Color As Meaning in Kandinsky's Thesis

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The lack of a distinct focus or perspective in the painting also makes it difficult to define a specific purpose or intent apparent in the work. Throughout his work, Kandinsky was obsessed with almost paradoxical contrast, as though any statement of a "fact" has inherent inconsistencies with reality. In Yellow-Red-Blue, this is exemplified in the moods and suggestions of representation created by primarily the colors used, and secondarily the shapes, suggesting a worldview of undefined balance; an all-encompassing reality that resists efforts to be broken into its constitutive parts. Such a worldview, like the painting, contains both cheery and somber elements, and is an outgrowth and creator of both order and chaos, day and night.

Applying meaning to or interpreting meaning from art is always a dangerous task, and much more so when dealing with abstractions.
No abstraction is pure, however; in good art, there is always an intent. Kandinsky left enough of his own philosophical and theoretical thoughts and beliefs about art to make an interpretation of Yellow-Red-Blue and his other paintings quite confidently.

Wassily Kandinsky. "Secession." (Adrienne Kochman, trans.) Critical Inquiry (23), Summer 1997.

Christina Lodder. "Review: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art," K.C. Lindsay and P. Vergo, eds. The Burlington Magazine, 125 (968), November 1983, pp. 705-6.

Hugh Wood. "Review: Arnold Schoenberg/Wassily Kandinsky: Letters, Pictures, and Documents" (Jelena Hahl-Koch, ed.; John C. Crawford, trans.). The Musical Times, 126(1704), pp. 94-5.

Rose-Carol Washton Long. "Kandinsky's Abstract Style: The Veiling of Apocalyptic Folk Imagery." Art Journal, 34 (3), pp. 217-28.

Lodder, 705-6.….....

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