351

TA 10 (2+3) pp. 351357 Intellect Limited 2012

Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research
Volume 10 Numbers 2 & 3
2012 Intellect Ltd Miscellaneous. English language. doi: 10.1386/tear.10.2-3.351_7
Christoph KltsCh
SCAD Savannah
the point as transmedia
transaction: remarks on
Kandinskys aesthetics and
the notion of life
When Wassily Kandinsky turned his back on representation, two ontologi-
cal realms became accessible: the inner, i.e. spiritual, emotional, psychological,
and sensual realm, and the abstract, i.e. formal and mathematical realm. Most
modern aesthetic theories stem from here as they reject aesthetic value through
representation or master narratives and favour a more scientific agenda (think,
i.e. of political, sociological, psychological, anthropological, structuralistic,
constructivist, mathematical, biological amongst other approaches). But at the
ontological bottom of any scientific theory we have to make a choice: do we
focus on unsplittable entities, which governed by laws constitute reality or
do we focus on processes which explain changes, transitions, movements, etc.
1
In many fields we still search for the grand unifying theory that could
synthesize both: matter and energy, location and movement, brain and mind.
And new phenomena puzzle us ontologically: i.e. what is information or
memory, both technical and biological? Kandinsky opened a door. Behind
that door lays an aesthetic investigation of a realm which is beyond repre-
sentation. I want to argue that the notions of abstract or spiritual are falling
short and that instead deep philosophical questions are raised. In the form of
a sketch, Kandinskys point will be placed between Max Bill, Henri Bergson
and Michel Henry.
1. Alfred N. Whitehead is
the most prominent
figure to argue for a
scientific model that
focuses on process
rather than substance.
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Christoph Kltsch
352
2. The philosophical
aspects of information
aesthetics and its
application to art
production can be
found in Kltsch
(2007a). The article is
an English summary
of the German
book publication:
Computergrafik:
sthetische
Experimente zwischen
zwei Kulturen.
Die Anfnge der
Computerkunst in den
1960er Jahren (2007b).
3. Setzen wir anstelle
des Begriffes
Elementarwrterbuch
das Wort
Zeichenrepertoire und
anstelle des Begriffes
Kompositionslehre das
Wort Manipulations-
repertoire, so
erkennt man in
der Formulierung
Kandinskys
nichts weniger
als die seherische
Vorwegnahme
informations-
theoretischer
Programmkunst (in
Stiegler 1970: 3941).
In 1954 Max Bense was invited to teach information at the Ulm School of
Design by his friend and concrete artist Max Bill, who was one of Kandinskys
students at the Bauhaus.
2
During that time Bill worked on the introduction
for the third German edition of Kandinskys Punkt und Linie zu Flche. In
Point and line to plane (first published in German 1926 during his Bauhaus
period 19221933) Kandinsky speaks of grammatical structures, numerical
terms and a future science for aesthetics:
The multiplicity and complexity in expression in the case of the tiniest
form achieved by only minimal variations in size offer even the non-
specialist a convincing example of the expressive power and expressive
depth of abstract forms. As these means of expression are developed
further in the future, and as the receptivity of the spectator increases,
more precise concepts will become indispensible and will certainly,
in the course of time, be arrived at by measurements. Mathematical
expressions will here become essential.
([1926] 1994: 544)
The relation between Kandinskys call for measurement and early compu-
ter art has been addressed numerous times, i.e. art historians Max Imdahl
(1968: 281) contrasted Benses aesthetic with Kandinsky; Cumhur Erkut
pointed out the parallels between computer art and Kandinsky (2000),
computer artist Joseph H. Stiegler (1970: 3941)
3
sees Kandinsky as a forerun-
ner of computer art and Frieder Nake refers to Kandinskys notion of an inner
necessity (1974: 48f.).
Kandinsky remarkably extracts the point from the sentence Today I am
going to the cinema. at the beginning of Point and line to plane.
Today I am going to the cinema.
Today I am going. To the cinema
Today I. am going to the cinema
. Today I am going to the cinema
([1926] 1994: 540f.)
By moving the point that functions as a full stop in the first sentence into the
middle of the line of words, the point becomes disruptive and alters the read-
ing of the original sentence. In the last line the point is extracted from the
sentence and gains autonomy. Kandinsky leaves us with the form of a written
sentence of pre-modern-times without a full stop and an isolated graphi-
cal element a point that is now freed to gain other meanings. In Little
articles on big questions from 1919, he describes how our accustomed eye
responds dispassionately to punctuation marks (Kandinsky [1919] 1994: 423),
that outer expediency and practical significance of the entire world around
us have concealed the essence of what we see and hear behind a thick veil.
