Wassily Kandinsky, 1906
Van
A little bit of Slavia:
Vasily Kandinsky depicts a sad figure on a downcast day at the center of his 1906 painting
Russian Woman in a Landscape. Seeing the woman evokes her sadness on the viewer: her melancholy is too powerful not to be shared. She is alone but not quite lonely, joined not by the colorfully garbed people near the house on the hill, but only by her viewer. Though contemplative, she looks neither defeated nor shameful, but possesses a visible strength evident in her determined stare and upright posture. Through her powerful presence, the viewer is gradually drawn deeper into the painting, first to her (the true focal point), then to her ornate but not ostentatious gown and veil, then to the tree stump and the ground around her feet. The patchwork grass leads away from the pale woman, up a tree-lined hill and to a colorfully decorated building with bright silhouettes of people entering or exiting. Beyond them lie the distant sea and the cloudy, dusky sky above, framing the green landscape with a blue backdrop. Between the sky and the woman lies a portrait not only of not just one person’s lonely spirituality but of the characteristics of all her kindred Russians, displaying clearly the gloomy mind and sober contemplation through the mystic night mentioned by Viacheslav Ivanov in his 1890 poem
The Russian Mind.
--
The Russian Mind
Willful and avid mind,-
The Russian mind is dangerous as flame:
So unrestrainable, so clear,
A happy and a gloomy mind.
Like the steady hand of a compass
It sees the pole through swells and fog;
It leads the timid will
From distracted dreams to life.
Like an eagle gazing through the mist
To survey the valley's dust
It soberly contemplates the earth,
Floating in a mystic night.
1890
--
Русский ум
Своеначальный, жадный ум,-
Как пламень, русский ум опасен:
Так он неудержим, так ясен,
Так весел он - и так угрюм.
Подобный стрелке неуклонной,
Он видит полюс в зыбь и муть,
Он в жизнь от грезы отвлеченной
Пугливой воле кажет путь.
Как чрез туманы взор орлиный
Обслеживает прах долины,
Он здраво мыслит о земле,
В мистической купаясь мгле.
1890
