Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.

Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Book Review: Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art

I never found myself with strong feelings for Kandinsky’s work. I think I could pick his style out of a line-up, but it did not stir any grand emotional response. Neither positive or negative.

I confess. I put the text version of Concerning the Spiritual in Art down several times. I gave up. I could not keep my attention in it, to absorb any content. It washed over me like water over oil and my eyes slid off the page.

I picked it back up as an audio book. I found myself entranced by his descriptions of color. I wish there was 500 more pages of Kandinsky describing each and every color, in all their iterations of brightnesses, shades and meaning. My apathy towards Kandinsky is now cured.

I recommend this book for every visual artist and lover of color▪️