And This thick veil hides the inexhaustible material of art

(Kandinsky [1919]
1994: 423). Kandinsky goes on by saying In these few lines I shall dwell only
upon one of these beings, which, in its tiny dimensions approaches nothing,
but has a powerful living force the point ([1919] 1994: 423). Kandinskys
description of the geometrical point as union of silence and speech identifies
punctuation as a zero gravity centre from which meaning is constructed. The
TA 10.2&3_Kluetsch_351-357.indd 352 3/13/13 10:17:46 AM
The point as transmedia transaction
353
4. In 1913, Max Scheler
announced the
Bergson reception in
Germany, which had
elements of hype, must
be overcome (Gnther
1991). Hilary Fink (1999)
gives an overview of
the relation between
Bergson and Russian
Modernism 1900-
1930. She claims that
during the 1920s and
1930s of the twentieth
century almost all
intellectuals in Russia
were acquainted
with the basic ideas
of Introduction to
metaphysics (1903)
and Creative evolution
(1907) by Bergson.
pauses between words are as important as the chain of words itself. The point
belongs to language and signifies silence. But furthermore:
In doing so, I abstract the point from its usual conditions of life. It has
become not only not expedient, but also unpractical, nonsensical. It has
begun to break through the conventions of its existence; it is on the
threshold of an independent life, an independent destiny. The thick
veil has been rent from top to bottom. The astounded ear perceives an
unfamiliar sound, the new utterance of what once seemed a speechless
being.
(Kandinsky [1919] 1994: 423)
And finally, says farewell to the now insane punctuation mark and sees
before him a graphic and painterly sign. The point, liberated from its coer-
cive destiny, has become the citizen of a new world of art (Kandinsky [1919]
1994: 423). Kandinsky extracts what is called in science a primitive notion
point from nature, architecture, dance, music, woodcut, amongst others
([1926] 1994: 554). The point is an element that appears in all kinds of artistic
media. It is remarkable that Kandinsky extracts the point from artistic media
and not from everyday objects or phenomena.
Being interviewed by Karl Nierendorf in 1937, Kandinsky answered his
question whether abstract art no longer has a connection to nature:
No! And no again! Abstract painting leaves behind the skin of nature,
but not its laws. Let me use the big words cosmic laws. Art can only
be great if it relates directly to cosmic laws and is subordinated to them.
One senses these laws unconsciously if one approaches nature not
outwardly, but-inwardly. One must be able not merely to see nature, but
to experience it. As you see, this has nothing to do with using objects.
Absolutely nothing!
(Kandinsky 1937: 807)
Here, Kandinsky vehemently opposed a nave form of materialism.
While Kandinsky searched in Munich for a connection with the inner
nature in The Spiritual in Art (1911), the Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure
held his Third Course of Lectures in General Linguistics (19101911) in
Geneva and Henri Bergson,
4
the French philosopher of vitalism and imma-
nence, said in the lecture on The perception of change given at Oxford
the same year:
My present, at this moment, is the sentence I am pronouncing. But it is
so because I want to limit the field of my attention to my sentence. This
attention is something that can be made longer or shorter, like the inter-
val between the two points of a compass. For the moment, the points
are just far enough apart to reach from the beginning to the end of my
sentence; but if the fancy took me to spread them further my present
would embrace, in addition to my last sentence, the one that preceded
it: all I should have had to do is to adopt another punctuation.
(Bergson 1997: 151)
At this point it is interesting how Bergson treats the punctuation as a means
to extend attention. Roman and Medieval Latin, for instance, do not know the
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Christoph Kltsch
354
5. This contraction can
be seen in Bergsons
famous cone diagram
in the third chapter of
Matter and Memory
(1990: 152).
punctuation as a closure for sentences. The sentence full stop is a rather modern
invention. How was it to read and write without full stops and punctuation?
Where is the idea of a stop, a centre, an anchor coming from? Bergson speaks of
a contraction as one of the five senses of subjectivity (Deleuze 1990: 53). As we
shall endeavor to show, even the subjectivity of sensible qualities consists above
all else in a kind of contraction of the real, effected by our memory (Bergson
1990: 34). That contraction, where the distance between perceived object and
brain is zero, is the point where affection arises, subjectivity and personality are
established, perception and memory are connected.
5
Very much like Kandinsky,
the point is thus a key element that needs to be exposed to a force. When a point
is moved and leaves a trace in memory and when drawn or danced, sound and
moulded it becomes a line. That which we can describe only mathematically
and therefore exists only as abstraction becomes in these very distinct thinkers
Kandinsky and Bergson an origin for art, life and spirituality.
