Van Gogh to Kandinsky

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Last Saturday I took myself off to Edinburgh to this exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery and I'm so glad I did This was the first ever exhibition dedicated to Symbolist landscape painting covering works from 1880-1910 and included works by Van Gogh, Gauguin,  Munch, Mondrian, Whistler and Kandinsky as well as other artists from throughout Europe. I was really hopeful that the exhibition would dovetail in with the work I was doing for my extending specialist techniques unit at college.

The works were exhibited within six rooms which led the viewer on a journey through symbolism to abstraction which highlighted the influence of literature, poetry, music, theology and mythology.I thought I would chose a painting from each room to write about as a means of reflecting on the exhibition. 

  Room I  Arcadia Contested

Arcadia is taken from Greek mythology and implies a land of peace and plenty.At the end of the nineteenth century great changes had swept across European society.Some artists envisaged new Arcadias while others took a more gloomy approach to the aftermath of industrialisation. 

The Island of the Dead 1880 Arnold Bocklin

Oil on Canvas  111 x 115 cm  

In 1880 Bocklin was commissioned by Marie Berna to paint a canvas in commemoration of her late husband . The result was "The Island of the Dead" The image is of a tall figure dressed in white  and a coffin in a shallow boat. They are being rowed by an oarsman toward an island. The island is like a large rock and the boat is gliding softly into the centre which appears to have split open and is filled with tall dark poplar trees. The figures in the boat and the rocks either side are lit. The rest of the painting is dark apart from the surrounding sky which appears light against the dark trees. Apart from a few ripples in the water there is no movement in the scene. The ripples suggest the inevitability of death as the boat glides into the great chasm. The verticals of the trees are pointing upwards to another world perhaps.

The image has a certain serenity and a feeling of calmness which I think comes from the stillness and the symmetry in the painting. On the other hand the stillness also evokes a feeling of fear and unease contributed to by the stark tonal values.
I'm sure when Marie Berna looked at this painting she would be able to "dream herself into the world of dark shadows " as Bocklin wrote she would.

In 1909 the Russian composer inspired by Bocklin's painting composed Opus 29 The Island of the Dead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N10YZ2Sk3Kg

Tomorrow I hope to post about my selection from the next room Symbolism and Naturalism