Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, we are immersing
ourselves in the mind of a man whose paintings
might look, well, like pure color and chaos at
first glance. Wassily Kandinsky. Exactly. But
he was actually one of the most, you know, rigorous,
systematic. thinkers of the modern era. Absolutely.
Kandinsky, living 1866 to 1944, he's rightly
called a pioneer of pure abstraction in Western
art. But just calling him a painter kind of misses
the mark, doesn't it? It really does. He was
an art theorist. He didn't just sort of stumble
into non -objective painting. He codified it.
He built this whole language for it. A language.
Yeah. A complete, rational, philosophical, even
spiritual language linking color, form, sound,
and, well, the human soul. Okay. So our mission
today for you listening is to kind of give you
the shortcut to understanding that language.
We're going to trace his incredible journey.
From a successful law career, believe it or not.
Right. To becoming this artistic prophet who
basically shattered, what, 3 ,000 years of tradition.
Ah. The idea that painting had to show reality.
And the real kicker, the initial shock factor,
is just how late he started. 30. 30 years old.
That's when he began his formal studies, life
drawing, sketching, anatomy, the absolute basics.
Imagine the guts that took. I mean, that's usually
when you're settled, right? Peak career time.
And he just throws it all away for the art world's
uncertainty. And that decision, and pretty much
every radical move he made afterwards in his
art, it was all driven by this one core idea
he called... Inner necessity. That's the key,
isn't it? That's what we're digging into. This
belief that art must come from inside, spiritual,
emotional, not just copying what you see. We
need to watch how that idea pushed him. First
out of law and then, well, to completely reinvent
painting itself. OK, so to really grasp how huge
that career change at 30 was, let's look at his
life before art school. He wasn't exactly a struggling
artist type from the start. Not at all. Born
in Moscow, well -to -do family, very cultured.
He took the most structured path you can imagine,
law and economics, excelled at it. And he was
successful, too, right? Lecturing. Yeah. By 1892,
he'd married his cousin, Anja Chimiakina, and
was already lecturing in jurisprudence at the
University of Moscow. A respected intellectual.
Set for life, you'd think. But something else
was pulling at him. Always. This private, almost
spiritual fascination with color. He talked about
it starting way back in childhood, how certain
colors just hit him differently, stimulated him.
So it wasn't just liking pretty colors, it was
deeper. Much deeper, almost mystical. And that
connection, that became the engine, you know,
for his later theories about... color symbolism
and psychology was there a specific moment when
this really broke through well a big early crack
in that structured life came during an ethnographic
research trip in 1889 he was only 23. went up
to the vlog to region north of moscow on academic
business studying the law that was the mission
yeah provincial law but what really stayed with
him was the visual experience the houses the
churches there decorated with these shimmering,
vibrant colors. He said it felt like he was literally
moving into a painting. Not just looking at it,
but inside it. That's a key difference. Exactly.
And he noticed the folk art, those bright reds,
yellows, blues, often against dark backgrounds,
this visceral sensory thing totally outside the
academic world. It really hit him. You can see
its influence on his early work. But the real
crisis moment, the one that points towards abstraction.
That came later. Yes, a few years later, just
before he finally ditched Moscow for Munich in
1896, seeing Monet's haystacks. Ah, the famous
story. This is crucial for understanding abstraction,
isn't it? Because it wasn't straightforward admiration.
Not at all. It was conflict. He went to an exhibition,
saw the painting, the catalog says haystack,
he looks, and he just cannot recognize the object.
Which... For his trained, logical mind. It was
a problem. His inner necessity back then, his
intellectual side, screamed that the painter
had no right to paint indistinctly. He felt actual
pain, confusion, the object was missing. His
whole worldview challenged by a blurry painting.
But then, and this is the genius part, that other
inner necessity, the emotional, spiritual one,
took over. Despite the confusion, the painting
gripped him. Emotionally. It stuck with him.
Impressed itself ineradicably on my memory, he
said. He suddenly saw the fairytale power and
splendor of painting itself, working independently
of a clear subject. So color and just the act
of painting. could move the soul on their own.
That was the revelation. If painting could do
that without needing an object, then painting
was inherently abstract, just like music. Which
leads directly to his ideas about synesthesia.
