LEAH DICKERMAN

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY

MATTHEW AFFRON
YVE-ALAIN BOIS
MASHA CHLENOVA
ESTER COEN
CHRISTOPH COX
HUBERT DAMISCH
RACHAEL Z. DELUE
HAL FOSTER
MARK FRANKO
MATTHEW GALE
PETER GALISON
MARIA GOUGH
JODI HAUPTMAN
GORDON HUGHES
DAVID JOSELIT
ANTON KAES
DAVID LANG
SUSAN LAXTON
GLENN D. LOWRY
PHILIPPE-ALAIN MICHAUD
JAROSLAW SUCHAN
LANKA TATTERSALL
MICHAEL R. TAYLOR

2 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

 40 46 50 64 72 74
contents Pablo Picasso: COLORS AND GAMES: VASILY KANDINSKY, MR. KUPKA AMONG ON THE MOVE ABSTRACTION
THe CADAQUÉS MUSIC AND ABSTRACTION, WITHOUT WORDS VERTICALS HUBERT DAMISCH CHEZ DELAUNAY
EXPERIMENT 1909 TO 1912 LEAH DICKERMAN LANKA TatTersall GORDON HUGHES
YVE-ALAIN Bois DAVID LANG

7 82 94 100 110 116 124

FOREWORD CONTRASTS OF COLORS, LÉOPOLD SURVAGE’S WITH COLOR FRANCIS PICABIA: FERNAND LÉGER: GIACOMO BALLA:
GLENN D. LOWRY CONTRASTS OF WORDS PAPER CINEMA RACHaEL Z. D E LUE ABSTRACTION METALLIC SENSATIONS THE MOST LUMINOUS
MATTHEW AFFRON JODI HAUPTMAN AND SINCERITY MATTHEW AFFRON ABSTRACTION
MICHAEL R. TAYLOR ESTER COEN

9 134 144 154 172 182 188

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PAROLE IN LIBERTÀ MUSIC, NOISE, VORTICISM: PLANETARY PAINTING STRIPPED BARE DECORATION AND AGAINST
JODI HAUPTMAN AND ABSTRACTION ABSTRACTION DAVID JOSELIT ABSTRACTION THE CIRCLE
CHRISTOPH COX MATTHEW GALE IN BLOOMSBURY RACHAEL Z. D E LUE
MATTHEW AFFRON

12 200 206 226 238 254 262 370

INVENTING ABSTRACTION EARLY RUSSIAN 0.10 PIET MONDRIAN: 3 DE STIJL MODELS THE SPATIAL OBJECT THE LANGUAGE OF INDEX
LEAH DICKERMAN ABSTRACTION, MASHA CHLENOVA TOWARD THE YVE-ALAIN BOIS MARIA GOUGH REVOLUTION
AS SUCH ABOLITION OF FORM MARIA GOUGH
MASHA CHLENOVA YVE-ALAIN BOIS

274 292 296 300 310 324 373

SENSE AND NON-SENSE DANCED ABSTRACTION: DANCED ABSTRACTION: THE COLOR GRID THE ABSTRACT ENVIRONMENT EARLY ABSTRACTION LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION
HAL FOSTER RUDOLF VON LABAN MARY WIGMAN LANKA TatTersall MARIA GOUGH IN POLAND
MARK FRANKO MARK FRANKO JAROSLAW SUCHAN

332 338 346 350 358 364 376

WHITE SHADOWS: RHYTHMUS 21 THE ABSOLUTE FILM CONCRETE ABSTRACTION ABSTRACTION IN 1936 ABSTRACTION IN 1936 TRUSTEES OF
PHOTOGRAMS AROUND 1922 AND THE GENESIS ANTON KAES PETER GALISON BARR’s DIAGRAMS CUBISM AND ABSTRACT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
SUSAN LAXTON OF FILMIC GLENN D. LOWRY ART AT THE MUSEUM
ABSTRAcTION OF MODERN ART
PHILIPPE-ALAIN MIChAuD LEAH DICKERMAN
 FOREWORD

A B S T R A C T IO N may be modernism’s greatest innovation. It is now development of abstraction in seventy-five years, Inventing Abstraction
so central to our conception of artistic practice that the time before offers a chance to reflect on the legacy of MoMA’s own practice.
the idea of an abstract artwork made sense has become hard We are grateful to Leah Dickerman, Curator in the Department
to imagine, yet when those works first appeared — quite suddenly, of Painting and Sculpture, for the conception and organization of
H A N JI N S H I P PI N G is delighted to sponsor Inventing Abstraction, around 100 years ago — they took many observers by surprise. this exhibition and book. Masha Chlenova, Curatorial Assistant in
1910-1925 and to be part of sharing this important exhibition with Beginning in late 1911 and across the course of the next year, the Department of Painting and Sculpture, was her essential partner.
the global audience of The Museum of Modern Art. Hanjin has a series of artists including Vasily Kandinsky, Fernard Léger, We are especially grateful to the generous supporters of this
been a dedicated supporter of the Museum, sponsoring a variety Robert Delaunay, František Kupka, and Francis Picabia exhibited project and of the Museum’s programming in general. Inventing
of exhibitions and programs including Monet’s Water Lilies in 2009, works that marked the beginning of something radically new: Abstraction is made possible by Hanjin Shipping. Major support
Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 in 2011, and Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of they dispensed with recognizable subject matter. The implications is provided by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation,
Language in 2012. of these opening moves were registered with astonishing rapidity. the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, the Blavatnik Family Foundation,
Within five years, abstraction’s practitioners included Hans Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III,
Hanjin Shipping is Korea’s largest shipping company, and Arp, Vanessa Bell, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Arthur Dove, Natalia and the exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the
ranks among the top ten major shipping carriers in the world. Goncharova, Marsden Hartley, Paul Klee, Mikhail Larionov, Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The seminars
A proud supporter of the arts, it makes a priority of partnering Kazimir Malevich, Franz Marc, Piet Mondrian, Hans Richter, bringing together scholars in a variety of disciplines in the exhi-
with museums worldwide. Our Chairwoman, Eunyoung Choi, Wyndham Lewis, and more. bition’s planning stages were made possible by MoMA’s Wallis
is passionate about this goal and believes strongly that as Inventing Abstraction explores abstraction as both a historical Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the
the scope of our business extends to every corner of the world, idea and an emergent artistic practice. The story of its sudden Annenberg Foundation.
art helps us to communicate with the global community. We are flourishing may have something to tell us about the nature of On behalf of the Trustees and staff of the Museum, I wish
delighted to work with MoMA once again as a sponsor of this innovation itself: abstraction was not the inspiration of a solitary to acknowledge the lenders — private individuals and museum
extraordinary exhibition about abstraction, its birth and growth, genius but the product of network thinking — of ideas moving colleagues — who have entrusted us with the care of their works.
and its international role in modern art. through a nexus of artists and intellectuals working in different Their generosity has in many cases allowed us to exhibit works that
media and in far-flung places. Its pioneers were more closely linked have not yet been seen in this country, and in others to provide a
than is generally understood. From the start, abstraction was an new perspective on familiar ones. They have our profound gratitude.
international phenomenon, as artists and images moved quickly
across borders, sharing in a new exhibition and media culture.
Inventing Abstraction accordingly takes a transnational perspective: — GLENN D. LOWRY
surveying key episodes in abstraction’s early history, it includes work Director, The Museum of Modern Art
made across Eastern and Western Europe and the United States.
The coming of these first abstract pictures was matched by
extraordinary developments in other spheres. Sound poetry, non-
narrative dance, and atonal music developed in parallel with pictures
that no longer pictured; each jettisoned the weight of convention.
These new forms of practice suggest how abstraction at its incep-
tion may be seen as a cross-media imperative. Inventing Abstraction
explores the productive relationships among artists and compos-
ers, dancers and poets, in establishing a new modern language for
the arts. It brings together a wide range of art forms — paintings,
drawings, printed matter, books, sculpture, film, photography,
sound recordings, music and dance footage — to draw a rich portrait
of this watershed moment in which art was wholly reinvented.
Abstraction is a vital subject in The Museum of Modern Art’s
own history. An important touchstone for this project has been
Cubism and Abstract Art, a landmark exhibition organized by the
Museum’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., in 1936. The show
surveyed the early history of abstraction at a moment when mod-
ernist artists were under real threat from totalitarianism in Europe.
It had a lasting impact on MoMA’s collection: many works were
acquired directly from it, and others within the historical frame-
work it shaped. As the Museum’s first major exhibition on the early

