Farbstudie Quadrate, 1913 3.
Abstraction of Colour
| The two abstract artists who it could be claimed fully ‘liberated’ colour by completely relieving it of its localizing and descriptive function are Piet Mondrian(1872-1944) and Wassily Kandinsky(1866-1944). They are celebrated as being the pioneers of purely abstract art. The development of Kandinsky’s and Mondrian’s painting towards abstraction has often been compared. Their almost simultaneous development of an abstract language, has been seen as the result of the flourishing of two very distinct movements. Mondrian’s objective was to create an art of ‘determined relations’ whilst what drove Kandinsky was the search for the expression of what he called ‘inner necessity’. | ||
| Although they may be characterized as representing the opposite extremes in artistic tendency, one reaching towards an ideal of clarity, formality and precision; the other towards expressiveness, informality and flux, they had in fact common influences and interests. Both were greatly influenced by the anti-materialist philosophical currents of the time and were both indebted to the earlier modernist painters who had provided them with the aesthetic language and impetus to realize their vision of abstraction. Within both their work lies the desire to transform the spectators perception and experience of the medium of painting itself. Colour, stripped of its associations, at its purist and most plastic, communicated for both Kandinsky and Mondrian something about the fundamental, underlying laws of the universe. |
| It was Kandinsky’s fascination with colour, which he came to see as significant in its own right, which provided the immediate impetus for his move to abstraction. One evening he was startled by the sight of one of his own pictures, which was turned on its side so that he could not discern the objects, but which appeared "indescribably beautiful....pervaded by an inner glow"1. The same painting seen by daylight, with clearly discernible objects, was far less beautiful, leading Kandinsky to the conclusion that objects harmed his pictures. He felt that the effect of the object interfered with that of the colour, reducing its impact. Kandinsky believed that colours have an inherent character which sets up "vibrations with the soul". It was the spiritual force of colour that most concerned him, he felt that through colour he could "give artistic form to inner nature, i.e. Spiritual experience"2. |
Farbstudie Quadrate, 1913 3. |
| Kandinsky was a prolific writer as well as painter, and his writing "On the Spiritual in Art"(1912) is particularly enlightening in terms of the relationship between his spiritual aims, his aesthetic theory and how these are applied to his painting. He believed that the artists had an "inner necessity" to express the "inner essence of things". The main focus of his exploration of colour was how it could be employed as an expresssion of the spiritual, he imagined it to act as a kind of intermediary between the viewer and the spiritual world. The symbolist and expressionist aesthetic had provided a powerful catalyst for Kandinsky’s move into abstract art by encouraging his belief in the ephemeral nature of the material world and providing him with a mission of spiritual regeneration. | |
| Kandinsky’s view that "....colour contains within itself (my italics) a little studied but enormous power, which can influence the entire human body as a physical organism"4 owed a great deal to the contemporary psychological debate, especially the work of David Katz whose developments in the field of colour therapy had a great impact on those artists who shared his concern for isolating the effects of colour entirely from associations. In his book ‘On the Spiritual in Art’(1912) Kandinsky clearly states his agreement with both Goethe and Blanc that there exists a grammar of colour analogous to the grammar of music. His understanding of colour was essentially dynamic, and in his third diagram he sought a polar arrangement of black versus white, green versus red, orange versus violet, each arising 'from a modification of red by yellow and blue', and so on. He felt that each colour had an inherent character defined by its relationship to its opposing colour, for instance- plus/minus, warm/cool, active/passive, female/male, and believed that these characteristics, on a intuitive level and in certain combinations, could communicate an emotion or idea to the spectator. |  Kandinsky's Third colour diagram from 'On the Spiritual in Art', 1912 5. |
| Kandinsky aimed to create a visual form which would allow the spectator a freedom of imagination, interpretation and emotional response that was not based on the literal or descriptive, but on abstract colour and form, in the same way that music, "the least material of the arts" expressed itself through time and sound. He wrote of the "constant search for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction"6. The synaesthetic nature of his theory was underlined by a belief in the possibility of combining painting, music, architecture and prose in a Gesamtkunstwerk, or the total work of art. This idea was put into practice in his play "Yellow Sounds" and his portfolio of prose poems and prints ‘Klange’(Sounds 1913). Kandinsky claimed that it had been an early experience of one of Wagner’s(1813-1883) compositions that had inspired him to attempt to recreate musical harmony in colour and form. His eagerness mirrored that of the early symbolist whose interest in the Wagnerian aesthetic had led them to engage with colour in the way that the musician used rhythm, assonance and pitch. In Wagner there is also an affinity with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who considered music to be of central importance in man's emotional life, which was echoed in Kandinsky’s aims for his visual art. | |
 Impressions III,
1911 7. |
The use of colour to depict music can been seen most powerfully in Kandinsky’s symphonic composition Impressions III (1911) which is a direct illustration of a concert of Schonbergs. One can just make out the auditorium on the left side of the painting, the right side is enveloped in a blanket of yellow. Kandinsky’s description of the colour yellow as "disquieting to the spectator, pitching him, stimulating him" gives us a sense of the dynamism of the music. |
| Kandinsky believed his experience of synaesthesia, the phenomena when the senses are not separate from each other and there is a direct transfer of reactions from one sense to another, so that one might ‘hear’ colours and ‘see’ sounds, was inherently connected to his spiritualism. This idea was very likely to have been influenced by the Theosophy of Mme Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner, the pseudo-religious ideals of which Kandinsky was very interested in. Rodolf Steiner argued that in a higher state of awareness sense impressions such as colour, sound and smell could be experienced as creations of the soul or spirit, independently of objects in the real world. Steiner had introduced Kandinsky to the theories of Goethe, however, In ‘On the Spiritual in Art’ Kandinsky claims that his ideas depended upon ‘empirical-spiritual experience’ and not on any ‘positive science’. As in Theosophy Kandinsky believed in a certain universal harmony underlying the apparent chaos of the natural world, and he felt a someone with a 'higher consciousness' could tap into this. "Art can only be great if it relates directly to cosmic laws and is subordinate to them. One senses these laws unconsciously if one approaches nature not outwardly,-but inwardly".8 | |
| Kandinsky decided to test his theories with an experiement using the people of Weimer, were he lived, as the subjects. He sent out over one thousand postcards with the colours red, blue and yellow and a triangle, square and circle, asking for them to be put into pairs. The result that came back, seemed to support his theory. A predominant number of people thought of a yellow triangle, red square and blue circle. I decided to do my own experiment similar to that of Kandinsky's, but with much wider and more varied questions as to the associations and meaning people assign to different colours. This is an on going study for this website, one that you can take part in. The questions and the results so far can be seen on my Interviews Page |
2. In Der Blaue Reiter Almanac 1912
3.Farbstudie Quadrate, 1913, Downloaded from www.artchive.com
4.KCWA p.567
5.Kandinsky's Third colour diagram from 'On the Spiritual in Art'. Scanned from Gage p.208
7. Impressions III, 1911, Oil on Canvas, 35x 46, Private Collection. Downloaded from www.artchive.com
8..KWCA p.598