QuoteProject
Whether the psychological effect of color is direct...or whether it is the outcome of association, is open to question. The soul being one with the body, it may well be possible that a psychological tremor generates corresponding one through association.
Wassily Kandinsky
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote discusses the relationship between color and psychological effects, suggesting a deep connection between the body and soul.

Wassily Kandinsky reflects on the complex relationship between color and psychology, contemplating whether color influences emotions directly or through learned associations. He posits that since the soul and body are intertwined, emotional responses to colors may arise from psychological stimuli that resonate deeply within us, highlighting the significant impact art can have on our inner experiences.

Themes

ColorPsychologyEmotionArtAssociation

In practice

Example use cases

In a presentation about the impact of colors in branding, you could use this quote to illustrate the psychological effects of color.

More from Wassily Kandinsky

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.
Wassily KandinskyRead
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.
Wassily KandinskyRead
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.
Wassily KandinskyRead
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.
Wassily KandinskyRead
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
Wassily KandinskyRead
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.
Wassily KandinskyRead

Similar quotes

All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory - of the absolute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.
Charles BaudelaireRead
The whole world of publishing is moving to electronic, but when you put a poem on a screen and you increase the type size, the shape of a poem changes.
Billy CollinsRead
I've never liked the word 'celebrity.' I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.
Annie LeibovitzRead
The public needs art, and it is the responsibility of a ’self-proclaimed artist’ to realize the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses. … I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached. The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. I am merely a middleman trying to bring ideas together.
Keith HaringRead
A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.
Francis SchaefferRead
I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.
David ChipperfieldRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.