BEELDEN IN VEELVOUD

ays break through. Kandinsky himsclf distinguished three centres in this
composition, of which the middlc and most important one, 'floats in the
air rather and looks as though it is surrounded by vapours*.38 Some of the
waveüke patterns in this painting (fig. 7) resemble abstractions of Leonardo's
already fairly schematic clouds or waves (fig. 8). There are also striking
iconographical similarities. Kandinsky's compositions are full of reminiscences
of the kind of figurativc clcments that on closer inspection cmerge
out of Leonardo's drawings — thimderbolts, panic-stricken figures, trees
bendine o to the o°round
and devastated cities. And even the addition of the
recurrent motif of the boat with oars, which does not occur in the Biblc
story of the Delugc or in the Apocalypse, suggests that Kandinsky was following
Leonardo's recommendations.
The similarities bctween Kandinsky's and Leonardo's dcluges and storms
then are not merely iconographical, but above all visual. During the epoch
when Kandinsky was producinghis compositions, Leonardo wasvicwedas
a rich and prestigious source of inspiration for many; it was within this tradition
that Kandinsky followed the cxample of the 'grosse, vielseitige
Meister', as hè had called him. Like Merezhkovsky's Leonardo, hè acted as
the champion of new ideas that were quite unfamiliar to most of hts contemporaries.
And just as Da Vinci's drawings were treated by art historians
as a group, so Kandinsky presented his first seven Compositions as a coherent
series based on the theme of purifying catastrophes, completing the series
in 1913 with Composition Wand Composition VIL
Richter, Merezhkovsky and Péladan had all pointed out that Leonardo
must have planned a painting of the deluge and one of a storm. They also
added however that this project was never carried out, so that only Leonardo's
dcscriptions and drawings remain. Perhaps it was this remark that
prompted Kandinsky to recreate the storms that Leonardo had foreseen,
unleashing them fourcenturies later even more powerfully — and incolour.
(Translated by Donald Gardner)
466 Paul van den Akker