My favorite among the artworks shown, and new to me, is Yellow-Red-Blue. In reading your post and thinking about that painting, I suspect what I like so much is its musicality, in particular the sense of rhythm created by the interplay of color, shape, and line and their progression across the canvas. I had not really thought about or known much about how his art changed over time, and your post offers a mother lode of information about that in a concise, highly readable, space. I was also reminded, on reading the section about associating music with colors, of a trip to the Guggenheim long ago in which Impression III (Concert) was displayed together with audio of the Schoenberg piece that apparently inspired it. I don’t actually think that painting is one of Kandinsky’s best, but I was completely entranced by the art-music connection. Perhaps even more-so because of that, I often “relate” to his work as visual music. Thank you for the wonderful post!
The music connection is so important to looking at Kandinsky. Many of his smaller paintings in watercolor appear to me to have escaped from a music score and blossomed into shapes and colors. There's an excellent documentary called Wassily Kandinsky:Invisible Shapes that features an extended look at Yellow-Red-Blue. It's getting old now- it was made in 1994, but I learned so much about that painting and also about how to look at Kandinsky from it.
My favorite among the artworks shown, and new to me, is Yellow-Red-Blue. In reading your post and thinking about that painting, I suspect what I like so much is its musicality, in particular the sense of rhythm created by the interplay of color, shape, and line and their progression across the canvas. I had not really thought about or known much about how his art changed over time, and your post offers a mother lode of information about that in a concise, highly readable, space. I was also reminded, on reading the section about associating music with colors, of a trip to the Guggenheim long ago in which Impression III (Concert) was displayed together with audio of the Schoenberg piece that apparently inspired it. I don’t actually think that painting is one of Kandinsky’s best, but I was completely entranced by the art-music connection. Perhaps even more-so because of that, I often “relate” to his work as visual music. Thank you for the wonderful post!
The music connection is so important to looking at Kandinsky. Many of his smaller paintings in watercolor appear to me to have escaped from a music score and blossomed into shapes and colors. There's an excellent documentary called Wassily Kandinsky:Invisible Shapes that features an extended look at Yellow-Red-Blue. It's getting old now- it was made in 1994, but I learned so much about that painting and also about how to look at Kandinsky from it.
Thanks for the heads up on the video, which sounds very interesting. I’ve flagged to check whether the library might have it.
I really enjoy your investment in the viewer's experience of an image, including emotional and intellectual discomfort.
Thank you for commenting. I'm glad that aspect of my writing came through for you.