Yes We Kandinsky

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Kandinsky, Painting with red spot, 1914

The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by

frequent exercise. 

...
The starting point is the study of colour and its effects on men.

There is no need to engage in the finer shades of complicated
colour, but rather at first to consider only the direct use of
simple colours.
...
Two great divisions of colour occur to the mind at the outset:
into warm and cold, and into light and dark. To each colour there
are therefore four shades of appeal--warm and light or warm and
dark, or cold and light or cold and dark.

Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a colour means an approach
respectively to yellow or to blue. This distinction is, so to
speak, on one basis, the colour having a constant fundamental
appeal, but assuming either a more material or more non-material
quality. The movement is an horizontal one, the warm colours
approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him.

The colours, which cause in another colour this horizontal
movement, while they are themselves affected by it, have another
movement of their own, which acts with a violent separative
force. This is, therefore, the first antithesis in the inner
appeal, and the inclination of the colour to yellow or to blue,
is of tremendous importance.

The second antithesis is between white and black; i.e., the
inclination to light or dark caused by the pair of colours just
mentioned. These colours have once more their peculiar movement
to and from the spectator, but in a more rigid form.

...

Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the first

antithesis--an ex- and concentric movement. If two circles are
drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief
concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out
from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The
blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail
retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator.
[Footnote: These statements have no scientific basis, but are
founded purely on spiritual experience.]

In the case of light and dark colours the movement is emphasized.
That of the yellow increases with an admixture of white, i.e., as
it becomes lighter. That of the blue increases with an admixture
of black, i.e., as it becomes darker. This means that there can
never be a dark-coloured yellow. The relationship between white
and yellow is as close as between black and blue, for blue can be
so dark as to border on black. Besides this physical
relationship, is also a spiritual one (between yellow and white
on one side, between blue and black on the other) which marks a
strong separation between the two pairs.

An attempt to make yellow colder produces a green tint and checks
both the horizontal and excentric movement. The colour becomes
sickly and unreal. The blue by its contrary movement acts as a
brake on the yellow, and is hindered in its own movement, till
the two together become stationary, and the result is green.
Similarly a mixture of black and white produces gray, which is
motionless and spiritually very similar to green.

But while green, yellow, and blue are potentially active, though
temporarily paralysed, in gray there is no possibility of
movement, because gray consists of two colours that have no
active force, for they stand, the one in motionless discord, the
other in a motionless negation, even of discord, like an endless
wall or a bottomless pit.

Because the component colours of green are active and have a
movement of their own, it is possible, on the basis of this
movement, to reckon their spiritual appeal.

The first movement of yellow, that of approach to the spectator
(which can be increased by an intensification of the yellow), and
also the second movement, that of over-spreading the boundaries,
have a material parallel in the human energy which assails every
obstacle blindly, and bursts forth aimlessly in every direction.

Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometrical form, has a
disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insistent,
aggressive character. [Footnote: It is worth noting that the
sour-tasting lemon and shrill-singing canary are both yellow.]
The intensification of the yellow increases the painful
shrillness of its note.

[Footnote: Any parallel between colour and music can only be
relative. Just as a violin can give various shades of tone,--so
yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.
But in making such parallels, I am assuming in each case a pure
tone of colour or sound, unvaried by vibration or dampers, etc.]
Yellow is the typically earthly colour. It can never have
profound meaning. An intermixture of blue makes it a sickly
colour. It may be paralleled in human nature, with madness, not
with melancholy or hypochondriacal mania, but rather with violent
raving lunacy.

The power of profound meaning is found in blue, and first in its
physical movements (1) of retreat from the spectator, (2) of
turning in upon its own centre. The inclination of blue to depth
is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is
deeper.

Blue is the typical heavenly colour.

[Footnote: ...The halos are golden for emperors and prophets
(i.e. for mortals), and sky-blue for symbolic figures (i.e.
spiritual beings); (Kondakoff, Histoire de l'An Byzantine
consideree principalement dans les miniatures, vol. ii, p. 382,
Paris, 1886-91).]

The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest.

[Footnote: Supernatural rest, not the earthly contentment of
green. The way to the supernatural lies through the natural. And
we mortals passing from the earthly yellow to the heavenly blue
must pass through green.]

When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly
human.

[Footnote: As an echo of grief violet stand to blue as does green
in its production of rest.]

When it rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its
appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music a light
blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello; a still darker a
thunderous double bass; and the darkest blue of all-an organ.

A well-balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The
horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the
centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore
motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but
by the world. Green is the most restful colour that exists. On
exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after
a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green
are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the
active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the
hierarchy of colours green is the "bourgeoisie"-self-satisfied,
immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when
nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive
energy of spring.

Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a
corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green
keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former
increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the
inclination to depth. In music the absolute green is represented
by the placid, middle notes of a violin.
...
pp. 36-9