Kandinsky And Maistre Analysis

The two artists I have chosen to write about in my essay are Wassily Kandinsky and Roy de Maistre. Both of these men are artists who were greatly influenced by the relationship between colour and sound and are thought to have pioneered the complete abstraction of art in each of their respective areas; Kandinsky is celebrated as the first artist to ever produce a entirely abstract work, while de Maistre is known as the one of the first Australian artists to use pure abstraction in his artwork. (Nairn & Serle, 1981)

Before delving into each of these artists separately, I would like to first discuss the idea of pure abstraction, as well as how I, as a member of the audience, feel about purely abstract art. Pictured above for reference is a watercolour

Synesthesia itself has only recently gained credibility as a neurological phenomenon after functional neuroimaging studies identified differences in patterns of brain activation (Hubbard & Ramachandran, 2005), as many have previously dismissed it as simply a side effect of an “overactive imagination”. As there was a lack of scientific research on synesthesia during Kandinsky’s time, there is not a lot of information on how, exactly, he associated colours and sounds. However, no matter how scientifically proven or unproven Kandinsky’s chromesthesia was, it is clear that he had quite an unusual relationship with music and colour, as shown by his extreme sensitivity to the use of colours in his artwork and references to colour-related sound (and vice versa) in the quotes given in the previous paragraph. This relationship was, in essence, Kandinsky’s method of responding to the world in his art. In this oil-on-canvas painting by Kandinsky, titled “Yellow Red Blue”, the viewer immediately senses a warmth and vibrancy emanating from the picture. It consists of multiple shapes, lines and tones that are all uniquely different, yet somehow manage to form a cohesive whole. This serves to bring about an air of organised chaos, which may evoke emotions of

The link between music and art, in de Maistre’s case, is very different from that of Kandinsky’s art. Whereas Kandinsky was thought to have a natural proclivity to experiencing sound and colour simultaneously, de Maistre took a far more intentional, systematic