Wassily Kandinsky
Artist
1866-12-04
Quotes by Wassily Kandinsky
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A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.
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To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.
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(...) an inner feeling called Stimmung by the germans and best translated as sentiment (it is to be regreted that this word, sentiment, which is meant to describe the poetical efforts of an artist living soul, has been misused and finally, ridiculed. Was there ever a great word that the masses did not try immediatly to cheapen and desecrate?) (...)
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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.
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Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame.
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Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.
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Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame.
Read quote -
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.
Read quote -
To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.
Read quote -
A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.
Read quote -
Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.
Read quote -
(...) an inner feeling called Stimmung by the germans and best translated as sentiment (it is to be regreted that this word, sentiment, which is meant to describe the poetical efforts of an artist living soul, has been misused and finally, ridiculed. Was there ever a great word that the masses did not try immediatly to cheapen and desecrate?) (...)
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Everything starts from a dot.
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The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.
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The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.
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The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.
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Color 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.
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Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.
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The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with base notes, or dark lake with the treble.
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