Artists perceive the most intuitive and simple reaction of nature, feel the spiritual power of nature from the heart, and express what they perceive with composition rules and visual composition. This is what we call creative inspiration.
The infinity of freedom has broken away from the three-dimensional illusion of the artist's aesthetics, truly entered the visual truth, freed from the degradation of material, and entered the pure aesthetic pleasure. Only in this way can a work achieve immortality.
Wassily kandinsky 1866 was born in Moscow, and 1944 died in France. My first major was law and political economy, and I got the title of doctor of law. At the age of 30, he gave up his position as a law professor in Moscow and moved to Germany to pursue his artistic career. He gave up what he had learned in the first half of his life and became a monk halfway, but he became the originator of abstract art that influenced later generations.
The rational thinking mode of doctor of law plays a key role in Kandinsky's systematic deconstruction of perceptual art. At the same time, in his exposition, we can also see many analogies between painting and music, which are vivid. Therefore, the breadth and depth of a person's knowledge complement each other, and the interdisciplinary way of thinking is often helpful for in-depth research in a certain field.
He believes that art, especially painting, is the closest thing to the essence of spiritual soul. His abstract theory tries to strip off the material representation of realistic painting and explore the deep law that painting inspires human mind. In other words, the content of painting is not the essence of aesthetic feeling, but the attributes of painting elements themselves, the composition between elements and the color relationship, which is the fundamental way to arouse the human spirit to sing beauty.
Just like music, only when you have a deep understanding of the notes themselves can you use them to combine people's melodies. This symbolic and orderly painting embodies its own strong rationalism thinking mode. The art of painting is orderly and regular in nature, not completely illusory and unpredictable.
In this book, he expounded his views. The geometric forms of painting elements such as points, lines and surfaces all have their basic aesthetic significance, and lines are the simplest but most informative form. These aesthetic meanings are the so-called "inner voice". He analyzed every element from both external and internal aspects. Externally, it is the form of elements; Internally, the element is not the form itself, but the internal tension that is active in it. For example, the soul of a line lies in its tension. And illustrate different forms of elements with examples.
By the end of19th century, Kandinsky and other artists began to combine figurative painting with material value, and to link abstraction with spiritual value. At the same time, they also realize that most people don't understand the facts of abstract art at all, and the challenge they face is how to reconcile the conflict between the goal of anti-materialism and the artistic style that can be accepted and understood by the public.
This change is closely related to the "fourth way" (the fourth dimension) discovered by Russian philosopher Usbinski. Usbinski thinks that our infinite consciousness is endless illogical consciousness. In the "fourth dimension" he discovered, everything was upside down, and the real and illusory third dimension changed here. Time and movement become fantasy here, so it needs a new logic and a new language.
The concept of the fourth dimension includes the following five aspects:
1. Non-Euclidean geometry;
2. Infinity = endless illogicality;
3. Subverting reality and unreality;
4. Illusion of time and movement;
5. monism: the unity of all things.
This philosophy has influenced many artists. Therefore, Kandinsky's completely unfamiliar artistic language and Malevik's surrealism can be regarded as a direct description of the fourth dimension, trying to describe a weightless and directionless space.
With the development of abstraction, many people can't understand abstract works at first, because the audience always wants to know what the author painted and what is this painting?
However, "what did you draw" is not the message that the author wants to convey, nor is it the key point. Abstraction does not represent superficial material, but focuses on symbolizing abstract elements that may touch people's hearts. This pure aesthetic voice, the form is greater than the content to arouse the imagination of the viewer. No matter what the background, experience and background of the viewer are, it can produce emotional fluctuations, which will lead to the * * * sound from the bottom, and then produce the same imagination and infinite possibilities.
In order to understand the fourth way and Kandinsky, we need to understand theosophy and anthropology.
Theosophy is an alternative spiritual and artistic way of thinking, and its theoretical content assumes that the universe originally contained atoms and vacuums. Vacuum has potential strength and divinity, which can be organized into a kind of willpower.
There are at least two ways to connect it with art: one way is to believe that color can shake the spirit, awaken the spirit dormant in people and give it the vitality it deserves. The other way is a belief that the beginning of art should be an indispensable act to lead us into the new world in the future.
Anthropology is actually rudolf steiner's version of theism, and Steiner pays more attention to color symbols and synaesthesia. It is conceivable that during Kandinsky's stay in Germany, his interest in Steiner's theory may be the same as that in the fourth way, and this interest focuses on spiritual and philosophical thinking, not its mathematical rationality.
Many other artists close to the extreme abstraction are interested in the above idea, but the difference is that in some specific cases, they regard it as a purely aesthetic phenomenon, not a spiritual or philosophical phenomenon. In this way, they actively participated in the painting creation to explore the attributes of light and color, eager to practice new creative forms in the new space, and finally formed the painting creation and work styles of many artists in the early 20th century.
On the one hand, Kandinsky absorbed these theories, on the other hand, he continued to improve and innovate these types, on the other hand, he continued to try different types of exchanges. This also means that when creating the same theme or theme, improvisation and structural layout often appear.
Knowing this will help us understand Kandinsky's increasingly complex paintings and the hidden images behind them.