The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
Interpretation
Abstract forms can communicate ideas more clearly and directly than representational forms.
Wassily Kandinsky's quote suggests that when form becomes more abstract, it often has a greater ability to connect with people on an emotional or intellectual level. This idea relates to the power of abstraction in art, where simplification and distortion can evoke deeper feelings and thoughts by stripping away unnecessary details, allowing the essence of the work to shine through.
In practice
In an art class, one might start a discussion about Kandinsky's philosophy on abstraction.
The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.
The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.
With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.
The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.
Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his heart is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will someday reach to heaven.
It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.
The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.
Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.
What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations.
Like everything genuine, its inner life guarantees its truth. All works of art created by truthful minds without regard for the work's conventional exterior remain genuine for all times.
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