Book review
This is not a perfect book by far, its filled with theoretical flaws and subjectivity that should be questioned. So, why am I giving it 5 stars? I am an art historian, I didn’t read this book to find it as truth or to consider it an actual part of reality, I read it as a way to understand both the artist and the movement he caused, to understand the thought processes and directions he was taking and that others would somehow follow in abstract art. The book fulfilled my need perfectly. As I read this extended essay by Kandinsky, and remembering the own lessons my university taught me, I found the ideologies constructed intriguing, a radical manifesto of what art should be for these artists. We start with the need to expose the inner meanings of each artist, the way art isn’t a material practice anymore in which we can only show what is seen in the outside world, but a way to show the invisibility of the inner world. He also explain an interesting analogy between the evolution of art and a triangle, in which the top slowly become part of the bottom as a new top is defined. What I found most interesting and something that I hadn’t heard before in classes is Kandinsky’s constant comparison between the new spiritual art that is arising and music, the way music is the first branch of art that divided itself from the immediate material world and as such, the first branch of art which dwelt with showing the inner worlds of the artists.
So yeah, as an art historian this was a good read, just don’t take it too seriously and always question what you are being told, art is always changing along with humanity, nothing is set in stone on what is correct and what isn’t.
- Goodreads rating – 3.84
- REVIEW – Estefania Pereira