Improvisation 7 1910

Wassily Kandinsky made this oil painting, Improvisation 7, and the making looks like it was a total blast. There’s a real sense of play and freedom here, a kind of “go with the flow” attitude that comes through the brushstrokes. Look at how Kandinsky layered the colors. They’re not blended so much as stacked, like he wanted each hue to have its own voice. You can almost feel the texture of the paint, thick in some spots, thin and transparent in others. It’s all about the physicality of the medium, the way the paint moves and behaves on the canvas. Notice that confident swoop of orange that dives right from the top left to center; it feels so spontaneous, so full of life. It is as if he is telling us to dive in. Kandinsky’s like a bridge between Van Gogh and de Kooning, right? He shares Van Gogh’s passion for color and de Kooning’s love of gestural abstraction, but he’s doing his own thing, exploring how art can be a window into the soul. The best art embraces ambiguity.