Painting artist research

Wassily Kandinsky:

Kandinsky’s work consists of many colour studies on how different colour combinations are perceived and how colours interact next to each other. Kandinsky saw colour as more than just a visual stimulus, it was something he felt and he was a synaesthete, meaning he could hear colours and see sounds. His work often linked with music to him and sort of flows melodically, as if he could hear the music coming out of the paints. Kandinsky’s colour theory/ study consisted of: yellow meaning warm, “cheeky and exciting,” “disturbing for people,” attack, madness, green meaning peace, stillness, passive, a mix of yellow and blue, blue being peaceful, supernatural, deep, “typical heavenly colour; the lighter it is, the more calming it is. When in the end it becomes white, it reaches absolute calmness.” Red is restless, glowing, alive, “manly maturity”, light red is a warm colour, and expresses joy, energy and triumph. Middle red creates the feeling of stability and passion, and dark red is deep and can be made deeper with light blue. He saw violet as morbid and sad, white as “a dead silence”, and black as an unmoveable silence, and opposite to white in that way. Finally, grey is the middle ground between black and white, expressing “a hopeless stillness”. He often uses complimentary colours in the backgrounds, or in touching shapes, making my eyes adjust to the contradictory of the colours and hone in on the shapes created by them.

Yellow has many meanings. It is the colour of the sun, and of wheat, and candle light. For some, it is the colour of cowards and xenophobes, of disease, of growing old. It has been the colour of terror, of madness and of kings.  In one or two countries, the yellow joke is adult, as are yellow movies. In others, it is divine, holy, the earth and the sun and everything.