Enya: How Can I Keep From Singing?

Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944), *Gekreuzigter Christus (Crucified Christ)*, with the artist’s monogram (lower right); signed, dated and inscribed ‘KANDINSKY 1911 Murnau’ (on the reverse), oil on board in the artist’s painted frame, 14¼ x 10 in. (36 x 25.6 cm.), Painted in 1911, Image Source: Christie’s

“Founded on an interest in folk art and in particular in the Bavarian folk tradition of Hinterglasmalerei or under-glass painting that Kandinsky and Gabrielle Münter had discovered in Murnau, Kandinsky, in addition to trying the technique himself, began to adopt many of the glass painter’s themes and subject matter in his own art. Adopting their freer, bolder and more simplistic use of colour as a means of furthering his own painting, Kandinsky recognized in the nave and folk tradition of glass painting a more powerful, freer and more direct means of expression.

Taking the nave format of many of the glass paintings that Kandinsky painted at this time, Gekreuzigter Christus also adopts the Christian motif of Bavarian glass painting, and has its frame decorated in a similar Bavarian folk style…Adopting the mystical and nave forms of both Russian icon paintings and Bavarian folk art, Kandinsky here depicts the image of the crucified Christ as a kind of apparition set against a radiant abstract sky. With its purple sun and blue mountains fusing into a glorious interaction of free form colour the painting, like the folk art that inspired it portrays not so much of the way the world looks as the way such a scene might feel to a devoted believer.”
READ FULL ESSAY: Christie’s

    How Can I Keep from Singing?

    My life flows on in endless song;
    Above earth’s lamentation,
    I catch the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn
    That hails a new creation;
    Thro’ all the tumult and the strife
    I hear the music ringing;
    It finds an echo in my soul—
    How can I keep from singing?

    What tho’ my joys and comforts die?
    The Lord my Saviour liveth;
    What tho’ the darkness gather round?
    Songs in the night he giveth.
    No storm can shake my inmost calm
    While to that refuge clinging;
    Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
    How can I keep from singing?

    I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;
    I see the blue above it;
    And day by day this pathway smooths,
    Since first I learned to love it,
    The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
    A fountain ever springing;
    All things are mine since I am his—
    How can I keep from singing?
   
 by Pauline T. & Robert Lowry, 1869