SOURCE: "Secession," in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 4, Summer, 1997, p. 729.

In the following translation of an 1899 review, Kandinsky assesses the work shown at the 1899 Munich Secession's international exhibit.

Kandinsky's review of the 1899 Munich Secession's international exhibition is his first major art essay.¹ It appeared in Novosti dnia (News of the Day), 4 November 1899, a prominent Moscow daily newspaper covering local, national, and international events, with occasional features on literature and art. Its discovery revises the status given to Kandinsky's 1901 article "Critique of Critics,"² which has been credited by Western scholars as his first essay on art.³ "Secession"'s publication thus gives us some of the earliest indications of Kandinsky's views on art, when he was a student in Munich. It was written only weeks before the approaching new century at a time when Kandinsky witnessed profound changes in art whose impact would be felt for years to come.

In "Secession...