Two exemplary positions in regards to Kandinskys work should be
mentioned. In 1957, Peter Selz drew a direct connection between Bergson and
Kandinsky. Selz states: His philosophy finds perhaps the closest parallel in
the thinking of Henri Bergson (1957: 128). And he supports his comparison
with the following Bergson quote:
art, whether it be painting or sculpture, poetry or music, has no other
object than to brush aside the utilitarian symbols, the conventional and
socially accepted generalities, in short, everything that veils reality from
us, in order to bring us face to face with reality itself.
(Bergson 1911: 128)
Selz points out that for Kandinsky, Realism=Abstraction and Abstraction=
Realism. He describes how Kandinsky derives the line from the de-
contextualized hyphen and the interlinkage of pure painting, pure music and
pure poetry. Selz roots this connection in the nineteenth-century theory of
Gesamtkunstwerk and gives Kandinskys Der gelbe Klang (1909) as exam-
ple. But, Selz misunderstands the transmedia aspect of Kandinskys extrac-
tion of the point from different art forms, which then creates a link that goes
deeper than the construction of an external Gesamtkunstwerk. Jrgen Claus
in contrast gives in 1991 a placement of Kandinsky within the noosphere:
About 100 years ago, the cosmic code entered the paintings of Cezanne
and van Gogh in the form of a painted code. These paintings embody
an awareness of the philosophical, religious and existential anchorage
of the cosmic code. Cosmic data have been dissolved into a field of
painted energies, no longer seen as earthly things, no longer perceived
as mere objects or events. The cosmic data have been melted down
together by a transfer of energies. [] Kandinskys [] search for a
new science, the science of art as he called it, started with the proto-
element of painting: the point, reducing the element of time to the
point as its briefest form. [] Kandinsky came astonishingly close to
defining points (picture elements) as the equivalents of pixels, as close
as one could have come to reaching this definition at that time.
(Claus 1991: 121)
Jrgen Clauss interpretation of Kandinsky is a consequent extension of his
embracement by the computer artist in the 1960s. But it was 1922 when Pierre
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The point as transmedia transaction
355
6. The resemblance of
that image of thought
is striking to Deleuze
and Guattari, the Body
without Organs (BwO)
and form of an egg.
That is why we
treat the BwO as
the full egg before
the extension of
the organism and
the organization of
the organs, before
the formation of
the strata; as the
intense egg defined
by axes and
vectors, gradients
and thresholds,
by dynamic
tendencies
involving energy
transformation
and kinematic
movements
involving group
displacement, by
migrations: all
independent of
accessory forms
because the
organs appear and
function here only
as pure intensities.
(Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 153)
Teilhard de Chardin (18811955), inspired partly by Henri Bergsons Creative
Evolution, coined the notion of the noosphere. The idea of a sphere consist-
ing of human thought has multiple forms during the twentieth century:
from esoteric Gaia mysticism to expanded consciousness and system theory.
To extract the point from written language, and to introduce it into painting
as a formal element, is radical in its intermedia approach a term coined in
the 1960s by Dick Higgins in relation to poetry (1966). During the 1960s, Gene
Youngblood developed the concept of expanded cinema (1970) and Bense
postulated a generative aesthetics (1965). The 1960s was dominated by a strong
tension: on the one hand, the scientific, cybernetic, sociological and system-
based theory, and on the other, the expanded consciousness, hippy culture
and flower power, radical exploration of processes in art, and intermedia. Like
no other period, the 1960s also stand for conceptualism. Computer art, for
instance, was born from mathematics and pure concepts. As a poet, Kandinsky
anticipated central ideas of the 1960s, when he extracted the point from a
sentence about the cinema to find a precise numerical law for art. Kandinskys
compositions follow an inner logic; this logic unfolds on the canvas, follows
colour theory and geometry, and is born in the painters mind. The canvas, the
theory and the mind are interwoven. This Web inspired early computer graphic
artists. It at least in theory translated easily into the cybernetic circles and
flow chart architecture of the mainframe computing age.
Furthermore Kandinskys extraction of the point at the beginning of his
central Bauhaus publication stands in stark contrast to Paul Klees deduction
of the point at the beginning of his Form und Gestaltungslehre (1971) during
his Bauhaus period 19201931 (1971: 3f.). For Klee, the point is grey because it
is neither black nor white, and black and white at the same time, it is neither
at the top nor at the bottom, and both at the same time; it is undimensional.
For Klee the elevation of the point to a central Gestaltung/shaping is a
cosmos-genetic. And thus, the point resembles the egg.
6
While for Klee the
analogy to life, with the cell structure of eggs is very explicit on the following
pages in his book, the connection to life in Kandinskys book is less literal.
