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Page 18
"Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy
and plenty" (Delacroix). [Footnote: Cf. Paul Signac, D'Eugene
Delacroix au Neo-Impressionisme. Paris. Floury. Also compare an
interesting article by K. Schettler: "Notizen uber die Farbe."
(Decorative Kunst, 1901, February).]
These two quotations show the deep relationship between the arts,
and especially between music and painting. Goethe said that
painting must count this relationship her main foundation, and by
this prophetic remark he seems to foretell the position in which
painting is today. She stands, in fact, at the first stage of the
road by which she will, according to her own possibilities, make
art an abstraction of thought and arrive finally at purely
artistic composition. [Footnote: By "Komposition" Kandinsky here
means, of course, an artistic creation. He is not referring to
the arrangement of the objects in a picture.--M.T.H.S.]
Painting has two weapons at her disposal:
1. Colour.
2. Form.
Form can stand alone as representing an object (either real or
otherwise) or as a purely abstract limit to a space or a surface.
Colour cannot stand alone; it cannot dispense with boundaries of
some kind. [Footnote: Cf. A. Wallace Rimington. Colour music (OP.
CIT.) where experiments are recounted with a colour organ, which
gives symphonies of rapidly changing colour without boundaries--
except the unavoidable ones of the white curtain on which the
colours are reflected.--M.T.H.S.] A never-ending extent of red
can only be seen in the mind; when the word red is heard, the
colour is evoked without definite boundaries. If such are
necessary they have deliberately to be imagined. But such red, as
is seen by the mind and not by the eye, exercises at once a
definite and an indefinite impression on the soul, and produces
spiritual harmony. I say "indefinite," because in itself it has
no suggestion of warmth or cold, such attributes having to be
imagined for it afterwards, as modifications of the original
"redness." I say "definite," because the spiritual harmony exists
without any need for such subsequent attributes of warmth or
cold. An analogous case is the sound of a trumpet which one hears
when the word "trumpet" is pronounced. This sound is audible to
the soul, without the distinctive character of a trumpet heard in
the open air or in a room, played alone or with other
instruments, in the hands of a postilion, a huntsman, a soldier,
or a professional musician.
But when red is presented in a material form (as in painting) it
must possess (1) some definite shade of the many shades of red
that exist and (2) a limited surface, divided off from the other
colours, which are undoubtedly there. The first of these
conditions (the subjective) is affected by the second (the
objective), for the neighbouring colours affect the shade of red.
This essential connection between colour and form brings us to
the question of the influences of form on colour. Form alone,
even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of
inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration
of its being acute-or obtuse-angled or equilateral) has a
spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this
value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same.
The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable
geometrical figure. [Footnote: The angle at which the triangle
stands, and whether it is stationary or moving, are of importance
to its spiritual value. This fact is specially worthy of the
painter's consideration.] As above, with the red, we have here a
subjective substance in an objective shell.
The mutual influence of form and colour now becomes clear. A
yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green
triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square--all these are different
and have different spiritual values.
It is evident that many colours are hampered and even nullified
in effect by many forms. On the whole, keen colours are well
suited by sharp forms (e.g., a yellow triangle), and soft, deep
colours by round forms (e.g., a blue circle). But it must be
remembered that an unsuitable combination of form and colour is
not necessarily discordant, but may, with manipulation, show the
way to fresh possibilities of harmony.
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