Italo Castella + Zhu Shengyiyu

 

Transference - from Kandinsky to Architecture to Digital Suprematism

The project explores transferring aesthetics from an artist's paintings into a house for Musician and then re-transferring back to the digital artwork. It is a collaborative work between Italo Castella and Zhu Shengyiyu. Some form of aesthetic structure is used in this exploration. The final artworks are two series of colour digital images and another series of Black and White digital images. 

The lineage of Kandinsky’s work

In order to understand the conceptual development of Kandinsky’s work, we can situate the thoughts behind Suprematism.

Picasso was honoured as the pillar of Suprematism, together with Filippo Marinetti. One could trace Picasso's works for an understanding of the abstract art of Suprematism. We could see the progress of Picasso’s investigation into the language and the primary thing about painting, they gave Malevich and his Suprematist investigators a way forward at the death of figurative painting, like the Pheonix, Art would rise from the ashes of death, a new form of painting will reign supreme, with new meaning, from itself and for itself.

Malevich saw the end of painting and a new beginning, through the work of Picasso. Perhaps, a revolution was the psychological climate of that time. Everyone had something new to declare and discover. Picasso’s persistent investigation of what is painting and the language of painting pointed Malevich towards a certain direction. Here Malevich saw the reductive approach of Picasso, from rawness with the dark outline of his Rose period (Circus Period) of the outcast people, typified by the ‘Family of Saltimbanques’ (1905), the outcasts stand as objects separate from each other without much emotion, like statues. Perhaps the message is that life made each one of us into unconnected individuals, to the multi-faceted nude figures of the ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ (1907) opening the floodgate of modern art, reducing figures into lines and receding shades culminating in the dissolving of ‘Portraits of Ambrose Vollard’(1910), then to the collaging of paint, text and paper, ‘Bowl of Fruits and Guitar’ (1920), the subjects had disappeared from the canvas only the title gives a hint of the subject, perhaps the mind could see beyond the thing itself. 

Modern Art is a mind game of concept and questioning, finding ways to reach the edge of Art, some call it the end game, Marcel Duchamp, an avid chess player, was the first to reach the furthest of the boundary of Art with his ‘Fountain’ signed and dated ‘R. Mutt 1917’. Perhaps the question of ‘What is Art?’ has come to an end with Duchamp. However, some are still engaged in that question, trying very hard to push beyond the concept, as we see it, they have not gone further. They periodically reiterate the same in different forms. One such piece is Lana Newstrom’s invisible art, which was exhibited and purchased, and was later reported to be a hoax. One other piece, one by Martin Creed, ‘Work No 127: The Lights Going On And Off’, is up for sale for £70,000, but there was no taker. I guess the stunt by Damien Hirst in 1990, the piece ‘A Thousand Years’, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding on a rotting cow's head, was sold to Saatchi for a report one million, was the few pieces that were actually sold.

Malevich saw where this reductionist phenomenon would bring the art subject into the deep valley, ending in the death of the figurative and eventually sealing the fate of art as representation. From the Nietzchean nihilistic existentialist thoughts, the Suprematists as the creators, resurrect new meaning, though condemned to eternal recurrence, the meaning was seen in the struggle for new meaning, and the process is all there is. The meaning is the process! As we will soon see the death of figurative painting encased in Malevich’s White on White (1918), a tilted white square painted on white canvas. Robert Rauschenberg repeat a similar act in his various panels of ‘White Painting’ in 1951 which spurred John Cage to execute his answer to music.  No sound was composed in 1952 by John Cage, in his notorious piece "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds" for any instruments. They both see the end and the furthest boundary of art and music. The birth of a new era perhaps can be signified by Malevich’s ‘Black Square’, 1915. From here, lines, curves, squares, circles, rectangles, and free-formed shapes, became the idiom of the new painting. Suprematism took the world by its horn, jolting people’s senses to face the new reality of anonymity and the non-objectivity world. 

From Malevich, Suprematism gave a new direction to architecture, he experimented with a series of works, translating art into architecture, through his thought of a new ‘non-objectivity’ art, free from its utilitarian function, breaking free from the influence of economic, political, and religious functions. Utilitarian phenomena on art is a disease of art, Malevich once proclaimed. Art for itself and architecture for itself is the highest form which Malevich was seeking. Malevich called his exploration of this new architecture, Arkhitektons.

The painting paints itself, freed from the adage of the past, freed from any association except those abstractions from the mind. Kandinsky’s work is both mythical and subjective to his own interpretation. He professed Art contained within ‘Spirituality’. Like music, it speaks of a higher truth. Colours take on meaning and emotion as he gives them weight and definition. Music, he so honoured it, became the text which he used as a tool for the abstraction of his painting, through his subjective interpretation. From Malevich, we see that Art can be translated into Architecture, giving it legitimacy and the creative power to speak of a new reality. The architecture was stripped of its past tradition and freed. 

