A parallel between color and music can only be relative – just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that both color and music share a subjective quality that allows them to evoke similar feelings and interpretations.
Wassily Kandinsky's quote illustrates the relationship between color and music, emphasizing that both art forms can elicit emotional responses that are personal and relative to the viewer or listener. He implies that just as a violin's warm tones can resonate with a palette of colors, certain shades like yellow can evoke various feelings akin to musical expressions, highlighting the interconnected nature of sensory experiences.
In practice
An art critique discussing the emotional impact of a painting may quote Kandinsky to articulate the synergy between visual art and music.
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.
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.
When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.
It is through the intentionality of poetic imagination that the poet's soul discovers the opening of consciousness common to all true poetry.
When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.
I stumbled onto the best profession to heal my childhood: the only one that lets you release and express whatever is ugly and messy and beautiful about your life. We're in the business of creating human beings. The more we spew, and the more honestly we do it, the better. Try that on Wall Street.
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art.
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