Behind everything, there’s an eye. Up and to its right it looks, pupil dilated to fill almost all of its iris, transfixed by a small salmon circle in the upper left corner.
The ‘everything’ this eye ignores is very similar to the eye itself. Circles, within circles, orbiting circles, all of them defiantly kaleidoscopic against the dark smears of the background. Each perfect circumference holds its own sense of gravity; they bend the black around themselves like tap water might curve around a spoon.
Reflected in the iris there is a tentative dusting of white. Bright dots that could each portray another circle, if only we could reach the origin of their light more intimately, to take them in up close.
This painting is Kandinsky exploding at me. This is also Kandinsky sitting next to me, excitedly pointing out at the fourth dimension, and whispering ‘look. Look how wonderful this is.’
/
Looking through this painting I see scouts, my friends, camping. We’ve been taken out of tents, into the chill of winter moonlight, to investigate the intricacies of bygone constellations. Our leader, telescope in hand, points to each speck of ancient fire in the sky and tells us which God breathed life into it, which Latin polysyllable has been deployed, like a Centurion, to guard its meaning over millennia.
‘That’s Betelgeuse. Antares. That one’s Alpha Piscis Austrini.’
They wink at us, knowingly, from trillions of years ago. They are aware of their own future majesty, and perhaps when they look out they see a trace of that great orb we call the Sun, being birthed by converging gases in our lonely circle of the universe.
‘That one’s Monoceros.’
/
There is no abstraction between Kandinsky’s legacy and his life: he is remembered for painting, and he lived to paint.
What motivates a man to fill a canvas with circles, to fill canvas upon canvas with colour that does not denote a scene, other than a love for circles and for shapes? To dedicate oneself to pioneering the art of abstraction, of colour-focussed representation, rather than continuing the tradition of representing reality realistically, is to declare that the material world is not enough.
The material world is not enough, Kandinsky says to the Soviet Union, his home, whose eyes cannot be drawn away from materialism.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Kandinsky says.
/
It is perhaps tragic that circles make me think of stars, and that stars make me think of scouts. The latter is the root of the tragedy: I think of scouting when I contemplate the cosmos because the only times I’ve ever witnessed the universe beyond our atmosphere is when I’ve been camping. We don’t realise how much beautiful matter we miss when we’re living urban lives. We don’t understand the theft that’s going on above our heads, how light pollution has robbed us of connection from the rest of everything to ever exist.
Contained in one night’s sky is all of human emotion: terror at the scale, the never-ceasing scope of it, romance from the terror of it, joy from the romance of it, melancholy from the loneliness of it, jealousy from the conspiracy of it (how many of those stars are in contact with one another, and why don’t they make a move towards us?), and rage, rage at the muted energy of it all.
It’s Shakespearian. It’s realist and abstract all at once, material and ethereal, heaven and earth.
And it isn’t dreamt of in the urban man’s philosophy.
/
Like HAL 9000, an ominous, omniscient presence lurks in the corner of Kandinsky’s painting. A small red circle, piercing from the top right. Think for a moment: Kandinsky turned to his pots and picked this striking scarlet out to balance this particular perpendicular with the rest of the image.
It’s as if he chose the most penetrating colour he could find, to offset the immense dragging weight of the large blue eye that sits just off the centre of the scene.
/
What are the similarities between Kandinsky and myself?
Ask me that five years before now. Go back in time and ask a younger me. He’ll tell you one of two things: either that ‘there’s nothing similar between me and Kandinsky’s weird circle painting because it’s one of those ‘high art’ pieces that doesn’t mean anything to anyone but still sells for millions. I would never create such a work, because I like to keep people entertained.’
Or, that version of ‘me’ would say there in fact is a connection: ‘Me and this guy both like to seem clever.’
Ask me now, though, if you must. Just know that I don’t have any straight answers.
Modern me would say that Kandinsky shares my urge to explore. To set oneself apart from the crowd, and to be seen and recognised for attempting something new. Kandinsky clears clouds with his canvas, snuffing the barrier of light pollution that sits between ourselves and the abstract potential of art, in the same way as I would like to forge a new lens through which people can view our reality. I just don’t know what shape that lens would take yet.
Me from five years ago would respond to this comparison by saying ‘see? I like to seem clever.’
/
I long to be in a gallery again…
I feel like I’ve contracted a severe case of 21st-century-itis, because I can’t escape the technological context of an art gallery. I’ve always got to contrast these physical spaces with the untouchable online ether where I spend most of my time. Galleries are startlingly material, even if, yet again, they are beyond touch. That is the paradox of an art gallery for me; when I leave one, it feels like I’ve just had a real experience of art, something unattainable online.
Perhaps, when you’re in a room with something, it can whisper to you in ways it couldn’t through a screen. It can pull you closer and tell you things that nobody else in the room can hear. You look around to make sure your secret dialogue is not being overheard, eavesdropped upon by others in the gallery. The painting can confide in you.
Being in a room with a painting also means it can turn you away, too. It can tut down at you, you who are small and insignificant at the back of the crowd. The clique already gathered around it understand it better than you ever will.
But there are always those friendly frames on the walls who beckon you over and give you a hug. They declare ‘it’s okay if you don’t understand me, but you’re here. What do you see?’
/
Behind everything, there’s an eye.
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