Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
–Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911)
I am running late this morning but came across this short post concerning a favorite artist, Wassily Kandinsky, whose work and words always inspire me. I like this because his advice to stop thinking is much the same thought that I often share in gallery talks. I say that my best work comes when I stop thinking and react instinctively. Too much thought moves the work towards stilted contrivance and an unnatural stiffness while work that comes intuitively tends more toward an organic feeling with rhythm and harmony.
A case of intuition over intellect or as I often put it in these talks, we’re just not that smart.
Some days the brain just gets in the way.
Several years ago in a short post here, I shared the quote above and a great little film from Alfred Imageworks that features an animation of the elements from some of Kandinsky’s great paintings as well a film from 1926 of Kandinsky creating a drawing with these same elements.
These always seem to help me in some way that I can’t quantify. Maybe I should take Kandinsky’s advice and stop thinking on this.
Anyway, thought they’d be worth revisiting today before I get down to real work.
Take a look if you are so inclined and then have yourself a good day, again, if you are so inclined.
Redtree Times 