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VASILY KANDINSKY

Kandinsky wanted to shorten the distance between painter and musician. In his seminal treatise ‘Regarding the Spiritual in Art’, written the year before this work, he wrote that it was music, not painting, that was most readily able to capture and stir the “vibrations of the soul”. For tangible art to reach these heights, it would have to do so in the mode of abstraction. This was, for Kandinsky, the most musical, lyrical, and free form of painterly expression. For four years, he created these series of abstractions, trying to bring his subconscious to canvas with as little dilution or distraction as possible. He saw them as spontaneous expressions of his inner mind, and while the majority of the painting is truly abstract, a firing cannon, falling building, and a crowd appear. These were no less spontaneous than the abstract forms and colors, instead they represented the tangible aspects of the material world that he was grappling with in the moment of creation - here, it is clear that war was on his mind. Kandinsky’s Improvisations are just that: imperfect, free expressions that grasp towards the intangible, searing power of music.

Melting Point of Ice

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Continents collide, antiquity butts up against modernity, and a primal spirituality comes into conflict with an industrialised capitalism. The work of Jean-Michel Basquiat has been explored perhaps as much as any post-war artist, and yet the depth of imagery, allegory, and references in his work continues to reward deep looking. Like few others, he was able to synthesise ideas from different movements, epochs, and civilisations, bringing traditional African art, as visible here in the mask-like face that dominates the top right corner, with a sensibility developed from his time as a graffiti artist, which the tightly coordinated chaos of the composition speaks to, and underpin the entire thing with a profound understanding of art history. Every inch of the canvas of ‘The Melting Point of Snow’ is used deliberately, weaving a tapestry of biblical stories, themes of childhood, and contemporary culture. Through all of it exists a theme of healing, from the Ritalin trademarks and copyrighted drug names, to the description of the Eye of Horus and it’s benefits, and the comforting stuffed toy labelled as non-toxic. The entirety of human history is fair game to Basquiat, and he manages to draw a line between disparate ideas in a single canvas that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Apartment Houses, Paris

JEAN DUBUFFET

In 1923, Jean Dubuffet read ‘Artistry of the Mentally Ill’ and developed a lifelong interest in work made by those with no formal training, suffering from mental illness. But Dubuffet was in no rush, he was a man of curiosity for the first half of his life; an occasional artist, winemaker and scholar, Dubuffet rejected anything that confined him as he strove for knowledge and travelled the world. He immersed himself in the study of noise music, of ancient languages, of lost wisdom and poetry, picking up and putting down the paintbrush every decade or so. But some twenty two years after reading Hans Prizhorn’s book, the eventual progenitor of the art brut (raw art) movement finally formalised those ideas of art made by the alienated and insane and began his life’s practice. He tried to emulate the work of someone expressing pure emotion, however muddled it might be, using only the tools at their disposal. Experimenting with non-traditional new materials, he incorporated mud, sand, gravel, and, notably, plant matter into his compositions. Here, the urban world of Paris reached into the very earth it was built upon, becoming a Frankenstein monster of man and nature.

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The Bells

Paul Zweig

A poet, critic and memoirist, Zweig was admired by his friends and the literary circles around him, but remains in wider obscurity to this day. Zweig was an obsessive study of culture, peoples and moods. Cross pollination is clear in Zweig’s work, his techniques as a memoirist clear across his poetry. A careful and astute eye, self-possessed and self-aware, he wrote as if with a magnifying glass, looking at the offhand nature of the world and reading the truth from it. While he looked outwards, he found himself everywhere. He journeyed deeper into the self with each evocative work.

Imagine Lucifer

Jack Spicer

Spicer saw the poet as a radio, intercepting transmissions from outer space. Language was furniture, through which information navigated. He was a radical, both in his literary style and in his life, defying every convention at every turn. Refusing to allow his work to be copyrighted, Spicer ran a workshop called ‘Poetry as Magic’, and for him the statement was true. Poetry was a means to experience and translate the unexplainable, and had to be freely available for those who searched for truth. Spicer died penniless and with only small acclaim, like so many poets before and after him, but the ideas he laid out in his work have gone on to influence thousands of poets after him.

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka was many things, and many things to many people. The most significant black poet of his generation, Baraka also is considered the founder of the Black Arts Movement and the Second Harlem Renaissance. Baraka wanted poetry, literature and art to be a legitimate product of experience. In doing so, he could hold a mirror up to a world in desperate need of self reflection. He was as fearless in his writing as he was in his activism, and he had a clear vision. The BAM became an aesthetic and spiritual sister of Black Power and Baraka’s voice was the most poignant, cutting and profound.