Front Cover:
Picture with an Archer by Vasily Kandinsky. 1909. Oil on canvas, 68 7/8 x 573/8". Museum of Modern Art, New York.
ON THE COVER: Riding against a backdropof fluid, metamorphic trees,buildings, and peasants, ahorseman on yellow steedtakes aim with his bow. In theleft foreground stand men inRussian dress; behind themare a house, a domed tower,and heaving mountains. Thepainting‘s abstract, patchworksurface and unusual,saturated colors, at oncesomber and vibrant, nearlyoverwhelm the figurativeforms. The scene is confusingand hard to make out. Thelone rider wielding his archaicweapon thrusts into thescene, mounted on a yellowand green steed practicallyflying forward, and he givesthe painting its name. A compositionwith potential connectionsto folktale or fantasyis darkened and transformed.When Kandinsky painted thework in the early twentiethcentury, he was living in Germany,far from home. Twoyears before “Picture with anArcher,” he had written an influentialtext in which he laidout an argument for abstractionin art. While the paintingportrays a recognizable landscape,it reflects his increasingmovement toward pure abstraction,accompanied hereby a threat of violence, dislocation,and fragmentation.
