Concerning the Spiritual in Art [Paperback]

There is a long chapter on the meaning and importance of color, eschewing the analytical approach. He takes a more subjective approach, noting how color and music can be viewed in similar terms. He talks about the attempt in classical music to create chromatic scales, but Kandinsky prefers to deal with such connections more abstractly, treating color as he would the sounds of instruments, for instance comparing yellow to the blare of the trumpet.

There is a short biography of Kandinsky which serves as an introduction and a preface by the translator, placing Kandinsky in the pantheon of modern artists. The book is by no means exhaustive. Kandinsky's writings have been collected into a marvelous book edited by Peter Vergo, which offers the width and breadth of this artist's vision. But, if you are looking for the short course, this is the place to go.

Today, however, there aren't many of these manifstoes that possess more than quaint historical value. Kandinsky's 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art' is one, and probably to our own shame, speaks as loudly to us today as it did to the artist's contemporaries. A cry against all that is bogus or a dead-end in art - the bourgeois-currying; the trend-following; the excessively materialistic, naturalistic or representational; art in which formal invention is not matched by emotional power - the book demands a return to spirituality in art in an age where a godless faith in science has resulted in a soulless culture.

Kandinsky is the artist who said that 'Art was close to religion', and his concept of painting is heavly bound up with his Russian orthodox upbringing (as well as later exposure to theosophy). One does not have to be a card-carrying mystic, however, to recognise the truth of his central argument, that the only art with the power to truly move us is that which is ruthlessly faithful to the artist's inner need, not public taste or contemporary styles.

this belief led Kandinsky towards abstraction: he rejected the idea that a painter should draw what was on the surface, instead of its inherent spirit or harmony (if this led to a cul-de-sac in 20th century art, this is because Kandinsky's mimics lacked his moral drive). This book is fascinating as Kandinsky, still creating recognisably (though distorted) representational works, was struggling towards the abstract geomotry for which he is now famous. It is essential for any lover of Kandinsky's work, and modern art in general, with its revealing analyses of colour and form, their 'psychology', and the various effects they can achieve. it is a portrait of modernism from the inside, and it is goosebumping reading a gifted contemporary passing judgement on Picasso and Matisse, although time has parted company with him in his preference for Maeterlinck and Isadora Duncan.

In his demand for a total art that would unite theatre, music and painting, he looks forward to the great Ballets Russes happenings, most significantly Nijinsky/Stravinsky/Picasso's 'The Rite of spring'. Throughout, he calls for painting to achieve the non-naturalistic liberation of music.

But behind the passion and certainty is an intellectually playful (not always caught by the fusty translation), though deadly earnest artist, who knows that everything he says is provisional and a guide, a record of his own groping, striving, tireless searching.