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- Klänge (German; Sounds) is a book by the Russian expressionist artist Wassily Kandinsky. Published in an edition of 345 in Munich in late 1912, the work is a famous early example of an artist's book, containing both poems and woodcuts by the artist, forming two parallel strands, each involving a loose progression. One of three seminal books that Kandinsky published between 1911 and 1912 - the other two being Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Der Blaue Reiter Almanac that he edited with Franz Marc - Klänge was to have a direct and lasting influence on Expressionism, Dada and Russian Futurism. [Kandinsky] began writing prose-poems, composing 38 altogether between 1908 and 1912. In 1913 these were published by Piper Verlag under the title Sounds, accompanied by colour and black-and-white woodcuts. in these Dadaistic poems, Kandinsky employs a method borrowed from young children's early attempts at speech; through constant repetition and babbling words are emptied of their meaning, so that only the pure sound remains. It is Kandinsky's aim to uncover this "pure sound" of language, the sound which "sets the soul vibrating." "We fought for painting, but painting alone will not suffice. I had the idea of a synthetic book that removed half of the old, narrow conceptions, breaking down the walls between the arts.... and finally prove that the problem of art is not a problem of form but a problem of spiritual content." Kandinsky, (en)
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