7
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I N V E N T I N G A B S T R A C T I O N traces the sweep of a radical new idea as Rumelin, Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneva; Benno Tempel, Hans
it moved among artists and intellectuals, sweeping across nations Janssen, Christian Rumelin, Doede Hardeman, and Frans Peterse,
and across media. The development of abstract art is a prime Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague; John Neumeier and
example of the power of network thinking. This catalogue and the Hans-Michael Schäfer, Stiftung John Neumeier, Hamburg; Susan L.
exhibition it accompanies were also made possible by the efforts Talbott and Eric Zafran, Curator, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum
of a far-flung network of individuals, and in working on them both, of Art, Hartford; Gary Tinterow, Gwendolyn H. Goff, and Emily
I was moved by and very grateful for the extraordinary gestures Neff, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Patrick Primavesi,
of generosity that make such a collaborative undertaking possible. Gabriele Ruiz, and Steffen Hoffmann, Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V.;
The makers of those gestures include the many dedicated teams Rainer Hüben, Fondazione Marguerite Arp, Locarno; Jaroslaw
of people at The Museum of Modern Art who use their great skills Suchan, Malgorzata Ludwisiak, and Jaroslaw Lubiak, Muzeum
to realize ambitious exhibition projects such as this one. There were Sztuki w Łodzi, Lodz; Nicholas Serota, Matthew Gale, Nicholas
also the eighty-four lenders who parted with their great treasures Cullinan, and Adrian Glew, Tate, London; Miguel Ángel Recio
to allow us to show them in our galleries; the twenty-three authors Crespo, Paloma Alarcó, and Guillermo Solana, Museo Thyssen-
who contributed their ideas and expertise to this volume; and Bornemisza, Madrid; Olga Viso and Darsie Alexander, Walker Art
scores of others who helped make this project happen in other Center, Minneapolis; Lora Urbanelli and Gail Stavitsky, Montclair
ways: generously giving us their advice and support in shaping the Art Museum, N.J.; Maja Oeri and Charlotte Gutzwiller, Emanuel
checklist, securing loans, figuring out the right recordings, provid- Hoffmann-Stiftung, Schaulager, Münchenstein, Switzerland;
ing financial support. All of us at The Museum of Modern Art are Helmut Friedel and Karola Rattner, Städtische Galerie im
profoundly grateful. Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Munich; Klaus Bussman,
We are deeply thankful for our many generous lenders, listed LWL–Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Westfälisches
on p. 375. Many of them have acted as true collaborators on this Landesmuseum, Münster; Amy Meyers, Yale Center for British
project, facilitating loans, enlightening us about the works in their Art, New Haven; Jock Reynolds and Jennifer Gross, Yale University
care, and making suggestions about other works and collections Art Gallery, New Haven; Richard Armstrong, Vivien Green, Tracey
to be considered. We warmly thank our colleagues in lending Bashkoff, and Susan Davidson, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
institutions: Madeline Schuppli and Brigitta Vogler-Zimmerli, and Foundation, New York; Thomas P. Campbell, Jennifer Russell,
private collection courtesy of the Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau; Ann Malcolm Daniel, Sabine Rewald, Rebecca Rabinow, and Cynthia
Goldstein, Nicole Delissen, and Geurt Imanse, Stedelijk Museum, Iavarone, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Adam
Amsterdam; Bernhard Mendes Bürgi, Christian Müller, and Weinberg, Barbara Haskell, Dana Miller, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro,
Charlotte Gutzwiller, Kunstmuseum Basel; Catherine Amé, Renate Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Lisette Pelsers,
Rätz, and Stephan Dörschel, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Udo Evert J. van Straaten, Liz Kreijn, Toos van Kooten, and André
Kittelman and Dieter Scholz, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen Strattman, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; Monique Barbaroux
zu Berlin; Nicholas Fox Weber and Oliver Barker, The Josef and and Laurent Sebillotte, Centre national de la danse, Pantin, France;
Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, Conn.; Stephan Berg and Volker Bruno Racine and Antoine Coron, Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Adolphs, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Heide-Marie Härtel, Deutsches Paris; Alfred Pacquement, Brigitte Leal, Jonas Storsve, Christine
Tanzfilminstitut Bremen; Louis Grachos, Douglas Dreishpoon, and Macel, and Philippe-Alain Michaud, Musée national d’art moderne/
Laura Fleischmann, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Douglas Centre de création industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fabrice
Druick and Stephanie D’Alessandro, The Art Institute of Chicago; Hergott and Jacqueline Munck, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville
Anthony G. Hirschel and Richard Born, Smart Museum of Art, de Paris; Timothy Rubb, Michael R. Taylor, and Anna Vallye,
University of Chicago; David Franklin and William Robinson, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Lynn Zelevansky, Carnegie Museum
The Cleveland Museum of Art; Philipp Kaiser, Kasper König, of Art, Pittsburgh; Oliver Kornhoff and Astrid von-Asten, Arp
and Stephan Diederich, Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Nannette V. Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen; Walburga Krupp, Stiftung
Maciejunes and Melissa Wolfe, Curator of American Art, Columbus Hans Arp und Sophie Taeuber-Arp e.V., Remagen; Māra Lāce and
Museum of Art; Charles Esche and Marcia Vissers, Van Abbemuseum, Iveta Derkusova, The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga;
Eindhoven; Hartwig Fischer, Ute Eskildsen, and Sandra Gianfreda, Ole Bouman, Mariet Willinge, and Pascale Pere, Netherlands
Museum Folkwang, Essen; Andrew J. Walker and Rebecca Lawton, Architecture Institute, Rotterdam; Robert A. Kret, Barbara Buhler
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Tex.; Carl- Lynes, Carolyn Kastner, and Judy Chiba Smith, Georgia O’Keeffe
Heinz Heuer and Nicolai von Cube, Collection Viktor and Marianne Museum, Santa Fe; Joëlle Pijaudier-Cabot and Héloïse Conesa,
FORTUNATO DEPERO . Complesso di fili giranti Langen; Claudia Dillmann and Beate Dannhorn, Sammlung Hans Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg; Sean Rainbird
(Complex of turning wires). 1915. Ink on paper,
8 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄2" (21 × 29.2 cm). Mart — Museo di arte Richter/Deutsches Filminstitut–DIF, Frankfurt am Main; Jean and Ina Cozen, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; Maria Tsantsanoglou, Angelica
moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto Bonna, Jean Bonna Library, Geneva; Jean-Yves Marin and Christian Charistou, and Olga Fota, State Museum of Contemporary Art –

