Improvisation 14 1910

Wassily Kandinsky made Improvisation 14 without a known date using oil paint. Look how he lets the colors bump into each other, creating shapes that feel like they're just forming, a bit like clouds. There's a real sense of movement here, isn't there? You can almost feel the brush dancing across the canvas. The paint isn't too thick, not gloppy, but you can see the individual strokes, the way he layered colors to get these amazing effects. Notice that tall, green shape on the left. Is it a tree? Or just a feeling of a tree? See how the blue kind of seeps around it. That's how Kandinsky lets us glimpse the spaces in between things, maybe even the spaces between thoughts. Kandinsky's process reminds me a bit of Joan Mitchell, who also went in for these open, emotional fields of color. It is like they are both trying to paint music, or maybe the feeling of a memory that is about to fade.