Kandinsky did it first...

... unless you know better, of course. I didn't. In fact, I had no thought of posting on Wassili Kandinsky until a few days ago, researching Chagall in a somewhat hefty tome of over a 1000 large pages (Art of the 20th Century - part of a retirement present from my former colleagues) I came across an article entitled With Closed Eyes. I almost couldn't believe mine. As those of you who know my post with almost the same title, With Eyes Shut Tight, might well understand. As you will have surmised, the article in question was not about Victor Pasmore, one of the twin subjects of my post back then, but Wassili Kandinsky. Reading the text I became even more engrossed, for it seemed to throw some light on the phenomenon that had formed the other half of my post, those images we see after closing our eyes. I do not recall ever having looked at the page in question before, and it is quite possible I had not. It is a book I dip into, and being of the size it is, there are probably other pages I have missed. I was also intrigued by two reproductions accompanying the text. The year (each of the book's pages deals with a specific year, the number of pages devoted to each year varying in accord with its significance) was 1944. Kandinsky had died on December 3rd of that year after coping with failing health since early March. By the summer his eyes had become almost permanently half-closed. After his death his widow Nina explained that He possessed the rare talent of being able to represent in his mind the world of his paintings with their colours and their forms, exactly as he later set them down on canvas. It has been suggested that these forms, their myriads of rings swimming across the surface of the work, were the effects of phosphenes that can be impressed on the eyeball when the eyes are closed. Towards the end of his life Kandinsky would have been painting what he was seeing with his eyes closed.


That might suggest that he lost his grip on reality to some extent, but Nina says not. What may not be generally known is that Kandinsky is credited with producing the first pure abstract painting, a watercolour. There is a story that goes with the event. It is that he had returned to his studio after a day painting in the countryside, to discover that someone had left a canvas propped against the wall at the far end of the studio. He was amazed at the painting, which he immediately recognised as a masterpiece, and amazed that anyone should have left it there while he was out. He approached it excitedly, only to be confronted with the fact that it was but one of his own, though on it side. The way he told it was that in that moment he realised the harm that had been done to his art by figurative painting.

Until the age of about forty (somewhere around 1906) he produced some of the most superb landscapes. For a while after that there came a period of equally superb watercolours. A few quotes of his I think worth passing on:

Of all the arts abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have heightened sensitivity for composition and for colours, and that you be a true poet.

I applied streaks and blobs of colours onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could...

Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

There is no must in art because art is free.