Color & Kandinsky

(Well, that was fun. Thanks, blogger, for eating my post. Grr...)

Let's try this again.

Seeing Kandinsky's painting Several Circles in the text (pages xxiv & 17) reminded me that I had read a book of his on color theory a long time ago. (I think it was Concerning the Spiritual in Art from 1910.) Anyway, I remembered very little about it, except that:

1.) It didn't really do much for me, and
2.)Apparently Georgia O'Keefe threw out every & started over after reading it.

Since the text brought it back to mind, I thought I'd go see what Kandinsky was about. He had some really particular ideas about what constituted "appropriate" colors for certain shapes, and it's possible that he had synesthesia (a medical condition where the wires get crossed and so people can hear colors, see music and so forth) which could've had something to do with his rigid ideas about color use. Still, it's interesting stuff.

Here's a cool blog post that gives a decent overview of basic color theory by Kandinsky. The whole proper color for particular angles part really got to me.

If you'd like to know more, this academic article titled Rhyme or Reason in Color Symbolism? A Biophysical Analysis of Kandinsky's Colour Theories is pretty short and very interesting.