Volga song 1906

Wassily Kandinsky painted Volga Song with oil on canvas and, man, it's a trip! The way Kandinsky puts down paint is so full of gusto; you can tell he's really feeling it, getting into the process of making. Check out the surface: the colors are pretty dense and opaque, but he doesn't blend everything perfectly. See how you can still make out individual strokes and dabs of color? It's like he's inviting you to see the painting being built, layer by layer. The water, for example, is a thick soup of blues and reds. They sit next to each other, almost fighting, but somehow they make a kind of shimmering, watery surface. It makes me think about Paula Modersohn-Becker who explored similar themes of folk culture, using a similarly bold approach to color. In the end, we’re all just talking to each other through paint, trying to figure stuff out, and leaving plenty of room for questions.