Kandinsky! Thanks!
posted by Thorzdad at 1:28 PM on June 22, 2012

I FUCKING LOVE KANDINSKY!
posted by symbioid at 1:28 PM on June 22, 2012 [4 favorites]

Go to this page. Scroll down fast. Then click over here and do the same. It's like watching someone's dreams come apart, if that person is called western civilization.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:29 PM on June 22, 2012 [10 favorites]

Nice. Another example of what I think the Internet Is For.
posted by marxchivist at 1:33 PM on June 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

oh man, thanks... I found a piece that the Walker Art Center had that wasn't listed in a museum. Crowdsourcing at its finest. I added a note, I hope they can update it.
posted by symbioid at 1:35 PM on June 22, 2012

When I visited the Stadtische Galerie in Munich, knowing only the later Kandinsky, I was blown away by the way his vision morphs from 1901-1912. Seeing Kandinsky's progress transformed my understanding/experience of painting.
posted by Jode at 1:41 PM on June 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love Kandinsky too, but then reading Robert Hughes' article on him in Shock of the New last night, I realized I'd never seen one in the flesh. Hence this search today. Improvisation 1914, watercolour, at MOMA gives me the same breathtaking feeling as a vast sky at dusk, though it doesn't especially look like a sky.
posted by Listener at 1:46 PM on June 22, 2012

Is there something like this for other artists, or is this just a one-off deal?
posted by resurrexit at 2:00 PM on June 22, 2012

Thanks for this! When I was 15, I went to NYC on a school trip. We went to MOMA and I was transfixed by his artwork. I came home a few days later and excitedly told my father how I had found this amazing artist; he laughed. I was briefly annoyed until he told me he had gone to NYC as a teenager, and also "discovered" this amazing artist, Kandinsky. Kandinsky love runs in my family, which is probably because we have impeccable taste.
posted by ilana at 2:40 PM on June 22, 2012

Nice post, thanks. There are also more than 130 Kandinskys at LACMA -- mostly early works on paper (through about 1912), but also a few paintings.
posted by scody at 4:26 PM on June 22, 2012

Those are neat, scody. Too bad they are so tiny on the page.
posted by Listener at 5:03 PM on June 22, 2012

We saw that big Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim a couple of years ago, and it had much the same effect as the scrolling down suggested by Potomac Avenue, only you spiraled up through his progression; it was a memorable exhibit.
posted by Red Loop at 6:30 PM on June 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is so wonderful. I have loved Kandinsky since I was a little kid and saw some of his pictures in a book. When I was younger and had time to make art, it was always Kandinsky I wanted to be like. Finally got to look at some of his paintings in person for the first time on a trip to NYC in March of this year. Suddenly and inexplicably burst into tears in front of this one. I'll never forget what it felt like to be standing there in front of it, finally.
posted by isogloss at 6:50 PM on June 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

Hey, isogloss, I'm wondering what you think about what appear to be units on that one, as given: "140х201 sm"? Do you think that equates to centimetres?
posted by Listener at 7:02 PM on June 22, 2012

And, resurrexit, here's a searchable site I just stumbled on that lists museums and much more info, and you can search for other artists.
posted by Listener at 7:07 PM on June 22, 2012

Listener, I don't know, but it might be. 140x201 centimeters would be about 55x80 inches, and that might be about right. The painting was quite large. More so than I expected.
posted by isogloss at 7:11 PM on June 22, 2012

Ah yeah, Red Loop, the Guggenheim Kandinsky show was incredible. In no small part because the Guggenheim was really designed for Kandinsky, or at least for artists like him. A lot of more representational art gets overshadowed by the space, but Kandinsky in there was perfect---you could appreciate color and composition at a distance, and brushstrokes up close.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 10:56 PM on June 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's a Kandinsky (my favorite one) at the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. Saw it a few years ago and got a nice print, hanging three feet away!
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 8:04 AM on June 23, 2012

I remember going to the Tate gallery when I lived in London aged 18. I went there for the Claude Monets which I knew were kept there. The Waterlillies. I walked into the big room devoted to the Monet paintings and I was disappointed. They didn't work for me at all. They were big, unfocused and not at all pretty. I kept walking, kept on looking at paintings and I remember feeling pretty disappointed.

And then I saw my first Kandinsky.

It wasn't pretty, it didn't show flowers and the colours weren't soft. It just struck me as the most amazing, challenging, interesting thing I had ever laid eyes on. I think that was the exact moment I fell in love with Modernism - a love affair that endures. Kandinsky's not my favourite painter anymore (hello Kasimir Malevich) but his work changed the way I look at and relate to art.
posted by kariebookish at 11:16 AM on June 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

For me, the gateway was Reciprocal Accord, at the Beaubourg. I sat on a bench, entranced for hours. How come my arty friends never mentioned this guy? The early stuff is historically interesting, to be sure, but it's his Paris years for me.
posted by Rash at 2:35 PM on June 24, 2012 [1 favorite]