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Here are 10 memorable quotes from that master of abstraction Wassily Kandinsky:
- Everything starts from a dot.
- Color is a power which directly influences the soul.
- The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.
- Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with ‘reality,’ next to the ‘real’ world.
- The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.
- 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.
- The more abstract its form, the clearer and more direct its appeal.
- Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings.
- The true work of art is born from the ‘artist’: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.
- The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.