The culminating end product of this
deconstruction of art in the early 20th century was Non-Objective
Art, a style that uses color, line, texture, and unrecognizable shapes and
forms. These works are totally abstract
and contain no apparent references to reality.
When we arrive at Kandinsky, artists refuse even to title their works,
in order to stay true to the idea of pure abstraction. This painting is his Composition III.
Wassily Kandinsky's earliest
artworks follow Post-Impressionist styles, with clear references to reality and
actual subject matter. He could paint
realistically but eventually chose not to for specific, philosophical reasons. Coming through art school, the painter sought
new ways to show the world around him and express inner feelings through images
not tied to tangible objects. Art, in
his mind, should not be merely an illustration of objects as they appear in
nature. He followed the theory that all
nature can be simplified by geometry, and he believed that a painting should be
a duplicate of some inner emotion (Expressionism). But it's left completely to abstracts. Kandinsky's paintings are very cerebral in
that he doesn't give any clues as to what we are observing. This is literally a canvas of lines and
shapes, colors on an otherwise blank, white surface, much of which, by the way,
has been left blank and white. They
appear structured and in some kind of order (most of his paintings, for
instance, feature a blue circle, red square, and yellow triangle), but that
order is indiscernible to us, the viewer.
Here we enter into a world not necessarily of imagination or style but
of pure abstraction; the point of the painting is to exist outside of
reality. What meaning can come out of
such a work? That, too, is left open and
undefined. The artist is trying to
create a work that extends beyond itself through non-reality, but how about
you? What do you think; is this art? Have we broken off into something else?
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