Several Circles

7:00 PM

 Wassily Kandinsky, Several Circles, 1926
By ANIRUDH VADLAMANI

A space is any continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied. So any viewer who sees this and thinks of the outer space would not be wrong to think so. This painting does represent space, just not the space the viewer was probably thinking of.

During his illustrious career where he garnered attention for being an impeccable painter as well as philosopher, Kandinsky heavily believed in an art style defined as "theosophy." Theosophy is the idea that creation is a geometrical progression from a single point, and every creative element of the work is generated from the original central point. Kandinsky wrote two books on theosophy during his career. With the second book, Point and Line to Plane, he released this painting to help amplify his point.

This painting helps define the theory of theosophy. Kandinsky starts the work from the direct center of the painting. From there, he sketches two circles. From the larger black circle, he follows it to the bottom and defines a new point of origin, and generates more circles from that point. While this sounds maddening, in the end, the work looks as it does now. A mess? Absolutely not. A calculated, geometrical masterpiece.

Kandinsky's works means nothing when its explained in such crude terms. To me, Kandinsky is a painter of feelings. Upon first inspection it looks like outer space and a bunch of colorful planets. However, if I look deeper, the other space I talked about earlier emerges. Eternal nothingness. The beauty of just general emotion, emerging from the center point, with hues of more nothing, but surrounded by a calming blue. Follow the blue and you see even warmer colors: light olive greens, violet, orange, and light pinks. I will not define each color because these should mean something else, to every different individual. 

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