8 9
 Costakis Collection, Thessaloníki; Gabriella Belli, Clarenza Catullo, Christoph Cox, Hal Foster, Mark Franko, Peter Galison, Jodi We extend warm thanks to our colleagues in the Department Our great thanks go to the many esteemed writers who con-
and Beatrice Avanzi, Mart–Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea Hauptman, David Joselit, Anton Kaes, Seth Kim-Cohen, Philippe- of Development for enabling us to realize this project — to Todd tributed to this volume, and who are listed in the Contents. Sara
di Trento e Rovereto; Eliane Cordia von Reesema, Triton Foundation; Alain Michaud, RH Quaytman, Josh Siegel, Lanka Tattersall, and Bishop, our new Senior Deputy Director of External Affairs, and to Dickerman, Henry Finder, Hal Foster, and Cara Manes, my sister
Danilo Eccher and Arianna Bona, GAM–Galleria d’Arte Moderna Michael R. Taylor. These conversational events helped to motivate Lauren Stakias and Heidi Speckthart. Our colleagues in Marketing and trusted friends, were the first to read my texts and offered
e Contemporanea, Turin; Philip Rylands, Solomon R. Guggenheim and refine the conceptual premises of the exhibition. Yve-Alain and Communications have helped us get the word out: Kim Mitchell, comments and suggestions that have improved them in both form
Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Christian Bois, Christoph Cox, Mark Franko, Anton Kaes, and David Lang Margaret Doyle, Brien McDaniel. Nancy Adelson, Dina Sorokina, and content.
Meyer and Therese Muxeneder, Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna; made specific suggestions that found their way onto our checklist. and Henry Lanman in the Office of the General Counsel office In our own Department of Painting of Sculpture, Ann Temkin,
Karola Kraus and Susanne Neuburger, mumok, museum moderner John Elderfield provided key advice on specific loans. The gerundive have provided invaluable advice, both legal and strategic. In the The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator, has been an
kunst stiftung ludwig wien, Vienna; Fred Bollerer and Philip title “Inventing Abstraction” is the product of a long and lovely Department of Exhibitions, Maria DeMarco Beardsley and effective advocate of and sage advisor to this project, and I am very
Brookman, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Richard conversation with Hubert Damisch. Teaching alongside Hal Foster Randolph Black have adroitly facilitated the exhibition’s logistics. grateful for her counsel in key moments. Anne Umland, Laura
Koshalek and Kerry Brougher, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture in the Department of Art History at Princeton University in the Our colleagues in the Department of Collection Management and Hoptman, and Doryun Chong provided camaraderie and generous
Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Earl A. Powell spring of 2010 provided another important forum for working out Exhibition Registration managed the complexities of moving so aid of many kinds. Cora Rosevear and Lily Goldberg worked atten-
III, Sarah Greenough, and Harry Cooper, National Gallery of Art, ideas, as did teaching with Pamela Lee at Stanford University many many works of art with graciousness and efficiency: Susan Palamara, tively to the arrangement of loan issues. Although this project
Washington, D.C.; Lisa Fischman and Bo K. Mempho, Davis Museum years ago. Our curatorial and design team worked with Paul Ingram Sacha Eaton, Jeri Moxley, Kat Ryan, and Ian Eckert. The in-house lay outside their many responsibilities, Cara Manes, Jodi Roberts,
and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Mass.; Alexander Klar and and Mitali Banerjee at the Columbia Business School in creating transportation and installation of artworks was smoothly coordinated David Sadighian, Iris Schmeisser, and Lanka Tattersall have all
Hanne Danneberger, Museum Wiesbaden; Christoph Becker and the diagram on this book’s front endpapers tracing the connections by Rob Jung, Steve West, Sarah Wood, and their team. The assis- contributed in key ways, giving special meaning to the idea of
Karin Marti, Kunsthaus Zürich; and Johanna Schultheiss, Thyssen- among artists represented in the exhibition. tance of our colleagues in Special Events, Facilities, Security, and teamwork. Departmental interns Nicole Benson, Emily Delheim,
Bornemizsa Collections, Zurich. The project has drawn on virtually every department at the Visitor Services has been, as always, crucial. Kathryn Holihan, Jasmine Helm, Alexandra Lawrence, Nina Léger,
We are also extremely grateful to private lenders: Rachel Adler, Museum. Our foremost thanks go to Glenn D. Lowry, Director, It was a great pleasure and privilege to collaborate again with Caroline Luce, Isabel Palandjoglou, and Victoria Sung have lent
Barney A. Ebsworth, Maria Graciela and Luis Alfonso Oberto, who has offered enthusiasm, strategic insight, and a contribution Jerry Neuner, Director of the Department of Exhibition Design their talents and enthusiasm to realizing the project.
Jeffrey Sherwin, and eleven anonymous donors. to the catalogue. The project benefited from the leadership and and Production, on the exhibition’s design; its elegance and intelli- I am most indebted and most grateful to those who were
Many individuals have provided essential information and counsel of Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, gence reflect his great skills. Peter Perez, Julia Hoffman, Ingrid most intimately involved in this exhibition. They deserve praise
assistance with loans. We warmly thank: Emily Braun, Charlotte and Ramona Bannayan, Senior Deputy Director for Exhibitions Chou, Sabine Dowek, and Claire Corey all played a key role in for both their skills and their tremendous dedication. Catherine
Douglas, Bernd Eichhorn, Ginevra Elkann, Jason Herrick, and Collections. Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director, served as realizing this design. The Edward John Noble Foundation Deputy Wheeler has handled the organization of both things and people,
Ursula Graeff-Hirsch, Juan Hamilton, Diana Howard, Elizabeth a sounding board for ideas at several key points, and helped us to Director for Education Wendy Woon and Pablo Helguera, Sara myself among them, and I am very grateful for her warm and adroit
Kujawski, Barbara Lesak, Sylvia Liska, Francis Naumann, Maria craft innovative solutions to bring a variety of voices from different Bodinson, Stephanie Pau, Sheetal Prajapati, and Desiree Gonzalez corralling. Masha Chlenova has been a true partner. She has han-
Carlota Perez, Kerry Rose, Thomas Rosemann, Pablo Schugurensky, fields into the discussion of this project. Our in-house diplomat in the Department of Education, as well as Allegra Burnette and dled complex administrative and diplomatic responsibilities, along
Aleksandra Shatskikh, Alexander Shedrinsky, Chris Stephens, Jay Levenson, Director of the Museum’s International Program, Maggie Lederer D’Errico in the Department of Digital Media, have with those of the highest scholarship. Neither exhibition nor cata-
Natalie Strasser, and Allison Whiting. We also acknowledge our deftly facilitated key international relationships. worked as true collaborators in creating rich interpretative materials logue would be possible without her vital support.
museum colleagues for their support of this project: Annemarie The multimedia nature of the exhibition has made us more and programs that enhance the exhibition’s content.
Jaeggi and Klaus Weber, Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, dependent than usual on the expertise of our fellow curators in In the Museum Library and Archives, Milan Hughston, — LEAH DICKERMAN
Berlin; Irina Lebedeva and Tatiana Gubonova, The State Tretyakov other curatorial departments, and on their generosity with interde- Michelle Elligott, Jennifer Tobias, David Senior, and Michelle Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture
Gallery, Moscow; Spencer Tsai and Osvaldo Da Silva, Barry partmental loans. We particularly wish to acknowledge the gener- Harvey assisted and advised our research efforts on many fronts.
Friedman Ltd., New York; Natalie Seroussi and Anne-Sarah ous help, both practical and conceptual, of Christophe Cherix, Robert Kastler and Roberto Rivera in the Department of
Bénichou, Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Paris; Mikhail Piotrovsky and Katherine Alcauskas, and Kim Conaty in the Department of Prints Imaging and Visual Resources, led by Erik Landsberg, worked
Maria Haltunen, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; and Illustrated Books; Connie Butler, Jodi Hauptman, Samantha to provide superior new photography of the collection works
Evgeniia Petrova and Marina Panteleymon, The State Russian Friedman, Kathy Curry, and David Moreno in the Department of for this project.
Museum, St. Petersburg; Thomas Trabitsch and Ursula Klein, Drawings; Roxana Marcoci, Sarah Hermanson Meister, and Mitra Colleagues in the Department of Publications, led by
Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna; Natalia Metelitsa Abbaspour in the Department of Photography; Sabine Breitweiser, Christopher Hudson, have been our valued partners in the realiza-
and Evgenia Suzdaleva, St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre Ana Janevski, and Leora Morinis in the Department of Media and tion of this book. David Frankel, Editorial Director and this book’s
and Music; Patrick Werkner and Sylvia Herkt, Universität für Performance; and Josh Siegel, Anne Morra, Katie Trainor, and editor, has improved this catalogue in countless ways; his broad-
angewandte Kunst Wien, Vienna; and Wolfgang Kos and Ursula Kitty Cleary in the Department of Film. In the Department of reaching erudition, keen eye, and fine-tuned sense of good prose
Storch, Wien Museum, Vienna. Conservation, Jim Coddington, Michael Duffy, Scott Gerson, is reflected on every page. Mark Nelson of McCall Associates has
With the support of MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Lee Ann Daffner, and Lynda Zycherman all put their great expertise produced an elegant and intelligent design that admirably suits the
Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, at the service of this project. subject; our many conversations during this process have honed
we were able to host a series of seminars on abstraction as a his- For financial support of this exhibition we are extraordinarily its content. Associate Publisher Chul Kim sagely guided the book
torical idea and an emergent artistic practice, and on its relation grateful to Hanjin Shipping, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen to its finished form, and Matthew Pimm oversaw its complex
to contemporary shifts in music, poetry, dance, philosophy, and Foundation, the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, the Blavatnik Family production. Hannah Kim, Genevieve Allison, Makiko Wholey,
science. Participants in these three sessions included Charles Foundation, Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis, and Sue and Edgar Maria Marchenkova, Frances Vigna, and Lauren Robbins all provided
Bernstein, Yve-Alain Bois, Christophe Cherix, Masha Chlenova, Wachenheim III. critical support.

