Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Wassily Kandinsky
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.”
“Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.”
“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”
“With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.”
“The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.”
“The artist must be blind to distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.”
“There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression.”
“Art becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work. Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away.”
“The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne.”
“A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.”
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Book Keywords:
artists, color-theory, color, painting, inventiveness, artist, music, originality, soul, paintings, abstraction, creativity, imagination, modernism, science, aesthetics, art
