SOURCE: "Kandinsky's Book of Revelation," in Art in America, December, 1982, pp. 105-09, 157-59.

In the following essay, Radcliff examines the apocalyptic vision in Kandinsky's seminal essay, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and compares it to the biblical book of Revelation.

I would like to propose that Expressionism enjoys a special relationship with apocalypse. This is not a new idea. The Expressionists themselves came up with it. Nor, I must admit, does this notion permit us to draw very clear lines. What modernist style has not served as a more or less sensitive seismograph of our century's millennial tremors? High modernism aside, every plateau of the culture offers a platform from which to broadcast the jitters endured awaiting the final demise of everything—or of everything deemed significant. "End of Consumer Culture?" asks an editorial in ZG, a London-based art magazine with an earnestly street-level view of our situation...