vasily kandinsky composition iv

The mood of the author is transmitted through the inner movement to the right, and the small forms move to the left, which creates an amazing harmony of masses and simple lying lines.
The picture “Composition IV” is conceived very bright with a lot of gentle tones, which often flow one into another, yellow too cold. The ratio of light-tender-cold to sharp-moving makes the main contrast in the picture. Here, I think, this contrast is even stronger, but it is also firmer than the inner frankness. The result is a more accurate impression.

During the Bauhaus period, (1922–1933), Kandinsky’s paintings took on a geometric aspect, including circles, half-circles, coloured checkerboards, colour and monochrome straight lines, curves, and planes rich in colours and shading, as shown in Yellow – red – blue (1925), all which contribute to the complexity of his compositions. From 1934 to 1944 was the Great Synthesis period. Kandinsky created his last major paintings in his Paris living-room studio. His compositions were now biomorphic, organic in form and outline, as shown in Composition IX (1936) and Composition X (1939).
Kandinsky set the benchmark for expressive contemporary art in the twentieth century. His paintings and writings greatly influenced the Abstract Expressionism movement and its offshoots like Color Field painting. Painters such as Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock were influenced by biomorphic work from his later Great Synthesis period. Color Field painters Mark Rothko were fascinated by the Kandinsky’s use of shading and different colours and their impact on the viewer. Even the 1980s artists working in the Neo-Expressionist painters like Julian Schnabel and Philip Guston used his ideas in their own works work.

Oil on canvas – Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Hidden within the bright swaths of color and the clear black lines of Composition IV, Kandinsky portrayed several Cossacks with lances, as well as boats, reclining figures, and a castle on a hilltop. As with many paintings from this period, he represented the apocalyptic battle that would lead to eternal peace. The notion of battle is conveyed by the Cossacks, while the calm of the flowing forms and reclining figures on the right alludes to the peace and redemption to follow. In order to facilitate his development of a non-objective style of painting, as described in his text Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky reduced objects to pictographic symbols. Through his elimination of most references to the outside world, Kandinsky expressed his vision in a more universal manner, distilling the spiritual essence of the subject through these forms into a visual vocabulary. Many of these symbolic figures were repeated and refined in later works, becoming further and further abstracted as Kandinsky developed his mature, purely abstract style.

3. Overlapping
of contours by colors.
Only all outlines of the castle are weakened by the sky flowing through its contour.
1. Mass (Weights)
Colors
in the middle at the bottom – blue (providing cold tone to the whole)
on the right at the top – separated blue, red and yellow
on the left at the top – black interlacing lines of horses
on the right at the bottom – extended lines of lying figures

The second picture that I chose to analyze is “Pepper #30″ by Edward Weston. When I
see this painting, I am not ashamed to assume that I am seeing an ever day pepper.

Resources:

http://www.kandinskypaintings.org/composition-iv/
http://m.theartstory.org/artist/kandinsky-wassily/artworks/
http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-114.php
http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=78022
http://painting-planet.com/composition-iv-by-vasily-kandinsky/