This touching medical support for the idea that a spiritually superior person will naturally perceive the significance of the kinds of colour connections that he is talking about leads Kandinsky on to a grandiloquent cascade of musical metaphor: "Our hearing of colours is so precise Colour is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul.
Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposely sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key. Thus it is clear that the harmony of colours can only be based upon the principle of purposefully touching the human soul.
The heart of Kandinsky's connection to music, of course, is found not in his titles or theoretical self-justifications but in his works of art. And here it is clear that however arbitrary his scaffolding of theory, he had genuinely arrived at a way of playing on the canvas with the tensions and relationships between pure colours.
In an eloquent essay in the catalogue to the Tate Modern's forthcoming exhibition, Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction , the German artist Bruno Haas speaks of the clarity of Kandinsky's painterly "syntax" and describes how Kandinsky's families of colours resonate with one another to produce visual "chords". As if aware that we might not believe him, Haas suggests ways in which we can prove to ourselves the existence of these "chords" by taking a colour print of one of Kandinsky's pictures and holding down our hands over this bit or that to see how the colours and shapes change in relation to one another.
He quotes a vivid line from Kandinsky describing the experience of painting in this way and once again using a musical metaphor: "I had little thought for houses and trees, drawing coloured lines and blobs on the canvas with my palette knife, and making them sing just as powerfully as I knew how.
Although Kandinsky's hyper-Romantic language of musical and sensual connections is vivid and often original, it was also of its time.
At this period many artists and adventurers, often of quite different cultures, talked in generally similar terms.
WB Yeats's journals of his early London years touch on some of the same themes, French art and music of the Debussy era is full of associations and theories of this kind, and the Viennese were given an especially fruity prompt in this direction by Freud.
It was Vienna that produced for Kandinsky perhaps his most remarkable artistic friendship, with the composer Arnold Schoenberg. In , Kandinsky heard a concert of Schoenberg's music and realised he had found a comrade-in-arms. The two began a long and often stormy friendship involving fierce criticism of one another's works, and the intense sharing of ideas and influences.
Schoenberg, who was also a painter and writer, was as deeply involved in the idea of breaking down the barriers between the different arts as Kandinsky. Nowhere is this more vividly seen than in their theatrical experiments of these years. Sigmund Freud published his theories about the human psyche. Roald Amundson reached the South Pole and Werner von Siemens made the first telegraph that could send 1, characters per minute.
What seemed impossible yesterday was already obsolete today. People began questioning reality due to modern technology. For artists like Kandinsky, depicting reality was no longer the aim. The Russian artist wanted to portray the truth he found inside of people and reflect this internal world of emotions on canvas with abstract colors and forms.
Already in , art historian Wilhelm Worringer wrote an essay about "Abstraction and Empathy," which asserted that "the tendency to abstraction is a consequence of people's deep insecurity about the world. Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4, in Moscow. After studying law, he turned to art and moved to Munich in There, he first studied at a private art school, but later attended the Munich Art Academy.
The pictures of houses and forests that he created there were still influenced by the folk art of his Russian home, but were already characterized by brilliant colors. Supposedly, Kandinsky took up abstract art because he spotted a picture in his studio during twilight. It was lying on its side and Kandinsky recognized just forms and colors that fascinated him. He came to the conclusion that representationalism only hurt his work. Of course, Kandinsky was familiar with the color and light techniques of the Impressionists and the unusual forms of the Cubists.
Wassily Kandinsky also examined the theory of abstract art. In , his definitive book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," was published. It examines the purpose of art and how colors and forms impact the human soul.
Since abstract art is freed from representationalism, colors and forms can display their own spirit and express the feelings of the soul. While Kandinsky's works and theories were praised for being revolutionary, conservative art connoisseurs struggled with them. On December 2, , the association's jury rejected the artist's work "Composition V" for an exhibition. Together with Franz Marc, Kandinsky wrote "The Blue Rider Almanac" in , which outlined the equal status of the group's members and sought to define a new language of color and form.
Germany had declared war on Russia. Their relationship was over but they stayed in touch. In Moscow, Kandinsky continued his academic career as a professor. In , he married Nina Andreievskaya, who was 27 years younger.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Marc Chagall was a Belorussian-born French artist whose work generally was based on emotional association rather than traditional pictorial fundamentals.
French artist Henri Rousseau was a self-taught painter, influencing the Parisian avant-garde movement. Henri Matisse was a revolutionary and influential artist of the early 20th century, best known for the expressive color and form of his Fauvist style.
Claude Monet was a famous French painter whose work gave a name to the art movement Impressionism, which was concerned with capturing light and natural forms. A leading Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was one of the most famous artists of the early 20th century.
Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky is credited as a leader in avant-garde art as one of the founders of pure abstraction in painting in the early 20th century.
Olivia Rodrigo —. Megan Thee Stallion —. For Wassily Kandinsky, music and color were inextricably tied to one another. So clear was this relationship that Kandinsky associated each note with an exact hue. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me. People with synesthesia might smell something when they hear a sound, or see a shape when they eat a certain food.
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