A Pioneer and one of the great innovators of modern and abstract art, - Wassily Kandinsky (Василий Кандинский) made a bold attempt to redefine the functions of paintings. His new approach explored revolutionary ideas about abstract or non-objective painting — works without literal identifiable objects or that which does not take from the natural world. Kandinsky had devoted much of his time trying to find an answer to the questions of relationship between music and art. One of his essential goals was to create work with spiritual meaning without directly representing a subject or object. For Kandinsky, the purpose of art was to express an intense spiritual reality that lay beyond the world of external appearances. Influenced greatly by the esoterica philosophy known as Theosophy, Kandinsky was inspired to create art that was analogous to music, the most abstract and non-representational of art forms. Kandinsky’s Relations, a work in the Kreeger Museum located in Washington DC, created in 1934 is a mixed media on canvas …show more content…
His mystical concept of an inner reality beyond surface appearance would affect artists that came later. Theosophy is the unity of religion, science and philosophy (Ryan). The full message of Kandinsky’s paintings is revealed only to one who recognizes the spiritual identity of the form and initial emotion that inspired it. This idea of a “New Age” was a common theme among several of his works. “In the beginning was color.” Kandinsky wrote in the opening line of his memoir, which is what his work is all about. The first colors that made an impression on him was the “color of light bright green, white, carmine, black, and yellow ochre” (Brion, 10). Moreover Kandinsky saw red as “… the exuberant spirit of joyful vitality, of melodious well-being” (Brion,