19th century progressed, many writers and thinkers-- among them, the visionary german philosopher friedrichietzsche-- came to believe european culture was in a desperate crisis, that its beliefs and institutions were on the point of dissolution, and that a period of war and revolution would follow, fought out on a hitherto unimaginable scale by the mass armies of the industrial west. these ideas occupied the thoughts of artists, too. among them, vasili kandinski. this is kandinski's apocalyptic composition number 6, painted in 1913. two years before, in munich, kandinski had formed a new group of artists-- der blaue reiter, the blue horseman. this theme of an impending apocalypse was a central concern not only of kandinski, but of blaue reiter artist franz marc. here in kandinski, it's expressed in a mystical abstraction. but the explicit meaning, conveyed in the metaphor of a great animal disaster, comes out in franz marc's fates of animals, painted in 1913. predictably, this painting has often been treated as a prophecy of the great war, out of which came the collapse of the austro-hungar