Michel Henry describes that process as follows:
Yet, if the point is situated in its place in a written text and plays its
normal role, it is accompanied with a resonance that one might call its
resonance in writing. Its displacement within the sentence and then
outside of the sentence in an empty space produces a double effect:
the writing-resonance of the point diminishes, while the resonance of
its pure form increases. At any rate, these two tonalities have appeared
now where there was only one, two modalities of invisible life within
us when there was one single objective form in the world and there still
only is one point before us. The radical and now undeniable dissocia-
tion of the external and internal elements of painting occurs through the
invincible force of essential analysis, if, as in the course of the experi-
ment that we just carried out, it is the case that the external remains
numerically one while the internal is duplicated and has become a
double sound.
(Henry and Scott 2009: 48)
Michel Henrys interpretation of Kandinsky focuses on the notion of life.
As a philosopher of radical phenomenology, he aims to overcome the
epoch of world by reaching into its internal force: life. In the tradition
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Christoph Kltsch
356
7. Williams points
out that the earlier
work by Henry can
be understood
independently of his
thought on Christianity:
John Mullarkey, kindly
commenting on an
earlier version of this
article, has pointed
that this Christian
reference is neither
ubiquitous nor perhaps
necessary in Henrys
work (Williams et al.
2008: 267).
of philosophers who search for inner forces such as: Will (Schopenhauer),
Power (Nietzsche) and Spirit (Hegel), Henry has the closest resemblance
to Bergson (lan vital) and Gilles Deleuze (Plane of Immanence/A life).
While Henry shares a strong grounding in Christianity with Kandinsky, this
common root is not essential for the current analysis of Kandinsky.
7
For
Henry, Kandinskys search for interiority can be described in the follow-
ing equation: Interior=interiority=invisible=life=pathos=abstract (Henry
and Scott 2009: 11). When an artist, or art, for that matter, looks inward
it creates an inner space, in which that which is invisible is about to be
made visible. At the same time that which is invisible is governed by forces
of life. In an auto-affection (pathos) it becomes consciousness and can be
expressed abstractly. Henry has:
two seemingly mad ideas: 1. The content of painting, of all paintings,
is the Internal, the invisible life that does not cease to be invisible and
remains forever in the Dark, and 2. The means by which it expresses
this invisible content-forms and colours are themselves invisible, in
their original reality and true sense, at any rate.
(Henry and Scott 2009: 48)
The invisible life as auto-affect pathos, as an underlying force existing prior
to subjectivation, thus establishes the resonance and rhythm between the
picture plane and the interior of the world. It is through the notion of life
that Henry sees the connection between the seen and the seeing, between
the internal and external; it is his answer to the question of how the pre-
established harmony between mind and world can be explained.
referenCes
Bergson, Henri (1911), Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, New
York: The Macmillan Company, p. 157.
(1990), Matter and Memory (trans. W. S. Palmer), New York: Zone Books,
p. 34.
(1997), The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Secaucus, New
Jersey: Citadel, p. 151.
Claus, Jrgen (1991), The cosmic and the digital code, Leonardo, 24: 2,
pp. 11921.
Deleuze, Gilles (1990), Bergsonism (trans. Barbara Habberjam), New York:
Zone Books, p. 53.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, 12th ed., Minneapolis, MN [u.a.]: University of Minnesota
Press, p. 153.
Erkut, Cumhur (2000), Abstraction Mechanisms in Computer Art, Helsinki: Art@
Science.
Fink, Hilary (1999), Bergson and Russian Modernism 19001930.
Henry, Michel and Davidson, Scott (2009), Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky,
London: Continuum, p. 48.
Imdahl, Max (1968), Modi im Verhltnis zwischen sthetischer und seman-
tischer Information. Anmerkungen zu Max Benses Aesthetica (1965), in
Simon Moser (ed.), Information und Kommunikation. Referate und Berichte der
23. Internationalen Hochschulwochen Alpbach 1967, Mnchen: Oldenbourg,
pp. 14549
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The point as transmedia transaction
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Kandinsky, Wassily ([1919] 1994), On point, in Kenneth C. Lindsay and
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Capo Press.
([1926] 1994), Point and line to plane, in Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter
Vergo (eds), Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York: Da Capo
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([1937] 1994), Interview with Karl Nierendorf, in Kenneth C. Lindsay
and Peter Vergo (eds), Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York:
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Klee, Paul (1971), Form und Gestaltungslehre, 3rd ed., Basel [u.a.]: Schwabe,
p. 3.
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(2007b), Computergrafik: sthetische Experimente zwischen zwei Kulturen.
Die Anfnge der Computerkunst in den 1960er Jahren, Vienna: Springer.
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philosophische Forschung, 45: 2, pp. 25766.
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Contributor details
Contact: Prof. Art History, SCAD Savannah, GA, USA.
E-mail: ckluetsc@scad.edu
Christoph Kltsch has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
TA 10.2&3_Kluetsch_351-357.indd 357 3/13/13 10:17:47 AM
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