Wassily Kandinsky
– December 13, 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist.
Page 1 of 1
In a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completed abstracted. (on making abstraction, 1912)
In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings.
In this painting, I was in fact in quest for a certain hour, which was and which remains always the most beautiful hour of the day in Moscow. The sun is already low and has reached its highest force, which it has searched all the day, to which it has aspired all the day. […] The sun dissolves all Moscow in a spot which, as a frenzied tuba, makes entered into vibration all the inner being, the whole soul. […] Rendering this hour seemed the biggest, the most impossible of the happiness for an artist. These impressions renewed every sunny day. They brought me a joy which shattered me until the bottom of the soul, and which reached until ecstasy.
The artist must have something to say, mastery over form is not his goal but adaption of form to its inner meaning.
The geometric line is an invisible thing. It is the track made by the moving point; that is, its product. It is created by movement – specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point. Here, the leap out of the static to the dynamic occurs. […] The forces coming from without which transform the point into a line, can be very diverse. The variation in lines depends upon the number of these forces and upon their combinations.
There is no form, there is nothing in the world which says nothing. Often - it is true - the message does not reach our soul, either because it has no meaning in and for itself, or - as is more likely – because it has not been conveyed to the right place.. ..Every serious work rings inwardly, like the calm and dignified words: ‘Here I am!'
An empty canvas is a living wonder -- far lovelier than certain pictures.
The world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit.
The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero. […] Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech. The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence.
Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hands which plays touching one key or another purposively to cause vibrations in the Soul. (1912/13)
But, as well as the body, the spirit fortifies itself and develops itself by the exercise. As a neglected body which becomes weak and finally impotent, the spirit becomes weaker. The innate feeling of the artist is like the talent of the Gospel which must not be buried. The artist which lets its gifts unemployed is the lazy servant.
Colour is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul. (1912/13)
What thus appears a mighty collapse in objective terms is, when one isolates its sound, a living paeans of praise, the hymn of that new creation that follows upon the destruction of the world. (on destruction in creating his ‘Composition 4', 1913)
..Lohengrin at the Court theatre in Moscow and the painting of Monet: the Hayststacks.. ..that stamped my life and shook me to the depths of my being.
Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the strings.The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
Painting is an art, and the art in its whole is not a vain objets creation which get lost in the void, but a power which has a goal and must serve to the evolution and to the refinement of the human soul, to the moving of the Triangle. It is the language which speaks to the soul, in its proper form, of things which are the daily bread of the soul and which it can receive only under this form.
Is beautiful what proceeds from an inner necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is inwardly beautiful.
All means (in painting) are sacred when they are dictated by inner necessity. All means are reprehensible when they do not spring from the fountain of inner necessity.. ..The artist must be blind to ‘recognized’ and ‘unrecognized’ form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.
Every phenomenon can be experienced in two ways. These two ways are not arbitrary, but are bound up with the phenomenon – developing out of its nature and characteristics : Externally – or – inwardly.
Page 1 of 1