Abstraction of Kandinsky

Kandinsky’s work of lines, shapes and colours was chosen as the premise for the exploration and translation of art into an architectural language to be used and demonstrated in a dwelling project for a musician. Kandinsky’s very special form of abstraction derived from his understanding of music, free of things of nature and the past, but of things of the abstract which were forms of virtual creation derived from his subjective universe. As paintings should never be a copy of other things, not nature, not human, not everyday things, but of themselves. 

Asymmetric Balance

As in most work, even behind the veil of classical paintings, there lies a structure of balance. If we reduce the painting into lines of directions and weight in terms of their hue values, brightness and contrast, we can see a certain structure within the composition of all paintings. There are some arrangements that excite us and others create a certain stability and stasis. In Kandinsky’s work, we see an Asymmetric balance composition, that constantly moves and changes as one’s eyes glide across the canvas. One huge brightly coloured geometrical shape balanced with a small dark geometrical shape connected visually with a suggestive line. 

 

A quick study sketch by ShengYiYu Zhu of Kandinsky’s Composition 8.

Line, Curve and Axis

The lines featured prominently in the painting, directing a series of geometrical to align, situate and interact with the lines. Here we see how various dissimilar shapes come together as if there is a certain traction that binds them together forming a bigger whole. Lines as axes, as a form of connection, as a directional element is the lexicon of Kandinsky’s artwork. Curves give rhythm and sinews to an otherwise straight-edge space. From large to smaller curves they give direction and movement.  

Geometric shape

Perhaps the most basic shapes that can be constructed with mathematical precision is that of geometrical shapes, therefore they become the basic elements used in Kandinsky’s art pieces. It starts with a point, then a line, then two lines, then a triangle, then a square, a rectangle, a trapezoid, a rhombus, or perhaps a point then a circle. They are the most primitive of shapes and forms. It is from here that all forms can be derived from them. It is also from here that a new language of forms can spring forth and write the history of abstract painting. Abstraction is a logical construct of the human mind. Somehow, Kandinsky and the like Malevich professed a wholly new definition of what is Art, like the Nietzschean Overman, honey flowed from his hands. Kandinsky believed that Art has spirituality.

Fragmentation

As we view his work, we see fragments of shape and objects floating in space or overlapping with another element. They float freely. The triangles of broken shards of glass exploded into the space of infinity. There was no human object except those geometrical objects. Perhaps it is also the subconscious rendering of the vast unknown space, that of the universe, of the multiple perfect spheres floating in the dark mystical beyond. Invisible forces are keeping them in their position while moving them in a repetitive motion. The fragments are held together by invisible forces of movement and stasis, perhaps represented by lines and centres, much like the universe.

Anchors

Yes, some of these fragments would have to settle and be anchored on other elements, such as line the line as the foundation and elements settling and anchoring on them. Some anchors by overlapping while others hinged lightly on lines and curves. A variety of shapes with different colours settle and balance.

Fluidity

As with music, it flows from one to another without breaks. Kandinsky’s composition starts and flows continuously from one element to another through overlapping elements, lines and directional suggestions using line weights, asymmetric balance, and other mechanisms. Our visual cues flow and hop from one area to another, all the while we are immersed in his universe where abstraction is the narrative of his art. Like music, the abstraction leads back to our emotions of exhilaration, dismay, elation, peace, sadness, anxiety, anger, or bliss, or serenity or wondrous emptiness.

Abstracting Abstraction into Architecture

From Composition 8, some patterns were derived backed with the underlining concern of creating a new language of Art, from its death and rebirth, we distilled the following:

• Asymmetric Balance

• Line, Curve and Axis

• Geometric shape

• Fragmentation

• Anchors

• Fluidity

A house for the Musician

A two-storey house of two geometrical shapes, one stable and another rotated, punctured by an axis from one into another and terminated on the outside with a subtraction in a two-dimensional circle. Planes of different shapes attached themselves to the axis, all miraculously anchoring themselves with the line. 

A return to the two dimension

Using the three-dimensional model of the house, a virtual camera explores different angles with varying focal lengths, perspectives and axonometric were generated with different shadings of the model, such as wireframe, X-ray and hidden lines. At times the model is also sectioned to allow one to explore the inside of the model. Sectional planes could be vertical, horizontal or slanting. The lines also take on different forms, thin continuous or dash lines. 

With the captured images, certain areas were given weight with black fill or sometimes various greys. The images are presented with different layering, alternating between two-dimensional and three-dimensional. 

Through the digital medium, the final images started from simple to complex interactions where the mind is no longer able to grasp the initial simplicity of forms. It is led to trace and move from one line to another to another, pausing as they become shapes. Energy moves, pauses, explodes, coalesces, races, and dissipates in a geometrical landscape of transference between the two and three dimensions.

THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED HERE