10 11
 Must we not then renounce the object altogether,
throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract?
— Vasily Kandinsky, 1911

R O U G H LY O N E H U N D R E D Y E A R S A G O, a series of precipitous shifts took place in the cultural

sphere that in the end amounted to as great a rewriting of the rules of artistic production
as had been seen since the Renaissance. That transformation would fundamentally shape
artistic practice in the century that followed. Beginning in late 1911 and across the course
of 1912, in several European and American cities, a handful of artists — Vasily Kandinsky,
František Kupka, Francis Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Arthur Dove — presented paintings that
differed from almost all of those that had preceded them in the long history of the medium
in the Western tradition: shunning the depiction of objects in the world, they displayed
works with no discernible subject matter. Indeed they abandoned the premise of making a
picture of something. “Young painters of the extreme schools,” the poet and critic Guillaume
Apollinaire wrote in February 1912, “want to make pure painting, an entirely new art form.
1
It is only at its beginning, and not yet as abstract as it wants to be.”
In the period immediately following, abstraction was proposed many times over,
by different artists working in different places and with different philosophical foundations.
Its pioneers included Hans Arp, Vanessa Bell, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Natalia Goncharova,
Marsden Hartley, Paul Klee, Mikhail Larionov, Fernand Léger, Kazimir Malevich, Franz
Marc, Piet Mondrian, Hans Richter, and Wyndham Lewis. By the eve of World War I, art-
Opposite: ists producing abstract works could be counted in the dozens. This shift in the frontier of
EL LISSITZKY . Handwritten explanatory text to possibility moved so suddenly as to shake the foundations of art as it had been practiced.
accompany a copy of the Proun Portfolio. 1920. Observers spoke of the exhilaration and terror of leaping into unknown territory, where
Gouache and ink on paper, sheet: 17 3⁄4 × 13 3⁄4" comparison with the past was impossible. This evacuation of the object world was, to be
(45 × 35 cm). Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne
sure, hardly a silent disappearance, but rather was accompanied by a shower of celebratory

INVENTING ABSTRACTION
1. THOMAS YOUNG . Diagram of the pattern manifestos, lectures, and criticism, a flood of words flung forth perhaps in compensation
of wave interaction obtained by throwing two for their makers’ worry about how the meaning of these pictures might be established.
stones of equal size into a pond at the same
Scores of earlier images from other Western disciplines — chromatic studies, theo-
instant. From A Course of Lectures on Natural
Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (London: sophical and mediumistic images, cosmogonic images, scientific images (fig. 1) — may
LEAH DICKERMAN J. Johnson, 1807) resemble abstract art. But these are not art at all, for despite any formal similarity they

12 13
 2. J. M. W. TURNER . Sun Setting over a Lake. in an idiom that seemed closer to a diagram (plates 3, 4). His new paintings featured angled
c. 1840. Oil on canvas, 35 7⁄8 × 48 1⁄4" planes defined by linear scaffolding that shifted across the work’s surface. Only the faintest
(91.1 × 122.6 cm). Tate. Turner Bequest
traces of the structure of the female figure or still life named in the pictures’ titles were
3. J. A. M. WHISTLER . Nocturne in Black and Gold: discernible within. “The Cadaqués images are so difficult to decipher,” wrote Picasso’s
The Falling Rocket. 1875. Oil on panel, 23 3⁄4 × 18 3⁄8" biographer John Richardson, “that even the artist sometimes forgot what a particular image
(60.2 × 46.7 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts. 4
represented.” These works seem abstract in all but name.
Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
Picasso’s dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler could not reconcile himself, it seems, to the
5
terrifying novelty of these new works: he declared them “unfinished.” The Picasso scholar
Pierre Daix has noted that while Kahnweiler had the right of first refusal of Picasso’s
paintings, these particular works went to a rival dealer, Ambroise Vollard — suggesting
6
that Kahnweiler had rejected them. And it seems that Picasso himself — the most nimble-
minded, radically innovative artist of the first decade of the twentieth century — also
struggled with the implications of these works. In a later conversation reported by his wife
Françoise Gilot, Picasso asserted that these “pure” pictures required supplements to
function as painting. Referring to the fragmented forms of bodies, musical instruments,
and words that began to appear in the Cubist pictures he made immediately after his
were intended to produce meaning in other discursive frameworks. Within the sphere sojourn in Cadaqués (plates 1, 5), he explained, “I painted them in afterwards. I call them
of modern art, J. M. W. Turner’s seascapes (fig. 2), James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturnes ‘attributes.’ At that period I was doing painting for its own sake. It was really pure painting,
(fig. 3), Edgar Degas’s landscape monoprints, Gustave Moreau’s ink drawings and water- and the composition was done as composition. It was only towards the end . . . that I
7
color sketches, and Hermann Obrist’s theater sets, among other images, have been held brought in the attributes.” In the works that followed those almost abstract images made
up as important forms of proto-abstraction. But these works do not declare a break in Cadaqués, Picasso incorporated the shattered forms of representation as if to tether his
with subject matter, even though, in so rigorously defining it in terms of atmospheric paintings securely to the world of things. Failure to do so, it seems, threatened painting
and experiential qualities that it is all but obscured, they provide an important foundation itself. He would later declare that abstraction was impossible: “There is no abstract art.
for the emergence of abstraction in the twentieth century. (Landscape above all, wrote You always have to begin with something. Afterwards you can remove all appearances of
2
the art historian Henri Zerner, was “a laboratory for abstract art.”) This exhibition and reality, but there is no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an
8
book, however, do not, as several previous studies of abstraction have done, attempt to indelible mark.”
inventory such precedents for abstraction avant la lettre, though of course they have Writing to Marc in October 1911, Kandinsky described Picasso’s pictures, which
3
bearing on the story being told. he had seen in photographs sent to him by Kahnweiler, as “split[ting] the subject up and
Before December 1911, when Kandinsky exhibited Komposition V (Composition V; scatter[ring] bits of it all over the picture,” an effect that was “frankly false” but nonetheless
9
plate 18) in Munich, in the first exhibition of the Blaue Reiter, the artists’ group he had an auspicious “sign of the enormous struggle toward the immaterial.” While Picasso in
co-founded, it seems to have been impossible for artists to step away from a long-held 1910 could paint a picture approaching abstraction but could not embrace it philosophi-
tenet of artistic practice: that paintings describe things in a real or imaginary world. cally, Kandinsky conversely could develop a theoretical rationale for abstraction but could
In the years preceding, there was some sense of building consternation around this issue, not make the final break. The sheer difficulty of thinking such a radically new idea — think-
of possibilities tested and rejected and of ideas yet unrealized, but it was only in the annus ing within a new paradigm — is evident in the publication history of Kandinsky’s hugely
10
mirabilis that followed Kandinsky’s showing of Komposition V that abstract pictures began influential tract On the Spiritual in Art (plate 10). The manuscript existed in draft form as
to be exhibited publicly as art, and their philosophical justification developed in treatises early as 1909. In the first two published editions, which appeared in December 1911 and
and criticism. It was only then, one could say, that the idea of an abstract artwork began to May 1912 respectively, Kandinsky sets abstraction as a goal, clearly and effectively advocat-
11
make sense. And for some artists and intellectuals, abstraction not only began to seem ing a practice that would advance “deeper . . . into this territory.” He nonetheless balks
12
plausible but took on the character of an imperative. in embracing in the present day an art that breaks “the tie that binds us to nature.”
13
“Today,” he writes, “the artist cannot manage exclusively with purely abstract forms.”

I
Indeed, in his paintings of that date, referential form is almost but not quite effaced. But
his opinion changed in the next two years (as did his painting), and by 1914, in a manuscript
for a planned fourth edition of On the Spiritual in Art that was forestalled by World War I,
he edited this paragraph to allow for the possibility of a fully abstract art. “Today,” the new
14
phrasing read, “only a few artists can manage with purely abstract forms.” In a lecture
T W O S T O RI E S from the years immediately preceding 1912 convey some sense of how difficult written (but never delivered) some years later, the artist commented on the difficulty of
it was to arrive at the novel idea of an abstract picture. this intellectual passage: “As yet, objects did not want to — and were not to — disappear
In 1910, while Pablo Picasso was summering at Cadaqués, Spain, he made a small group altogether from my pictures. First, it is impossible to conjure up maturity artificially at any
of strange pictures that looked unlike any that had preceded them. Leaving behind the particular time. . . . I myself was not yet sufficiently mature to be able to experience purely
15
hillsides of reversible cubes that he had made the previous year in Horta, he now worked abstract form without bridging the gap by means of objects.”