Immediately. He wrote those famous lines, color
is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmony, the
soul is the piano with many strings. The artist
just plays the notes on this visual keyboard.
And he connected it beyond painting too, Wagner.
Yes, he cited Wagner's opera Lohengrin. He felt
Wagner was pushing. music beyond just melody
into this purely expressive emotional space.
That was the final push, really, the intellectual
and spiritual fuel he needed. To finally ditch
law and head to Munich in 96, to actually study
art. Right. So in Munich, he studied first at
a private school, Anton Auschwitz, then got into
the Munich Academy. And this is where his personal
life gets really intertwined with his art. Gabriel
Minter. Yes. The German artist. He started as
her teacher, but they became partners romantically
and artistically from about 1902 to 1916. They
traveled a lot, Europe, North Africa, soaking
up all the new art movements. And you can see
him processing all this in his work from the
early 1900s, right? Starting to break down reality.
Definitely. He's using these broad areas of color,
moving away from fiddly details. Look at Sunday,
Old Russia from 1904. It's this fanciful scene,
peasants and nobles, but the color is already
starting to dominate the forms. And couple on
horseback, 1907. There you really see him experimenting.
Using techniques like pointillism, those dots
of color to flatten the picture plane, make it
less about depth, more about the surface. Plus
the fulvest influence. Wild colors. Exactly.
The colors are totally non -naturalistic. He's
using color purely to express his inner feeling,
his experience, not to accurately describe a
horse or people. Which brings us to a really
pivotal piece. Yeah. The Blue Rider from 1903.
Ah, yes. Here are the subject, a figure on a
horse. It's almost swallowed up by the way it's
painted. The details are blurry and distinct.
It's more about the colors, that intense blue
especially, and the sense of movement. And it's
the intentional blurring, the disjunction. He's
making you work, making you engage with the paint
and color, not just recognize a story. It's not
pure abstraction yet, but it's a huge step. He's
clearly prioritizing expression over representation,
setting the stage for everything that came next.
Okay, so by the late 1900s, Kandinsky's definitely
choosing spiritual, emotional color over just
painting what he sees. But he's an intellectual,
right? He needs more than just... Feeling. He
needed to justify it to prove this radical shift
wasn't just, you know, random splashing. So he
dove deep into theory. And that theory was heavily
shaped by spiritual movements. Theosophy comes
in here. Vitally important. He officially joined
the Theosophical Society in 1909. Madame Blavatsky's
writings were a huge influence. What was the
connection? What did theosophy offer him? Well,
Theosophy proposed that creation itself wasn't
random. It was structured, a geometric progression,
starting with a single point, then unfolding
into basic shapes, circles, triangles, squares.
Ah, so it gave him a framework. If the spiritual
world is built on geometry, Then he could use
geometry and color to tap into that spiritual
truth, but without having to paint traditional
religious scenes. It was a bridge. And you see
that geometry pop up later in his theories about
shapes and lines. Directly. And Theosophy even
offered a kind of visual language. He looked
at books like Thought Forms by Annie Besant and
Leadbeater. What were those? They had these illustrations
trying to visualize things like the human aura
or emotional states as colorful, geometric, non
-representative. Presentational forms like abstract
diagrams of feelings pretty much and Kandinsky
absorbed that he translated those visuals of
invisible states into his own developing abstract
vocabulary But this kind of thinking I imagine
didn't sit well with the mainstream art world
back then Not at all. In 1911, his ideas were
seen as way too radical. He actually split from
the main Munich Artists Association, the Neue
Künstlervereinigung München, after they rejected
one of his increasingly abstract works. What
did he do? Retreat? Nope. Doubled down. He immediately
got together with other like -minded artists,
Franz Marc is the big name, along with Gabriel
Münter and founded Der Blaue Reiter. The Blue
Rider Group. Named after his painting. Exactly.
It became the banner for the German avant -garde,
pushing for this emotional, expressive, spiritual
path towards abstraction. And they were active.
Exhibitions, publications. Oh, yes. They put
out the really influential Blue Rider Almanac,
held two major exhibitions. They were making
waves. But then... World War I. World War I interrupted
everything in 1914. Kandinsky, being Russian,
had to go back to Moscow. But the impact of that
period, especially the Blue Rider, it wasn't
just the paintings, was it? It was his writing.
