” Highly inspired to create art that communicated a universal sense of spirituality, he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist’s inner experience. His visual vocabulary developed through three phases, shifting from his early, representative canvases and their divine symbolism to his rapturous and operatic compositions, to his late, geometric and biomorphic flat planes of color.”
I have never heard music like the symphony that I hear when I look at a Kandinsky. The painting above it a much softer painting than some of his other works that would better show the similarity in marks between my work and his. However, I wished to use it as a reference due to its genius colour use and shapes. Where I use triangular and jagged edges, Kandinsky can work with circles that calm the soul of the audience. This painting was used alongside another of Kandinsky’s works (The Black Lines) in Six Degrees of Separation as a metaphor for the fagility of excistance, chaos and control.
I also wish to discuss Kandinsky’s synaesthesia, the confusion of senses (music to visuals etc). Art has always been deeply personal for me, with certain paintings provoking emotive responses. The colours I use mirror the emotions that I am feeling. With Kandinsky this was taken to a further level as his synaesthesia coupled with his spirituality meant that colour is not just warm of cold but has specific relationships with feelings:
These relationships are definitely something to consider, as well as delving further into Kandinsky’s colour and shape theories! Fortunately the library has a copy of his complete works that I have now reserved.
One thought on “Kandinsky revisited”