14 15
 4. PABLO PICASSO . Femme nue debout (Standing 5. PABLO PICASSO . Self-portrait of the artist in his studio
female nude). 1910. Charcoal on paper, 19 × 12 3⁄8" on the Boulevard de Clichy, Paris, with the drawing Femme nue
(48.3 × 31.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum debout mounted on the wall behind him. December 1910.
of Art, New York. Alfred Stieglitz Collection Gelatin silver print, 5 13⁄16 × 4 9⁄16" (14.7 × 11.6 cm). Musée Picasso, Paris

II
Then, should there have been any doubt that something was happening, Paris newcomer
Picabia thrust his own stake in the ground of this terrain at the same Salon d’Automne in
which Kupka’s Amorpha works appeared. He, too, showed a gargantuan tableau, La Source
(The spring, 1912; plate 86), which invoked a figurative reference through its title but was
nonetheless an audacious declaration of abstraction. He simultaneously placed a closely related
I N 1911, H O W E V E R, T H E A S S A U LT WA S L A U N C H E D. canvas of the same scale — Danses à la source II (Dances at the spring II, 1912; plate 87) —
27
That December in Munich, Kandinsky exhibited Komposition V, a monumental mani- at the Salon de la Section d’Or, which also opened that October. Picabia had made both
festo for abstraction that maintained only the most inscrutable traces of figural references. works the summer before, which he had spent almost continuously in the company of
That same month, he published On the Spiritual in Art, his loquacious paean to the ineffable. Apollinaire. At the time, the poet was working on his booklet Les Peintres cubistes, on Cubism
28
Three Kandinsky works — none quite so ambitious or so determined in their evacuation and its aftermath; the impact of the 1912 exhibitions led him to make major late-stage
29
of referential content as Komposition V— were shown a few months later in Paris, at the changes in the proof of the book. Divided between venues, Picabia’s irreverent pair of
16
Salon des Indépendants, in March-May of 1912. Delaunay, who had been corresponding pictures invoked Picasso’s work through their faceted planes and rose-period palette, then
17
with Kandinsky since late 1911, and had studied French translations of On the Spiritual seemed to travesty its refinement in their billboard scale, crude paint handling, and pulsing
18
of Art made by Sonia Delaunay-Terk and Elisabeth Epstein, understood these works to eroticism, as well as through their defiant breach of the figurative tradition, which Picasso
19
herald the birth of abstraction. “This inquiry into pure painting is the current problem,” had maintained. One critic wrote that Picabia had “set the year’s record for fantasy” with
30
wrote Delaunay to Kandinsky. “I do not know any painters in Paris who are truly seeking “ugly” works that “evoke incrusted linoleum.” At the same Salon d’Automne, Léger showed
20
this ideal world.” Soon afterward the French artist made his own near-abstract works, his Femme en bleu (Woman in blue, 1912; plate 89), a work that, rather than describing a
his Fenêtres (Windows) series (plates 31–33), and showed them in July 1912 in the Ausstellung woman dressed in blue, seems to efface the figure with large arcing planes of that color,
des Modernen Bundes, in the Kunsthaus Zurich, at the invitation of Bund co-founder Arp so that the only remaining trace of human reference is the painting’s vertical orientation.
21
(who had in turn obtained his address from Kandinsky). These works similarly announced The work’s indecipherability was played out in the press, the subject of jest, but savored
a new form of picture-making to key viewers in German-speaking realms. The Swiss artist nonetheless: the work was reproduced on the front page of the newspaper Éclair, the pub-
Klee, who saw the Zurich show, proclaimed in a review that Delaunay “has created the lic was invited to decipher it, responses were published through October, until the mystery
31
type of autonomous picture, which leads, without motifs from nature, to a completely was “solved” in a letter from Léger himself on November 3.
abstract life form. A structure of plastic life, nota bene, almost as far removed as a Bach On a different shore, in February 1912, Dove, who had been living and working in
22
fugue is from a carpet.” Westport, Connecticut, showed works so distilled from natural motifs as to approach
And then in October of that year, at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, a traditional forum abstraction in a one-man show in the gallery at 291 Broadway, New York, established by the
32
for scandalous artistic gestures, the Czech painter Kupka dispensed with all lingering photographer and aesthetic impresario Alfred Stieglitz (plate 81). Dove was no stranger to
hesitations, displaying two paintings, Amorpha, chromatique chaude (Amorpha, warm chro- European modernism: he had spent fifteen months in France in 1908–9, and on his return had
matic) and a second, more monumental one called Amorpha, fugue à deux couleurs (Amorpha, been struck by the first American exhibition of work by Picasso, which Stieglitz had hung at
fugue in two colors; plate 24), that declared independence from traditional subject matter. 291 in 1911. The show included a drawing Picasso had made the winter before (fig. 4), which
The paintings were filmed for Gaumont newsreels and shown across Europe and the appears like a talisman of things to come in a number of photographs showing him or his
23
United States. For some critics these works only offered proof of the dangers of such a friends seated proudly below it (fig. 5). The photographer Edward Steichen, who had partici-
departure: Gustave Kahn called them “games which are not within everyone’s reach,” and pated in the selection of the works for this show, described it as “certainly ‘abstract’ nothing
33
Louis Arnould Grémilly asked, “With their clear musical titles, don’t they demonstrate but angles and lines that has got [to be] the wildest thing you ever saw laid out for fair.”
24
the difficulty with titles and the worry of escaping from painting for painting?” And then the flow of events thickened: toward the end of 1912, Léger began his
In considering Kupka’s role as the one who took this particularly public step in defiantly abstract Contrastes de formes series (Contrasts of forms; plates 92–95). La Femme en
breaching convention, it may be relevant that he was something of an outsider in the sphere bleu was probably one of two works he sent to the Armory Show, which opened in New
34
in which he worked: he was trained in Prague and Vienna in a heady Symbolist milieu. York in February 1913. The Americans Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright
Yet in Paris, far from being the isolated émigré figure he is frequently portrayed as in the showed abstract works at the Munich Neue Kunstsalon in June 1913 and at the Bernheim-
literature, he was a member of artistic circles in which some of the most experimental Jeune gallery, Paris, in October of that year, preludes to Russell’s grand contribution to
ideas about avant-garde practice were discussed (giving him an insider/outsider status that the Salon des Indépendants the following spring, a canvas bounded by a border of painted
seems particularly fertile for paradigm-shifting thought): he lived next door to Raymond stripes more than eleven feet high (plate 77); and in March 1913, Apollinaire described
Duchamp-Villon, and during 1911 and 1912 was a sometime guest in the Sunday salons held a series of pictures, distilled from images of trees (plate 252), by a Dutch artist working
35
at Jacques Villon’s house in Puteaux, frequented by a changing cast of characters including in Paris, Mondrian, as “a very abstract Cubism.” Each of these early efforts stood as a
Marcel Duchamp (Duchamp-Villon’s and Villon’s brother), the Delaunays, Picabia, Léger, manifesto, a proclamation of the viability of abstraction.
25
Apollinaire, Gino Severini, Albert Gleizes, Emile Le Fauconnier, and Jean Metzinger.
Although those who gathered there have often been labeled the “Puteaux group,” and
identified with the rigid second-generation Cubism of Gleizes and Metzinger, something
else was clearly also in the conversational mix: a core group of participants in these Sunday
26
salons were to play important roles in abstraction’s early history.

16 17
 6. VASILY KANDINSKY . Cover of Der Blaue Reiter (The blue rider). 1914.
Illustrated book, ed. Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Line block reproduction
after woodcut, 11 7⁄16 × 8 3⁄4 × 13⁄16" (29 × 22.2 × 2 cm). Second ed.
(Munich: R. Piper). The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York

