Sounds by Kandinsky
Sounds (Klänge) was published in Munich in 1912 and is one of the most famous examples of an "artist's book" (livre d'artiste). This work, which Kandinsky himself called a "musical album," consists of fifty-six Expressionist woodcuts and thirty-eight prose poems. The woodcuts were created between 1907 and 1912, while the poems were written in 1909–1911. The artist said that the choice of the book format arose from an "inner necessity," which seems to have inspired and guided him in his further search for artistic synthesis.
The texts in the book resemble Dadaist poems, though Kandinsky also employs an interesting technique borrowed from children's early attempts to speak: constant repetition deprives a word of its meaning, and only the pure sound remains, which makes "the soul vibrate."
Sounds is one of Kandinsky's three publications that appeared before World War I. Unfortunately, Reinhard Piper, the publisher, was afraid of poor sales and was reluctant to publish the edition. Thus, fewer than 120 copies were issued over the course of two years. The planned Russian edition never materialized. Nevertheless, European and Russian avant-garde artists, Dadaists, and Futurists read the book, and it had a certain impact on the development of art in the pre-war period.
Hans Arp, who was considered one of the founders of the Dada movement, wrote the following in his review of Sounds: "Kandinsky has showed the rarest spiritual experiments in these poems. Out of 'pure existence' he has derived the beauty never previously heard in this world. This is what has never happened to words and sentences before…"
