Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian abstract artist born in 1866. He is a key figure in my research not only because he is a real pioneer of abstract art but also because I personally really like the paintings he had made because of the kind of organized mess it presents. Kandinsky said he experienced everything, music, events, feelings etc. in colors which and developed his own theory on how different colors express emotions which his famous book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911, was all about. He wanted to express feelings through form and color and was convinced that the language of abstract art has the ability to transcend physical and cultural boundaries. Some theorize about Kandinsky having experienced synesthesia, which means experiencing two senses at the same time, like seeing colors when listening to music, and his paintings reflect this, both in the way they look but also since many are named after songs.

Mark Rothko 1903-1970

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” he declared. “And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions….If you…are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point.” As Kandinsky, Mark Rothko also used color to evoke emotions in his paintings. Rothko used floating forms of color on colored grounds for which he became known for. This compositional strategy which he started in 1947 was named “Color Field Painting” by critics and Rothko became a pioneer for this type of composition, floating expressive color on an open space. In “color field painting” color becomes the main subject and is separated. Artists involved with this strategy of art were much into religion and myth from context. Rothko viewed his art as a tool for emotional and religious expression. He was inspired by American artist Milton Avery, from who he learned his ability to minimize form and color but maximize their importance. According to Rothco the colors in his paintings possessed their own life force and did not refer to anything else. Rothko was not about color for the color’s sake but the color in service of human spirit.

James Turrell

James Turrell is an American artist who uses an architectural approach to light with different colors to create a sensorial experience for the viewer. He talks about his work is more an experience than a gaze but Turell uses a sensorial experience to invite a spatial and cosmic experience rather than demonstrating fixed geometric forms and angles. Turrell said, “Light is not so much something that reveals as it is the revelation.” In his work “skyspace” he questions color, not in relation to another color but to a context. He reminds us to consider the source. The fact that context informs the perception is interesting because in conjunction with “skyspace” there is a reference to Josef Alber’s teaching and is about that the human eye can distinguish millions of color but color acuity is more rarified than being able to identify a single musical tone without accompaniment.

Feedback and Reflection

Seminar:

For the seminar part, I need to find a better connection between the chosen artists. There is a connection between Rothko’s and Turrell’s work in the sense that you as a viewer experience the work rather than observing it. There is an architectural aspect to both of them, Rothko having built the Rothko Chapel in Houston that symbolizes his wish to make people experience the spiritual aspect of his art, and Turrell’s work which uses color light in a space rather than onto a canvas in order for the audience to experience his work. Another direction is to research more about the emotions triggered in the viewer as opposed to the optical effect and use artists as Frank Stella as another reference.

Studio:

For studio, I want to create several paintings that each focuses on the feeling represented by a singular color the day that feeling was felt. In the end when I have very many of them I want to organize them in a way that makes a large, aesthetically pleasing, piece of abstract art in which you still can go back to any part of the process making. I will have to decide in which way I will organize them in the end, either by color schemes, by feelings or chronological order. As Kathleen said, I need to set up the parameters for this project and then make a sort of grid to combine all the small paintings to one.