Wassily Kandinsky Quotes

..the works of Mozart. They create a welcome pause amidst the storms of our inner life, a vision of consolation and hope, but we hear them like sounds of another, vanished and essential unfamiliar age. Clashing discords, loss of equilibrium..

I have just finished one painting and am already at work on the preliminary drawings for the next one. I must do something in order to get rid of such habits or I won't manage to find time for any vacation. I have had this new painting in my mind since January, and must get it down on canvas.

Up till then [c. 1895] I had known nothing but realist art, in effect only the Russians.. .And suddenly for the first time a saw a picture. The catalog told me it was a haystack of Claude Monet; I couldn't tell it from looking. Not able to tell it upset me. I also considered that the artist had no right to paint so indistinctly. I had the dull sensation that the picture's subject was missing. And was amazed and confused to realize that the picture did not merely fascinate but impressed itself indelibly on my memory and constantly floated before my eyes, quite unexpectedly, completely in every detail. I did not understand any of this.. .What was quite plain to me, however, was that the palette had a strength that I heave never before suspected, far beyond anything that I had ever dreamt..

..the long Russian word for creation: 'proisvedenie' - so different from its shorter counterparts in English, French and German - expresses for me the whole history and process of creation, lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and foreshadowed by divine predestination.

Painting is a thundering conflict of different worlds, which in and out of the battle with one another are intended to create the new world, which is called the world of art. Each work arises technically in a way similar to that in which the cosmos arose – through catastrophes, which from the chaotic roaring of the instruments finally create a symphony, the music of the spheres. The creation of the work is the creation of worlds.

[Art is] ..the mysterious expression of the mysterious..

The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appeal. In any composition the material side may be more or less omitted in proportion as the forms used are more or less material, and for them substituted pure abstractions, or largely dematerialized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted forms, the deeper and more confidently will he advance into the kingdom of the abstract. And after him will follow the gazer at his pictures, who also will have gradually acquired a greater familiarity with the language of that kingdom. Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint solely in abstractions? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of the material and the non-material shows us the answer to this question. As every word spoken rouses an inner vibration, so likewise does every object represented. To deprive oneself of this possibility is to limit one's powers of expression. That is at any rate the case at present. But besides this answer to the question, there is another, and one which art can always employ to any question beginning with "must": There is no "must" in art, because art is free.

Alors sempre avanti! (Ever Forward / Always Ahead)

At the moment there is a great tendency in painting to discover the 'new' harmony by constructive means whereby the rhythmic is built on an almost geometric form.. .I am certain that our own modern harmony is not to be found in the 'geometric' way, but rather in the anti-geometric, anti-logical way. And this way is that of 'dissonance in art', in painting, therefore, just as much as in music. And 'today's' dissonance in painting and music is merely the consonance of 'tomorrow'.

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek methods in sculpture achieve only a similarity of form, the work remaining soulless for all time. Such imitation is mere aping. Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning.

Approaching it in one way, I see no essential difference between a line one calls 'abstract' and a 'fish'. But rather an essential likeness. This isolated line and the isolated fish alike are living beings with forces peculiar to them, though latent. They are forces of expression for these beings and of expression on human beings, because each has an impressive 'look' which manifests itself by its expression. But the voice of these latent forces is faint and limited. It is the environment of the line and the fish that brings about a miracle: the latent forces awaken, the expression becomes radiant.. .The environment is the composition. The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions (expressions) of every part of the work.

At the appointed time, necessities become ripe. That is the time when the Creative Spirit (which one can also designate as the Abstract Spirit) finds an avenue to the soul, later to other souls, and causes a yearning, an inner urge.

The horse carries the rider with power and speed. But the rider controls the horse. Talent carries the artist to great heights with power and speed. But the artist directs his talent. That is the element of 'consciousness', of 'calculation' in the work – or whatever else one chooses to call it.

Kandinsky, Wassily – painter, printmaker and author – the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression and abandon objects in his pictures.

Houses and trees [in and around Murnau] made hardly any impression on my thoughts. I used the palette knife to spread lines and splashes of paint on the canvas, and made them sing as loud as I could. That fateful hour in Moscow [when he saw a colorful Haystack painting of Monet for the first time in his life] rang in my ears, my eyes were filled with the strong saturated colours of the light and air of Munich, and the deep thunder of its shadows.