III
in 1922, the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung (First Russian art exhibition) at the Van Diemen
gallery in Berlin, organized by David Shterenberg and El Lissitzky, which introduced a
Western audience to the Soviet avant-garde after the borders had been closed to the cultural
products of the new Bolshevik state in the years since the Russian Revolution of 1917.
There are also many less-well-rehearsed examples of the dissemination of ideas in the
T H E I N V E N T I O N O F A B S T R A C T I O N is usually told through stories about individual actors, history of early abstraction. The Russian literary scholar Aleksandr Smirnov, for example,
stories contained in discrete narrative silos, each with some claim to priority. One example an old friend and distant cousin of Delaunay-Terk’s from her native St. Petersburg, visited
is Kandinsky’s famous reminiscence, often repeated in the literature: he tells of seeing one the Delaunays in France during the summers of 1912 and 1913, spending time at their country
of his own paintings leaning on its side, at dusk, sometime after his arrival in Munich in house in Louveciennes. Returning to St. Petersburg, Smirnov spread the word of the new
1896. Incapable of discerning its content, he was nonetheless captivated by the forms and art he had seen in France, lecturing in July 1913 at the Brodiachaia Sobaka (Stray dog),
colors of this mysterious work — an event prompting the realization “that objects harmed an avant-garde gathering place in the years before the Revolution, on Robert and Sonia
36
my pictures.” Yet despite the epiphanic quality of this story, it took Kandinsky years more Delaunay’s work and the theory of simultaneous contrasts. “Poster-poems” by Delaunay-
to produce an abstract picture himself. And it is perhaps more significant that he recounted Terk, which combined bright arcs of color with an array of verbal fragments, hung on the
41
the tale in 1913, just as abstraction had become a public fact. walls, and Smirnov showed a copy of La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France
It was this drive to speak of individual priority in invention that led the makers of (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of little Joan of France, 1913; plate 41) that he had
42
so many of the early works in this exhibition and catalogue to backdate them, sometimes brought with him. Some nonmeetings had a charged significance too: Mondrian, it seems,
37
to several years earlier than they were actually made (plates 22, 30, 35, 129, 135, 136, 310). was so eager to avoid Picasso’s charismatic influence — and insistence that painting repre-
Indeed, there is something else misleading about speaking of the invention of abstraction sent things — that he would recall taking pains to avoid meeting the Spanish artist in the
through stories of solitary protagonists: what we have already heard here suggests that years 1912–14, when he lived in Paris. “Let them call it too abstract,” he wrote of his work
abstraction was incubated, with a momentum that builds up and accelerates, through a relay in a letter to Theo van Doesburg, his defiance belying the strength of his feelings on the
43
of ideas and acts among a nexus of players, those who make these artistic gestures and those subject. It is a distinctly modern interconnectedness that emerges here — one that is
who recognize and proclaim their significance to a broader audience. It was an invention decidedly international, facilitating intellectual dialogue between established cultural capi-
with multiple first steps, multiple creators, multiple heralds, and multiple rationales. tals like Paris, host to an international community of intellectuals, and centers in Central
In its emergence within a rich social network, abstraction resembles many other and Eastern Europe and the United States.
intellectual developments studied by sociologists. In his book The Sociology of Philosophies, Abstraction’s network was fostered in the years immediately before World War I by
Randall Collins looks at the social dimension of innovation, countering the Romantic ideal a new modern culture of connectivity. In trains, automobiles, and steamships, people were
of the genius as an inspired loner. Instead, he argues, innovation is found in groups: it arises travelling internationally in numbers far greater than ever before. National boundaries became
out of social interaction — conversation, sharing ideas, validation and competition. Moreover, porous as people crossed them with new ease — and until the outbreak of World War I,
44
the right sort of group, Collins suggests, can radicalize intellectual innovation, prompting most European countries had minimal passport requirements. Telegraphs, telephones, and
individuals to take positions far more extreme, far more convention defying, than they radio relayed news of events quickly across the globe. The sinking of the Titanic in 1912, thanks
38
would alone. This sort of productive sociability may also lead to multiple, almost simulta- to wireless telegraphy, was not only followed achingly by those on ships just out of reach of
neous inventions of the same or related things: many investigators converging on the same the ocean liner but was also one of the first news stories to be reported virtually simulta-
finding is a common pattern of scientific discovery, as the sociologist of science Robert K. neously with the event. These same communication technologies allowed for the synchroni-
39
Merton has suggested. Abstraction, with almost simultaneous “first” pictures appearing zation of times and clocks across distance, which facilitated the establishment of coordinated
in a scattering of places, would seem to follow this model. The answer to the question international markets and set the stage for the vertiginous growth of a modern speculative
45
“How do you think a truly radical thought?” seems to be: you think it through a network. economy and commodity culture. In Paris in 1912, Henri Poincaré hosted an international
Abstraction’s pioneers, despite being far flung, are far more interconnected than is conference that established a method for transmitting accurate radio time signals around the
generally acknowledged. Certain recognized points of contact suggest this: the revelatory world, and on July 1, 1913, the first time signal to be broadcast globally was sent from the
46
exhibition of Italian Futurism organized by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti at the Bernheim- Eiffel Tower, a key step in adopting a universal standard time. All of this fed a more inter-
Jeune gallery, Paris, in 1912, whose visitors included Duchamp, Picabia, the Russian artist national, global sense of one’s world. The network of sociability built by transit pathways,
Aleksandra Ekster, and the American artist Joseph Stella, even before the show traveled to the proliferation of print media, and new forms of communication allowed for the movement
London and then around Europe; the huge International Exhibition of Modern Art held at the of ideas and images across a broad terrain, a development crucial in abstraction’s incubation.
New York Armory on Lexington Avenue in 1913, which mixed European and American artists Within the art world specifically, the idea of a transnational avant-garde was fostered
and pulled in the crowds; Vladimir Tatlin’s visit to Picasso’s Paris studio in March 1914, by the rampant proliferation of journals. Art historian David Cottington estimates that
where he saw the Spanish artist’s constructed sculptures and then returned home to display there were approximately 200 “little reviews” of art and culture in Paris alone in the decade
47
“assemblages of materials” of his own in his studio in May, more than a year before exhibiting preceding World War I. Certain forums were particularly significant, one such being the
his famous Uglovye kontr-reliefy (Corner counter-reliefs; fig. 16, plate 219) at the 0.10 exhibi- Blaue Reiter almanac (fig. 6), founded by Kandinsky and Marc and first published in Munich
tion in Petrograd in December 1915; the arrival of Marinetti in Russia in 1914, to simulta- in May 1912, then again in a widely distributed second edition in 1914. Marc wrote in the
neous acclaim and disparagement so divisive as to precipitate the dissolution of Russian prospectus for the publication that it would “show the latest movements in French, German
40
Cubo-Futurism and the formation of its radically innovative successor movements; and later, and Russian painting. Subtle connections are revealed between modern and Gothic and

18 19
 7. GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE . “Lettre-Océan” 8. MARIUS DE ZAYAS . “Femme! (Elle).” Poem
(Ship-to-ship letter). Les Soirées de Paris no. 25 and typographic layout with illustration
(June 15, 1914). The Museum of Modern Art “Voilà Elle” by Francis Picabia. Repr. in 291 no. 9
Library, New York (November 1915). The Museum of Modern Art
Library, New York

