40 pages • 1 hour read
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
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BetaPart 2, Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “About Painting”
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Psychological Working of Color”
When most people experience color, it makes only a “momentary and superficial impression” (24) consisting of physical sensations, such as those suggestive of warmth and coolness. In more “sensitive” souls, by contrast, colors have a deeper, more intense, psychic effect resulting in a “spiritual vibration.” In some people, colors can even suggest the effects of other senses, like taste or touch or sound.
Kandinsky states the first of several “guiding principles”: Color is “a power which directly influences the soul” and that the artist is “the hand” which plays with color like a musician on his instrument “to cause vibrations in the soul” (25). Thus, “color harmony” is one of the “guiding principles” of Kandinsky’s theory of art, based on the concept of the “inner need.”
Part 2, Chapter 5 Analysis
In this chapter, Kandinsky introduces the subject of colors and their psychological and emotional effects on the soul, a subject he will discuss at much greater length in the following chapter. Upon seeing color, the eye at first receives “a purely physical impression” (23), but although this first impression is merely “superficial,” it later deepens into other sensations that more directly involve the soul and emotions. Kandinsky terms this the “psychic effect” of the colors and associates it with a “spiritual vibration.
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