Borneuf Term Paper Proposal

Nour Ammari 
10/28/2015
A. Borneuf 
Term Paper Proposal

Consisting of 38 prose poems and 56 woodcuts, Wassily Kandinsky's book of poetry, Klänge (1912) was conceived as a "musical album" rather than a work of poetry. Combining prose poems, black and white and color woodcuts, typography, and book design, Kandinsky created a total work of art which not only promulgated his seminal philosophical and artistic ideals articulated in his 1910 treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which cites abstraction as a remedy to spiritual anxiety and a combating force of growing materialism in the early 20th century. Through his work, Kandinsky aimed to engage the sight, sound, and emotion of the viewer in an attempt to create a work that transcended both the cultural and physical boundaries to reveal a sense of universal spirituality through shared experience.

I will discuss Kandinsky's paramount works Concerning The Spiritual in Art as well as On the Question of Form in order secure a legitimate foundation concerning the artist's ideas on sound in which to root my comparison. I propose a reading of Klänge as both a reflection of Kandinsky's philosophy and as a manifestation of a total work of art through an exploration of the relationship between image, sound, text, form and space, that is present throughout the work. I feel that examining the way that Kandisky's philosophies on art were shaped by the social climate and the way in which those ideas were then embodied in a total work allows for the integration of multiple concepts addressed during lecture, while still allowing room for new