53
primitive art, connections with Africa and the vast Orient, with the highly expressive, pictures which no longer have any real subject matter” (sujet véritable). On the subject
spontaneous folk and children’s art, and especially with the most recent musical develop- of Apollinaire, Delaunay wrote coyly to Kandinsky in a letter of April 3, 1912, “I will speak
48
ments in Europe and the new ideas for theater of our time.” In its very conception, then, to you sometime about the subject in painting, about an exciting conversation at the home
54
the almanac aimed at a dissolution of boundaries — between national schools, temporal of Apollinaire, who has begun to believe in us.”
realms, and media. Kandinsky declared it his goal to “show that something was happening For all Apollinaire’s media savvy, his personal social reach was perhaps more remarkable.
49
everywhere.” An emergent modern exhibition culture — for this was the dawn of interna- Picabia’s wife, Gabrielle Buffet, considered Apollinaire “the most social, the most well-known,
55
tional loan shows — played a parallel function: pictures moved across borders to new audi- the most far-reaching man of his time.” He was a close friend of Picasso’s, the one who
56
ences; images were distributed through print media; people took off in trains and cars. introduced him to Georges Braque in 1907. He recommended that Kupka read the color
57
Kandinsky and Marc conceived the Blaue Reiter this way, with almanac and exhibiting soci- theory of Paul Signac. He often accompanied Picabia on road trips in one of the latter’s
58
ety as complements to each other. By September 1911, Kandinsky was corresponding with magnificent fleet of cars, and Buffet recalls the pair’s endless discussions of abstraction.
artists in cities throughout Europe, soliciting both pictures for exhibitions and essays and He lived for a while with the Delaunays in late 1912, a key moment for our topic, and it was
images for publication. he, too, who introduced Sonia Delaunay-Terk to the poet Blaise Cendrars, an encounter
59
In bringing people into contact, some figures play a disproportionate role. The author that would result in their collaboration on La Prose du Transsibérien (plate 41). In January
Malcolm Gladwell uses the term “connectors” to describe charismatic, socially adept peo- 1913, he traveled with Robert Delaunay to Germany for the painter’s show there at the
ple with contacts dispersed among many different social pools, and he stresses their impor- Sturm gallery in Berlin, where he held court with the German Expressionists and gave an
50 60
tance in understanding how certain ideas may become suddenly, precipitously popular. influential lecture on modern painting; for the occasion, the duo published a catalogue
Connectors do the social work of many, facilitating relays of ideas among their broad of Delaunay’s paintings, prefaced with a dedication (reproduced in the present volume
acquaintance. One key actor in the development of abstraction was Kandinsky himself; on the half title page) and a poem, “Les Fenêtres” (The windows), by Apollinaire. When a
another was certainly Apollinaire. The poet began to publish art criticism in 1910, following delegation of Italian Futurists made an extended visit to Paris, he put up the poet-painter
61
a long line of French writers who had done so, including Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Carlo Carrà in his offices at Les Soirées de Paris, and the two saw each other almost daily,
Stéphane Mallarmé, and the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. Apollinaire quickly then produced graphically innovative free verse in quick succession —Apollinaire the
62
established himself as a formidable master of the new print-media world. In the period first calligramme (fig. 7), Carrà parole in libertà (plate 112). (He even managed to broker a
63
from 1910 to 1914, he wrote a column that appeared most days in L’Intransigeant, a paper gallery contract between the Italian and Kahnweiler.) Through Picabia, Apollinaire met
with a daily print run of about 50,000 copies; and another for Paris-Journal, with a daily the Mexican artist Marius de Zayas, who was scouting for Stieglitz in Paris in 1914, and
51
run of 40,000 copies. In 1912, with friends, he launched a review of his own, Les Soirées de whose rapturous report of the meeting prompted Stieglitz to begin an exchange of journals
52
Paris, which published poetry and cultural commentary of all sorts — reviews, feuilletons, with Apollinaire through the mail. Not surprisingly, Stieglitz’s journal 291 (fig. 8), appearing
64
and Apollinaire’s polemical pieces on the direction of painting. in 1915, was modeled in part on Les Soirées de Paris (fig. 7).
With these combined forums, Apollinaire played a key role in publicizing the incre- The network through which the idea of abstraction spread is suggested in this book
mental developments in the new modes of artistic abstraction. And in some respects he in a diagram (front endpapers), made with a tip of the hat to the famous chart that graced
may have precipitated them: in the Francophone context, even before Kupka’s and Picabia’s the cover of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s catalogue for his Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition, at
audacious showings in the fall of 1912, it was Apollinaire who threw down the gauntlet, The Museum of Modern Art in 1936 (plate 452). Vectors link individuals who knew each
declaring in the first, February 1912 issue of Les Soirées de Paris that “the new painters paint other, suggesting the unexpected density of contacts among abstraction’s pioneers. Key

20 21
 connectors can be discerned: they appear at the center of a burst of rays and include Kandinsky, to a kind of abstraction — to a coldness inevitable in conceptions which are determined
69
Apollinaire, Stieglitz, Marinetti, and Tristan Tzara. Perhaps not surprisingly, at least on reflec- by completely false and rigid pictorial ideas.” Yet in an essay of the same year, Charles
tion, what many of these individuals have in common is the fact that they served, among Baudelaire broached a new sense of abstraction as a language separate from nature, humanly
their other roles, as editors of little reviews, building a network in their cross-border corre- created and therefore essentially artificial: “In nature there is neither line nor color.
spondence, commissioning manuscripts, requesting reproductions, and soliciting support. Line and color have been created by man. They are abstractions. . . . The pleasures we derive
in them are of a different sort, yet they are perfectly equal to and absolutely independent

IV
70
of the subject of the picture.” Wilhelm Worringer’s book Abstraktion und Einfühlung
(Abstraction and empathy), of 1908 — actually written in 1906, as a doctoral thesis —
reintroduced the term at a moment in which it resonated with conversations within the
international avant-garde. Although Worringer did not speak of contemporary art, he
described a “will to abstraction” in both primitive and modern societies, a common expres-
A P O L L I N A I R E WA S P E R H A P S T H E F I R S T to give a name to this new phenomenon, distinguish- sion of anxiety and vulnerability in relation to an external world not confidently mastered.
ing it from a generalized Cubism just weeks after Kupka displayed his Amorpha paintings The “aim of abstraction” — here Worringer picked up on the meaning of the word as an
at the Salon d’Automne, though he did not mention Kupka by name. The term he bestowed — isolating operation — was “to wrest the object of the external world out of its natural
Orphism — was both awkward and decidedly anachronistic: it paid homage to the mythical context, out of the unending flux of being, to purify it of all its dependence upon life,
Greek poet/musician Orpheus, who had appeared in one of Apollinaire’s poems of 1911 as i.e. of everything about it that was arbitrary, to render it necessary and irrefragable, to
65 71
an avatar of “pure poetry.” Evoking too the Orphic cults and the Alexandrians, the writers approximate it to its absolute value.” The text had great impact, especially in German
of the classical period who fascinated Apollinaire, it suggested a fusing of ancient mystery avant-garde circles around Berlin’s Sturm gallery; its importance for Kandinsky is signaled
66
and modern image. A spate of appellations for this new form of picture-making soon in his declaration of “our sympathy, our understanding, our inner feeling for the primitives”
72
followed: pure painting (Apollinaire, Delaunay, Kandinsky, and the critic Maurice Raynal), on the opening page of On the Spiritual in Art, and his use of the term “abstraction” in
new pictorial realism and variations thereof (Delaunay, Léger, Malevich, and Mondrian), that essay probably also shows its influence. Some of the connotations Worringer found
objectless painting (Klee and Malevich in German and Russian respectively) — each indica- in the “will to abstraction” — separation from the world, purity, arbitrariness, ideas of the
67
tive of subtle shifts in philosophical orientation. The artists pursuing nonrepresentational absolute — have likewise lingered.
painting splintered into an array of grouplets with neologistic self-nominations like “Rayism,”

V
“Synchromism,” “Suprematism,” “Unism,” and so forth. Even so, as abstract pictures began
to appear, the difficulty that observers and participants apparently had in finding a suitable
name for them suggests how they continued to defy easy categorization.
The word that we have come to use as shorthand for painting that jettisons the depic-
tion of things, the one that I use here — abstraction — had been in existence long before
this moment. Georges Roque and Jean-Claude Lebensztejn have recently traced its evolution T H E P U B L I C A P P E A R A N C E O F T H E FI R S T A B S T R A C T PA I N T I N G S was matched by equally
68
from early senses as a verbal act meaning “to remove,” “to isolate.” By the sixteenth century, momentous developments in other spheres. New types of music celebrated sound, indepen-
the word had the sense of “considering in isolation,” of “separating accident from substance” dent of compositional or harmonic development; Futurist parole in libertà (words in liberty),
(Lebensztejn), so that one might, for example, begin to define the “abstract sciences” as Russian zaum (transrational poetry), and Dadaist sound poetry privileged the graphic and
those removed from practical application or empirical study — that is, from real-world aural quality of language over communicative comprehensibility; and dance abandoned its
concerns. Here abstraction functions as an operation, the act of abstracting one thing from traditional grounding in costumed narrative to stress the kinesthetic movement of the body.
another, and this understanding is still present in early abstract works in which traces of Scholars have long noted the historical coincidence of these phenomena but not often the
descriptive subject matter abound. At times the figure seems to be aggressively effaced, fact that they were deeply linked, not only through their similar challenges to the conventions
layered under paint applied in a different mode (Kupka’s Mme Kupka dans les verticales of their respective genres but also through important relationships among key figures in
[Mme. Kupka among verticals, 1910–11; plate 25] or Léger’s Femme en bleu); at others, shat- these different disciplines, relationships that facilitated the movement of ideas across media.
73
tered fragments of recognizable elements emerge as if to maintain ties between Marc tells a famous story about Kandinsky’s embrace of abstraction. He first met
the artwork and things in the world (Delaunay’s Fenêtres or Kandinsky’s Komposition V), the Russian artist in Munich, at a New Year’s Eve party celebrating the incoming year
or vestiges of a natural or figurative motif seem to provide an armature for a new type of of 1911. That night they began an intense and productive friendship that would include
painting (Picabia’s Source, Morton Schamberg’s Figure (Geometric Patterns) [1913; plate 80], the cofounding of the Blaue Reiter group and the publication of the Blaue Reiter almanac.
Mondrian’s “The Trees” [1912; plate 252]). These elements are common enough to suggest Two days later, on January 2, 1911, these new friends, along with Aleksei Jawlensky, Marianne
that evacuating all ties to the natural world was not key to the models of abstraction first Werefkin, and Kandinsky’s companion, Gabriele Münter, attended a concert of music by
proposed around 1912. the Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg. The crowd was dumbfounded but the artists
When the term “abstraction” does appear in the sphere of art, in the nineteenth century, were dazzled; over drinks after the concert, they excitedly discussed the congruence they
it was often deployed pejoratively to mean overly intellectual or theoretical. Charles Clément, recognized between Schoenberg’s music, his theories (his writing had been published in the
for example, writing in 1868, described the work of the followers of Jacques-Louis David program), and Kandinsky’s painting. On January 14, in a letter to the artist August Macke,
as characterized by “a tense style, an overspecialized search for shape which can only lead Marc wrote of the evening, “Can you imagine a music in which tonality (that is, the adherence

