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So I just finished Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky. It is a tiny book, a six by eight inch paperback, 57 pages long. It is so dense I will have to read it again to retain more and take notes. In my quest to make my art more abstract, I am reading as much as I can about the beginnings of expressionism, from Cezanne to Gauguin to Kandinsky to American Expressionists of the mid twentieth century. 

I feel more strongly than ever that photography has taken over what the purpose of art USED to be. Art can now move on to feelings and soul-searching rather than just being a vehicle to copy what is seen. In the past (and I’m speaking of 200+ years ago) there was no other means to copy, because cameras hadn’t been invented. Some people think photography has made art obsolete, but I find the opposite to be true. It is freeing not to have to strive for an accurate physical likeness of something or someone. We are free to paint all the shapes, colors, and textures we feel, rather than slavishly copying light and shadow.

While I can agree there are basic concepts an artist must study to become a fluent abstract interpreter of the seen, once learned, they can apply the knowledge to any situation. I am learning that the concepts of design and value must be structurally sound first of all, and most everything that comes later (color, texture, etc.) will fall into place almost without effort. But Kandinsky carries this a bit further, likening visual art and color to music and human emotion. He attempts to describe how music and dance can become one, (or in an example from my mind, a book can turn itself into theatre.) Translator Michael T.H. Sadler goes so far as to proclaim: “Kandinsky is painting music.”

Sadler makes the comparison of Kandinsky to Picasso. Both studied Cezanne, and both tried to build on his concepts. Kandinsky took the path of Gauguin, tying color and composition to the spiritual (what is the meaning of life) and Picasso took a materialist approach. Put another way, while Kandinsky painted music, Picasso replicated physical reality into a different physical reality almost in a regurgitative way.  Kandinsky’s process is linear: he hears the music -> he interprets it in paint.  Picasso’s is more convoluted: he sees something (a person, a place, a flower) -> he redefines what he sees in a point-of-view pottage. 

While I like and admire both styles, I have to think for a long time about what the artists are trying to convey. Picasso’s work is most easily grasped because it is rooted in the physical, the material. But Kandinsky’s work is electric – charged with feeling, and as a result, much more futuristic. It is easy to see more than a century later why Kandinsky is considered the pioneer of abstract art. He referred to representational, materialist, art as “a glove without a hand.” 

Kandinsky, I believe, is and was the more obscure artist. His writings, like the book I just finished, were for another (future) time. I won’t go so far as to say he was misunderstood – he was a well-respected teacher and painter during his lifetime - but his life was overshadowed by the Russian revolution and World War 2, naturally resulting in artistic collateral damage. Though the two artists’ lives coincided for several decades (Kandinsky was older and died in 1944) and Picasso was arguably the more well-known by western standards, it is clear that Kandinsky has won the long game.

I will write more on this in future blogs after I’ve re-read this book and taken more notes.  This self-education is helping me understand where I want to go with my own art. Thank for stopping by!