Crucially, yes. Around 1910, he started writing
what became his masterpiece of theory concerning
the spiritual in art, published in 1911. This
was huge. A manifesto, really. It was a defense,
a promotion, a philosophical grounding for abstract
art based on that idea of inner necessity, internal
emotion. What made it so revolutionary? He laid
out this rigorous argument that color and form
could and should be used on their own, completely
separate from describing the real world. It wasn't
decoration. It was a spiritual need. And people
noticed. Immediately. The international art world
took note. Michael Sadler published the English
translation in 1914, which was massive for legitimizing
abstract art in Britain and the U .S. Parts even
showed up in Wyndham Lewis's radical magazine
blast. So the book had a direct impact. on collectors
too. Absolutely. Sadler's father, Michael Sadler,
actually bought several Kandinsky works in 1913,
including an abstract piece, Fragment for Composition
7, some of the very first abstract Kandinsky's
to land in a major British collection, thanks
to the book's influence. This really elevates
him beyond just being a painter. He saw himself
differently, didn't he? He really did. He saw
himself almost as a prophet. He used this amazing
metaphor in the book. The authentic artist, the
one creating from inner necessity, stands alone
at the very tip of an upward moving pyramid.
What does the pyramid represent? Art history
or maybe human consciousness, the base is like
the common understanding of beauty. But the whole
pyramid is constantly moving up, progressing
into the future. And the artist at the top is...
Making discoveries, seeing things others can't
yet grasp. What seemed weird or inconceivable
yesterday, like that Monet haystack he couldn't
recognize, becomes normal today. And what's avant
-garde and confusing now? Becomes tomorrow's
common knowledge. So the modern artist for Kandinsky
had this almost moral duty to... to lead the
way, to bring about that future reality. That's
a heavy responsibility. And you see that sense
of drama of being at a turning point in his big
paintings from that time, the compositions. Definitely.
Especially the first seven compositions leading
up to World War I. He was obsessed with eschatology
and times, the coming of a new age, a massive
spiritual shift. So the themes are huge. Apocalypse,
rebirth. Massive cosmic themes. Destruction,
creation, death, rebirth. He's drawing on...
huge biblical stories, Noah's Ark, the four horsemen,
the resurrection, but translating them into this
new non -literal visual language. There's this
feeling of urgency, chaos, cosmic events unfolding.
But crucially, they aren't illustrations of those
stories. If you look at Composition 7 from 1913,
maybe his most complex piece ever. You won't
find Noah or horses. Right. It's this swirling
storm of color and lines. He used what he called
veiled imagery, hidden symbols, fragments of
shapes, arches, not to tell a story, but as symbols,
archetypes of that destruction creation cycle
he felt was happening right then. He's painting
the feeling of the apocalypse, the spiritual
upheaval, not the event itself. OK, so let's
get into the nuts and bolts here. How did he?
actually do this how did he translate that huge
spiritual vision into paint the key seems to
be his synesthesia right that crossing of the
senses hearing colors seeing sounds he didn't
just experience this he built his theories around
it he thought it was how art worked He believed
it was the mechanism for communion between the
artist and the viewer. The artist feels something
that creates a sensation that becomes the artwork.
The artwork then generates a sensation in you,
the viewer, which hopefully triggers a similar
emotion. It's a chain reaction. And he got really
specific about the connections, didn't he? The
color sound pairings. Well, yeah, famously specific.
And they really stick with you. Like yellow for
him was the color of middle C played on a brassy
trumpet. Loud, sharp, aggressive. Exactly. Exactly.
But other colors had totally different vibes.
Red was like a tuba, maybe low brass, strong,
heavy, earthy. And green? Green was quieter,
more like a sustained violin note, restful still.
Blue was the deepest, maybe a cello evoking coldness,
the heavens, spirituality. And black and white?
Black was the color of absolute closure, silence,
the end. While white was the opposite silence,
but full of potential, like a pause before creation
begins. So when he combined colors, he wasn't
just thinking visually. He was thinking acoustically.
He was composing chords. Color combinations produced
vibrational frequencies, just like piano chords
or cello chords, instruments he actually played
as a kid. Wow. And he didn't just keep this in
his notebooks, right? He actually put it into
practice. Massively so. The most famous example
is probably his stage design for Mussorgsky's
pictures at an exhibition. It premiered in Dessau
in 1928. That sounds incredible. What did he
do? It was like a living synesthetic manifesto.