22 23
 PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS © 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome.
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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation: pl. 105. Art Resource, N.Y.: pl. 147. Inventing Abstraction, 1910 – 1925
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Edited by David Frankel
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© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Whitney Museum of © Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid: pl. 303. © 2012 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artist’s Rights Society (ARS), New This book is typeset in Placard Condensed, Hoeffler Text, and Freight Sans.
American Art, New York, photo Sheldan C. Collins: pl. 181. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. York: pl. 5. Courtesy: The Art Institute of Chicago: pl. 1. Scala/ The endpapers are set in Futura. The paper is 150gsm Luxosamt.
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris: p. 19, Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art: pl. 304. Art Resource, N.Y.: pl. 2. © RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource,
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167, 168, 170, 402, 403, 443. Courtesy Arnold Schönberg Center, Courtesy private collection courtesy the Aargauer Kunsthaus © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y., image Art Resource,
Ester Coen’s essay was translated from the Italian by Marguerite Shore. Hubert Damisch’s and
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©
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© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Resource, N.Y.: pl. 223. pl. 146. [Link]
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© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. N.Y.: pls. 208, 294, 309, 441. Documents: p. 33, fig. 16; pl. 205. [Link]
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© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.: pl. 153. Courtesy State Museum of Contemporary Art–Costakis Collection,
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© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Schriftgutarchiv: pl. 439. Courtesy State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg: p. 27, fig. 17; pls. 200, Cover: Liubov’ Popova. Zhivopisnaia arkhitektonika (Painterly architectonic; large detail). 1917. Oil on canvas,
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation: pls. 88, 94, 129, 130. Courtesy Charlotte Douglas, N.Y.: pl. 219. 202, 207, 213, 218, 310, 311.
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. © 2012 The Estate of Arthur G. Dove, courtesy Terry Dintenfass, Inc. Courtesy State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow: pl. 212. 31 �⁄₂" × 38 �⁄₈" (80 × 98 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Philip Johnson Fund. See plate 224
Courtesy Staatsgalerie Stuttgart: pl. 169. Courtesy Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: pl. 81. Courtesy and Courtesy Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam: p. 27, fig. 13; pls. 36, 209,
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y., image Art Resource, 210, 216. Endpapers: the diagram on the front endpapers maps the nexus of relationships among the artists represented
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich: pls. 9, 13, 366, 367. N.Y.: pls. 82, 83. © 2012 Stichting Kröller-Müller Museum: pls. 272, 308.
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. © The © Werner Graeff ’s Estate. Courtesy the Museum Wiesbaden, photo © 2012 Stiftung John Neumeier: pls. 348–52.
in the exhibition and book Inventing Abstraction 1910–1925. Vectors connect artists whose acquaintance with one
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, photo Vladimir Ed Restle: pl. 407. © Tate, London, 2012, courtesy Tate, London/Art Resource, N.Y.: another during these years could be documented; the names in red are those with the most connections within
Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovots: pl. 19. © 2012 Duncan Grant/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, pl. 141. Courtesy Tate, London/Art Resource, N.Y.: p. 15, fig. 2.
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. London. Courtesy and © Tate, London, 2012: pl. 171. Courtesy: a Courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections, photo Giuseppi Penisi this group. The chart was a collaboration among the exhibition’s curatorial and design team and Paul Ingram,
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow: pl. 20. private collection: pl. 174. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven: (Foto Brunel): pl. 128. Kravis Professor of Business, and Mitali Banerjee, doctoral candidate, Columbia Business School. Contributors
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. pl. 175. © 2012 Peyton Wright Gallery. Courtesy: Montclair Art Museum, N.J.:
Zentrum Paul Klee: pl. 369. © HIP/Art Resource, N.Y./National Archives, London: pl. 138. pl. 74. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian at MoMA were: Allegra Burnette, Masha Chlenova, Ingrid Chou, Leah Dickerman, Sabine Dowek, Jasmine Helm,
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/PICTORIGHT, © 2012 Vilmos Huszar/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ Institution, Washington, D.C.; photo Lee Stalsworth: pl. 76.
The Netherlands. Photo Marcin Muchalski, © Diamond Shot Beeldrecht, Amsterdam: pl. 264. Courtesy Gemeentemuseum Den Albright-Knox Art Gallery/Art Resource, N.Y.: pl. 77.
Nina Léger, Jodi Roberts, and Catherine Wheeler. The back endpapers list the artists, and their birthplaces,
Studio: pls. 265, 266. Courtesy Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Haag: pl. 268. Photo Marcin Muchalski, © Diamond Shot Studio: © 1910, 1938 Universal Edition A.G., Vienna/UE 2291. Courtesy Arnold birth and death dates, and the countries where they worked during the period covered by the exhibition.
photo Peter Cox: pl. 267. pl. 377. Schönberg Center, Vienna: pl. 8.
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. © 2012 Johannes Itten/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ © 1912, 1940 Universal Edition A.G., Vienna/PH 229. Courtesy Arnold Halftitle: Guillaume Apollinaire. Dedication preceding Apollinaire’s poem Les Fenêtres (Windows) in R. Delaunay,
Rachel Adler: pl. 121. PROLITTERIS, Switzerland: pl. 361. Courtesy Kunsthaus Zürich: Schönberg Center, Vienna: pl. 7.
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. pl. 364. Courtesy Adrien Sina: pl. 360. the catalogue for a Delaunay exhibition at Der Sturm gallery, Berlin, January–February 1913. 13 �⁄₈ x 10 �⁄₈" (34 x 27 cm).
Fondazione Torino Musei/Studio Gonella: pls. 96–99. © 2011 Kunsthaus Zürich, all rights reserved: pl. 126. Courtesy Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Bereich Sondersammlungen:
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy Kunstmuseum Basel, photo Martin P. Bühler: pls. 409–38. pl. 353. Paris: André Marty, 1913. The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. The text reads in translation, “I Love the
Mart — Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Courtesy © L & M Services B.V. The Hague: pl. 30. © 2012 Georges Vantongerloo/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ Art of today because I Love/Light above all and all people/Love Light above all/they invented Fire/G A”
Rovereto: p. 8; pls. 120, 122, 123. © 2012 L & M Services B.V. The Hague, 20120503. Courtesy: CNAC/ ProLitteris, Switzerland: pl. 274. Courtesy: The Solomon R.
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome: pls. 113, MNAM/Dist. RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, N.Y.: pls. 39, Guggenheim Foundation: pl. 275. Tate, London/Art Resource,
114. © and courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y., 43–49, 51. Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, N.Y.: pl. 276.
Title: Anton Giulio Bragaglia. Cambio di posizione (Change of position). 1911. Gelatin silver print, 5 �⁄₁₆ x 7 �⁄₁₆"
image Art Resource, N.Y.: title page, pls. 109, 110. Mass.: pl. 50. Courtesy the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: pl. 189. (12.8 x 17.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. © 2012 L & M Services B.V. The Hague, 20120809: pls. 38, 42. Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, photo
Courtesy Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Art Resource, N.Y.: pl. 104. © 2012 Estate of Rudolf von Laban. Courtesy: Centre national de la Sheldan C. Collins: pl. 152. Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. danse: pls. 354, 355. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Bereich © 2012 Mary Wigman Foundation, Cologne. Courtesy Mary-Wigman-
Courtesy a private collection: pl. 111. Sondersammlungen: pls. 353, 356. Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin: pls. 358, 359.
© 2012/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy L’Illustration: pl. 84. Courtesy Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein: pl. 34.
Courtesy a private collection: pls. 115–19. Photo Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y.: p. 15, fig. 3. Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven: pls. 78, 150. Printed in Spain

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