Q&A: Geist, Art, and Kandinsky
Q: Who’s Wassily Kandinsky?
A: Russian painter and art theorist, Wassily Kandinsky is credited with creating one of the first purely abstract works. After studying at the University of Moscow, Kandinsky gave up a successful career in law and economics when, at 30-years-old — inspired by Wagner’s Lohengrin, Monet’s Haystacks at Giverny, and the discovery of radioactive decay — he changed courses, went to Germany, and devoted himself to the craft of painting. He studied in the Munich Academy of Arts to master the basics, while concurrently devoting himself to his own experimentation, in an attempt to fuse spirit with form. He bounced back and forth from Munich and Moscow, before ultimately settling in France. He died in 1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a commune in the western suburbs of Paris.
Q: Why do you love Kandinsky?
A: Because there’s spiritual gold buried in the mix of colors and patterns in his paintings. Because what looks like a random entropic rainbow is actually carefully curated chaos. Because he had synesthesia, and saw musical notes as colors on a palette.
I love Kandinsky because he saw the arts as one giant conversation taking place, between mediums and throughout generations. And I love that he was an optimist and a mystic. “The spiritual life,” he said, “to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and definable movement forwards and upwards.”