The shapes, the colors on the stage backdrops,
lighting, they were all synchronized with the
music exactly following his detailed notes. So
as the music changed. The colors and forms changed.
When the pitch went up, maybe the color shifted
from deep blues and reds to bright yellows and
whites. When the rhythm got frantic, the shapes
might get sharper, more agitated. It was a moving
abstract landscape driven entirely by sound.
That perfectly illustrates the concept. But let's
jump back a bit to 1913 to show how deep the
sound connection went in his actual painting
process. The story behind Composition 6. Ah,
the flood anecdote, yes. It really shows the
power of sound over intellect for him. He'd been
working on this huge painting for months, right?
Yeah. Trying to evoke flood, destruction, rebirth.
Made over 30 studies, sketches, really detailed
preparations. But he was totally blocked, stuck.
Why? He knew what he wanted to paint. He knew
intellectually, yes. But he was trying too hard,
trapped in the idea of the flood, trying to force
the symbols. He couldn't access that. Inner necessity.
So how did he break through? It was Gabrielle
Minter who suggested something radical. She told
him, forget the meaning, forget the intellect.
Just repeat the German word, uberflute deluge.
or flood over and over again like a mantra focusing
on the sound purely on the physical sound the
vibration of the word not its meaning and it
worked amazingly yes the moment he let go of
the concept and just immersed himself in the
sound that inner necessity unlocked he stopped
trying to illustrate and let the sound guide
the paint he finished that massive complex swirling
canvas in just three days incredible it shows
his abstraction wasn't just intellectual games
it was this deep almost trance -like spiritual
process accessed through sound. But that very
individualistic spiritual approach? Well, it
was about to clash with the real world. World
War I sends him back to Moscow in 1914. And then
the Russian revelation happens. Exactly. So from
about 1918 to 1921, he gets heavily involved
in the cultural politics of the new Soviet state.
Trying to shape the new art world. Yeah. He collaborated
on art education, museum reform. He even helped
set up the Museum of the Culture of Painting
he was trying to contribute. But the Soviet climate
wasn't really aligned with his ideas, was it?
Not really. The dominant movements emerging like
constructivism and productivism, they were all
about utility, materialism. Art had to serve
the state, serve industry, be practical. And
Kandinsky's focus on inner necessity, spirituality,
individual expression. It was completely out
of step. It was seen as foreign, too bourgeois,
too subjective, not useful for the collective.
His spiritual outlook just didn't fit the argumentative
materialism of Soviet society. So he was sidelined.
Pretty much. His influence waned, opportunities
dried up. So when Walter Gropius invited him
in 1921 to come teach at the Bauhaus in Germany.
He did good. Gratefully, yes. It marked another
huge shift, leaving the expressive, almost chaotic
energy of pre -war Europe for the structured,
theoretical world of the Bauhaus. So the Bauhaus
era, starting for Kandinsky in 1922, this was
incredibly important for him. The whole point
of the Bauhaus was merging art, craft, technology.
Making modern design for the masses, essentially.
Right. And this structured theoretical environment
was perfect for Kandinsky to really dig into
and formalize those geometric ideas that have
been floating around since his theosophy days.
And he wasn't just a minor figure there, was
he? Oh no, he was central. He taught the basic
design course for new students, advanced theory,
painting workshops, even classes on form psychology.
He really thrived on putting structure to his
ideas. And integrating geometry points, lines,
planes into his existing color theories. Exactly.
And this intense focus on formalizing everything
led to his second big book, Point and Line to
Plane, which came out in 1926. What was in that
one? More theory. Yes. but incredibly detailed.
It was like an academic treatise on form. He
analyzed the psychological, emotional impact
of different lines, angles, shapes. Give us an
example. What's the feeling of a straight line?
Well, for Kandinsky, a horizontal line felt cold,
passive, stable, heavy. but a vertical line that
was warm, active, light, dynamic. Kind of diagonal?
