"I had the impression that here painting itself comes to the foreground;
I wondered if it would not be possible to go further in this
direction."
Thus did the young Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) react
to his first viewing of Monet's Haystack, included in an 1895 Moscow
exhibit of French Impressionists. It was his first perception of the
dematerialization of an object and presaged the later development of his
influential theories of non-objective art.
During study and travel in Europe, the young artist breathed the heady
atmosphere of artistic experimentation. Fauvism, Cubism, Symbolism, and
other movements played an important role in the development of his own
revolutionary approach to painting. Decrying literal representation,
Kandinsky emphasized instead the importance of form, color, rhythm, and
the artist's inner need in expressing reality.
In Point and Line to Plane, one of the most influential books in
20th-century art, Kandinsky presents a detailed exposition of the inner
dynamics of non-objective painting. Relying on his own unique
terminology, he develops the idea of point as the "proto-element" of
painting, the role of point in nature, music, and other art, and the
combination of point and line that results in a unique visual language.
He then turns to an absorbing discussion of line -- the influence of
force on line, lyric and dramatic qualities, and the translation of
various phenomena into forms of linear expression. With profound
artistic insight, Kandinsky points out the organic relationship of the
elements of painting, touching on the role of texture, the element of
time, and the relationship of all these elements to the basic material
plane called upon to receive the content of a work of art.
Originally published in 1926, this essay represents the mature flowering
of ideas first expressed in Kandinsky's earlier seminal book,
Concerning the Spiritual in Art. As an influential member of the
Bauhaus school and a leading theoretician of abstract expressionism,
Kandinsky helped formulate the modern artistic temperament. This book
amply demonstrates the importance of his contribution and its profound
effect on 20th-century art.
