The last judgment 1912

Wassily Kandinsky made this painting, The Last Judgement, in 1912, with oils, and look at the way it dives right into the deep end of artmaking as a process. There is a real sense of everything happening at once. Kandinsky lays down these pure jolts of color – yellows and reds, blues and greens – and then scribbles over it all with these confident black lines, like the whole thing is a kind of beautiful, chaotic score. The black lines and abstract shapes guide our eyes. There is this one thick black mark that starts near the bottom, a swooping dark form that pulls the whole composition together. For me, it's like a key note, grounding the piece but also lifting it up. Think of de Kooning's raw energy, but with a mystical bent. Kandinsky's not giving us answers; he is inviting us into his world of vibrant ambiguity.