Kandinsky and Itten

This image, Blue by Wassily Kandinsky 1927, is a good example of what Arnheim meant when he wrote, "like Mondrian and Kandinsky, he can work with completely nonmimetic shapes, which reflect human experience by pure visual expression and spatial relations." (Arnheim 145) My brain worked with the large blue sphere in a couple of ways. The first was as a planet in an outer space realm of galactic blue. The tiny red sphere could be a planet further away in this galaxy. Another way to look at this painting is the blue sphere is a small marble on a large ink splot and the red dot is an image of a lazer point being shined on the ink. Either way I view the painting, my mind seems to use the Gestault to come up with these ideas. In both instances the blue background, either viewed as space or ink splot, is what Arnheim would call "a Gestault" (68).

This work, Kunst der Farbe, by Johannes Itten evokes Arnheim's explanation of simplicity, leveling and the whole. (66, 67) It is possible that Itten had this in mind when he painted his many Kunsts der Farbes. The simplicity of the square shapes gives power to the two colors used in this work. Itten was a color theorist at the Bauhaus and wrote The Art of Color. I also think about Arnheim's explanation on "levels of abstraction". While I am not sure I fully understand what he meant when he wrote, "when by some circumstance the mind is freed from its usual allegiance to the complexities of nature, it will organize shapes in accordance with the tendencies that govern its own functioning. We have much evidence that the principal tendency at work here is that toward simplest structure, i.e., toward the most regular, symmetrical, geometrical shape attainable under the circumstances." (145) I get the feeling that Itten's work speaks to this idea.