Tension, speed. He was basically creating an
emotional dictionary for every single geometric
element. It sounds almost scientific. It was
incredibly systematic. And interestingly, his
research was happening at the same time as Gestalt
psychologists were studying how our brains perceive
and organize visual information. The Bauhaus
was a real hub for that kind of thinking. So
he wasn't just making it up. He was grounding
it in contemporary psychology. Trying to, yes.
And he also formalized the links between primary
shapes and colors. The sharp triangle he linked
with that aggressive color, yellow. The square.
Stable intellectual square went with calm flat
red. And the circle. Ah, the circle became really
important for him at the Bauhaus, didn't it?
Hugely important. He saw the circle, no beginning,
no end, as the most peaceful shape. And crucially,
he felt it represented the human soul. The soul.
How so? Like it's a perfect, complete, self -contained
form floating peacefully within the chaos of
the universe. And you see this shift reflected.
Directly in his paintings from this time. More
geometry. Clearly. His style becomes much more
precise. Lots of circles, angles, straight lines,
grids. A great example is Yellow Red Blue from
1925. A painting, right. Huge, two meters wide.
And it really shows how he's moved on from, say,
the Russian constructivists who were more focused
on pure utility. What's going on in it? You've
got the main elements, a big vertical yellow
rectangle, this inclined red cross shape, and
a large dark blue circle, those primary color
shape pairings he theorized about. But it's not
just those three shades. No, it's complex. They're
set against this background filled with other
things, winding black lines, little scattered
circles, checkerboard patterns. It's not simple.
What's the effect? It forces you to look deeper,
as he said. It's not about just identifying yellow,
rectangle, blue, circle. It's about feeling the
tension and the harmony between all these different
elements, the colors, the lines, the shapes,
all interacting on the canvas. And while he was
deep in teaching and theory at the Bauhaus, he
was still connected internationally. Yes. He
helped start another group, Die Blauvier, the
Blue Four, in 1923. With Klee and Feininger.
And Alex Yovanyolansky. This was mainly for promotion.
outside Germany, especially in the U .S., a dealer
named Galka Shire really championed them, bringing
their European abstract art to America. But this
whole period of intense creativity and theoretical
work at the Bauhaus, it was happening against
a darkening political background in Germany.
Increasingly so. The rising right wing, and especially
the Nazis, hated the Bauhaus. They saw it as
degenerate, un -German, communist, Jewish, all
their usual smears. So the school was under pressure.
Constant pressure. It was forced to move first
from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, then again to
Berlin in 1932, trying to survive. But they couldn't
escape the Nazis. Ultimately, no. After a massive
smear campaign and direct government pressure
from the Nazis who had taken power, the Bauhaus
was finally forced to dissolve itself in July
1933. And for Kandinsky and many others. It meant
exile. He had to leave Germany, which led him
to France for the final chapter of his life.
So Kandinsky ends up in France, near Paris, in
Neuilly -sur -Seine from 1934. And this starts
his final period, right? the great synthesis
that's what it's often called because he really
starts integrating everything the expressive
color from his early russian days the spirituality
from theosophy and the geometric rigor from the
bauhaus How did his style change in this final
phase? It softened again, in a way. He moved
away from the really strict Bauhaus geometry
and started using what are called biomorphic
forms. Biomorphic. Meaning, like, shapes derived
from life, but not literal representations. They
often look sort of like microscopic organisms
or amoebas, embryos, tiny sea creatures, supple,
curvy, non -geometric outlines. What was he going
for with those? It seems like he was searching
for universal life forms, the absolute basic
building blocks of existence, almost like painting
life seen under a microscope. And the color.
The color compositions often consciously recalled
Slavic folk art, those bright colors he loved
from his youth. So a real fusion of his Russian
roots and all his theoretical development. And
he used black differently too, didn't he? Yes,
black became very important, but not just as
closure like in his earlier theory. He used it
more as a... cosmic background a void which made
the bright biomorphic forms floating within it
seen even more vibrant. And he experimented with
texture, adding sand. Occasionally, yes. Mix
sand with the paint to get this granular, earthy,
rustic texture, adding another physical dimension
to the abstract space. And his last major works
come from this period. His final two big compositions,
Composition IX from 1936 with these strong diagonal
lines pointing towards a kind of embryo shape
in the center, and then Composition X in 1939.
What's that one like? It's majestic, like fragments
of stars or colorful filaments bursting and floating
against this deep, infinite black background.
