The Artefact (Artifact)

For my artifact project I have chosen Kandinsky’s “Picture XVI, The Great Gate of Kiev”.
The analysis and research of it have shown very interesting facts.

History and Research:

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.

Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses color and form in a non-representational way. In the very early 20th century, the term was more often used to describe art, such as Cubist and Futurist art, that depicts real forms in a simplified or rather reduced way—keeping only an allusion of the original natural subject. Such paintings were often claimed to capture something of the depicted objects’ immutable intrinsic qualities rather than its external appearance. The more precise terms, “non-figurative art,” “non-objective art,” and “non-representational art” avoid any possible ambiguity.

Wassily Kandinsky – “Picture XVI, The Great Gate of Kiev” (1928)

Stage set for Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in Friedrich Theater, Dessau
(1928, Tempera, watercolor and ink on paper) (Colony, University of Koln, Theatre Sammlung, Germany)

“Sketch for Picture XVI, The Great Gate of Kiev”

4 April 1866 in Kiev was an assassination attempt upon the life of Tsar Alexander II. The attempt was unsuccessful and in honour of Tsar rescue, was organized competition of the gates projects.
The project from Viktor Hartmann (Russian architect and founder of the “Russian Style” in architecture) was done in a old Russian style. The gates were giving an impression of Kiev as a old Russian capital. But later on the competition was cancelled and successful project was not realized (The Gates were never built!!!).

Viktor Hartmann – “Plan for a City Gate of Kiev”

In 1874, best friend of Viktor Hartmann – Modest Musorgsky (Russian composer) creates his very famous suite of ten piano pieces “Pictures at an Exhibition” which was dedicated to his friend. This suite has a piece called “The Great Gate of Kiev” which is dedicated to his friend’s unrealized project.

Pictures at an Exhibition (Pictures from an Exhibition – a Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann) is a famous suite of ten piano pieces composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874. It is generally acknowledged to be Mussorgsky’s greatest solo piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. It has also become known through various orchestrations and arrangements produced by other musicians and composers.

Mussorgsky composed the work in commemoration of his friend, the artist and architect Viktor Hartmann, who was only 39 when he died in 1873. The original working title for the suite was Hartmann. It was probably in 1870 and through the highly influential critic Vladimir Stasov that Mussorgsky had met Hartmann, whose devotion to the cause of an intrinsically Russian art must have made him a congenial spirit. It was at Stasov’s instigation that a posthumous exhibition of over 400 of the artist’s works was mounted in the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, in February and March 1874, and Pictures at an Exhibition, composed a few months later, takes the form of an imaginary musical tour around such a collection.

In 1928, after 54 years Wassily Kandinsky being in Germany creates his collection of the paintings dedicated to Musorgsky’s suite “Picture at an Exhibition” and shows them in Friedrich Theatre in Dessau. One of them has a name “The Great Gate of Kiev”.

Finally in 2006, Austrian architects from the company called “Delta” started creating the project as a result of which on the same place in Kiev will appear a huge world trade centre (132 meters height). It will be named “The Great Gate of Kiev” in a memory of Musorgsky’s suite. The buildings will be completed in 2008. Did they know about Hartmann’s project?
The project will be realized after 142 years of the first idea of Russian architect Viktor Hartmann!

“The Great Gate project”

To reproduce Kandinsky’s painting I have drawn it in my workbook and also I have created a short presentation in Flash.