Wassily Kandinsky 
Squares with concentric circles 1913

SUBJECT MATTER

Looking at the quote addressed to this specific painting the artist seems to want to transmit joy and sound. He described it as a key board on which the artist can sing. The painting seems to have a joyful atmosphere caused by the strong contrasts between complementary colours (bright yellows and reds creating beautiful bright oranges).Is about colour and composition about the great impact which a well thought composition like this has on the viewer.

TECHNIQUE

The artwork is done on canvas with oil paint applied with the help of a palette knife and brush . The paint is not applied with care (he didn’t wanted his circles to be perfectly symmetrical as much as he wanted the colour choice to be perfect; thick consistent paint). When we talk about perspective in this painting is more about the individual viewing the composition. There might be people who would see the perspective through colour and brush mark but there will be individuals who will see just colour.

In this painting Kandinsky associated colour with sound and music .As I previously said the colours has been very well chosen to create an impact. It has got bright contrasts and surely a balance of the composition and colour eg; yellow next to purple and reds; blue and bright yellows with touches of red, yellow, red orange, blue-marine etc. The composition consists of 12 irregular squares with rows of different coloured irregular circles.

ARTIST’S CAREER

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter, a printmaker and an art theorist. He is one of the most famous 20 th century painters. Wassily was born in Moscow and spend his childhood in Odessa. Later he enrolled at the University of Moscow to study Law and Economics .He was quite successful in what he chose to do but later on at the age of 30 he started painting studies (life drawing sketches and anatomy). In 1896 he settled in Munich to study in a private school and after the Academy to France where he lived the rest of his life and became a French citizen in 1939.He died in 1944.

LINKS WITH OWN WORK

I appreciate his passion for learning, his hunger of finding and learning as much information as possible. The paintings of this period contain a very expressive coloured mass evaluating independently from forms and lines (abstract art).What I like about Kandinsky’s work is the large range of bright, happy, vibrating colours. I like that it makes you think and try to find what is actually the meaning of each shape ,the meaning of the painting itself (what is the message?).He has a very unique way of playing with shapes, lines and colours. I like the way the shapes are juxtaposition giving birth to new colours and shapes. I am sure there is a logic way of arranging the composition in every painting of Kandinsky but the beauty about it is that we will never be able to find the truth hiding behind each shape, each painting. The simple fact that each painting represents a feeling or a thought makes everything more interesting to observe. I have chosen this painting to be part of my research and influence in this unit called ‘Colours in high-key’ because it ticks all the boxes for me when we talk about the impact of colour and contrasts in our lives.

QUOTATIONS

‘I applied steaks and blobs of colours onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could’

‘Colour is the key board, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibration in the soul.

‘There is no must in art because art is free. ‘ Wiki .answers.com
https://docs.google.com/document/d/111aR-xRHFpnKOYbOrYCsFFIy9EMeZefPW_WIjcqic5Y/edit

Paul Catherall – Gherkin (2005)

Subject Matter

In this lino print, Paul Catherall has portrayed the Gherkin, and as we can see, it looks very un-colourful due to the lack of colours being used. Catherall only used black, grey and white to paint this lino print, which all look similar in my vision. This makes the Gherkin look dark next to the white sky behind it, but also reflective and shiny, as represented by the white surface area of the building. The atmosphere of the artwork looks windy and rainy, as represented by the boring grey colours, and this is the typical weather in London, which might be the reason why the artwork was done using these colours. I believe that this is another aspect that Catherall is trying to communicate.

Technique

Paul Caulfield did this artwork by lino printing and I think that it was the best method to producing something like this. Some of the lines are thin and they represent detail, but, as this is a small lino print of a big building, all the other marks are drawn in bulks of paint. The artwork has a certain level of depth applied to it, and this is represented by the building next to the gherkin. We can see that it is rounded by the way the outlines are drawn; they go outwards and down. As I have mentioned before, the artwork is drawn by using just black, grey and white, but this represents that the building is drawn from light areas to darker ones, and this increases the tonal range, and making the image look more satisfying and inspiring. The dark colours and light reflections on the building makes the lino print look flat and neat, also represented by the smooth and rounded shapes and lines that compose the image.

Career

Paul Catherall is a London-based printmaker and illustrator. From the late 1990s he has worked predominantly in linocuts. His prints beautifully reconstructed urban landscapes and architectural details. They build up seemingly abstract blocks of colour into perfectly balanced compositions, which unite as one representational whole. Cezanne and Sickert have been a recurrent influence on his use of colour and construction of form. He also greatly admires the progressive commercial designers of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly Edward Mcknight Kauffer and Tom Purvis. His work has featured on posters and book covers for British Airways, Marks & Spencer, Bloomsbury and Harper Collins.

Links with own Work

Paul Catherall’s work links very well with mine as I love drawing buildings and architectural details and when I was doing lino printing, I extremely enjoyed the task. I like how he produces landscapes of London and other buildings in London, and I enjoy doing transcripts of his work even though I didn’t use his method of lino printing in this task. His work also links well with Edward Wadsworth, another artist that did lino printing and that I studied.