It feels very cosmic. He actually became a French
citizen that same year, in 1939. But even in
France, he couldn't escape the shadow of the
Nazis. No. His work was prime target for them.
It was prominently featured in that infamous
degenerate art exhibition they staged in 1937.
What did they show? Various pieces, including
a painting from 1916 called Zweier Leirot, which
is now considered lost. For the Nazis, his art,
driven by inner necessity, was just proof of
weakness, intellectual rot, degeneracy, and the
physical destruction was devastating. When the
Nazis raided the Bauhaus earlier, in the 30s...
They confiscated his work. They confiscated his
first three compositions. Think about that. The
absolute pinnacles of his breakthrough into expressive
abstraction, gone. They were later destroyed
during World War II. too, an unbelievable loss
for art history. Just tragic. Yeah. But despite
those losses, his importance today is undeniable,
right? You just have to look at the art market.
Absolutely. His auction prices consistently reflect
his status as a giant of modern art. Any specific
examples? Well, back in 2012, one of his early
expressionist studies, Study for Improvisation
8 from 1909, sold for $23 million. Wow. And more
recently, 2016, a big Bauhaus -era abstract,
Rigide... Courbet from 1935 went for $23 .3 million.
And that one has an interesting history too.
It does. Solomon R. Guggenheim himself bought
that painting directly from Kandinsky back in
1936. Shows that major collectors recognized
his importance very early on. But that connection
to the pre -war and war era also brings complications,
doesn't it? the issue of Nazi -looted art. Yes,
that's an unavoidable and important part of his
legacy now. We have to look impartially at the
claims that have emerged against museums holding
works acquired during that period. It highlights
the moral complexities. Have there been significant
cases involving Kandinsky's work? There have.
There was a claim against the Beiler Foundation
over Improvisation No. 10 related to its post
-war history, which was eventually settled. But
the most high -profile one recently involved
a painting called Painting with Houses. Yes,
that case got a lot of attention. The painting
originally belonged to a Jewish family, the Leuensteins.
It ended up with the city of Amsterdam in 1940,
right after the Nazi occupation began. And the
family's heirs tried to get it back? For years.
There were legal battles. Court rulings initially
allowed the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to
keep it, arguing it was hard to definitively
prove it was a forced sale under duress. But
that changed. Yes, the moral argument eventually
won out. In 2021, the Amsterdam City Council
revisited the case and decided to return the
painting to the Leunstein heirs. They acknowledged
the impossible situation Jews faced under Nazi
occupation and the moral weight attached to acquisitions
from that time. It's a powerful reminder that
the history behind the art matters just as much
as the art itself, where it's a price tag. Absolutely.
The market value doesn't erase the historical
context. Hashtag tech tech outro. So as we wrap
up this deep dive on Kandinsky, I mean, the main
takeaway seems pretty clear. He wasn't just splashing
paint. He was like the chief architect of abstraction.
He really was. He fundamentally changed the game,
didn't he? He proved that abstract art wasn't
just about making pretty patterns. It was serious,
spiritual, logical, all driven by that core idea.
Inner necessity. And his life itself was just
constant movement geographically. Russia, Germany.
France. And artistically, Impressionism, Fauvism,
Blue Writer Expressionism, Bauhaus Geometry,
that final synthesis. It shows that listening
to that inner voice, that inner necessity, it's
maybe the toughest path, the most demanding critic
you can have. So let's go back one last time
to his idea of the artist as a prophet, standing
at the top of that pyramid, seeing the future.
Right. He predicted that what seemed inconceivable
yesterday would become normal today. And his
work is proof. that radical abstraction is now
in every major museum, sells for millions. It
became conceivable, even necessary. So what does
that mean for us looking around today? Well,
it makes you wonder, doesn't it, what revolutionary,
maybe totally confusing abstract forms are being
created right now, maybe in AI art or weird complex
music or even theoretical physics that seem baffling
today. But might actually define how we understand
beauty or truth a generation from now. Exactly.
What new kind of non -recognition like Kandinsky
felt with Monet are you experiencing today? What
confusing thing might turn out to be tomorrow's
big revelation, tomorrow's splendor? Something
to definitely think about. Keep that question
with you. Yeah. Thank you for joining us for
The Deep Dive.