The aim of this thesis is to study Viking Eggeling’s artwork Diagonal Symphony together with Eggeling’s own art theoretical writings. This method of reading Eggeling’s art theoretical writings with the aim to try and create a deeper understanding of his art and especially Diagonal Symphony is a new approach in Eggeling’s art historical discourse. The thesis starts with a description of how the field of art history has understood Eggeling and his art primarily through art historical research aimed at Hans Richter. I then argue that the method of understanding Eggeling’s art through his own art historical writings is a way to create an independent understanding about Eggeling’s art away from it’s explanatory relation with Richter. To understand and to analyze the relation between Eggeling’s art and art theoretical writings the thesis theoretical viewpoint are a system theoretical one with a special focus on cybernetics and the terms feedback and control. The thesis then establish that Eggeling, in his art and art theoretical writings, tried to compose his own method for creating the form figures we can see appearing in Diagonal Symphony and that this method of creating form was a way for Eggeling to control his creativity and to build up a structured system of forms. The study then concludes with the statement that Eggeling worked with the movie and the scrolls Diagonal Symphony as artistic material formations of a system of forms called Diagonal Symphony and that the system of forms called Diagonal Symphony is the result of Eggeling’s systematic method to generate form in a structured and organised way.

This essay aims to examine the manifestations of physical movement in two paintings by the Swedish modernist Otto G. Carlsund and to show aesthetic similarities to other modernist artists of the 1920s avant-garde. The method applied is Erwin Panofsky's Iconology to interpret the illusions of physical movement as expressions of the same ideas and visions that were conveyed by other artists during the same time in history. The results show that all painters included in this essay strived to communicate through motion in order to advocate for their visions of social change they believed their art could contribute to. The ambition to reform societies is interpreted as expressions of a Gesamtkunstwerk, a totalizing project aimed at all institutions of their day.