KANDINSKY @ ze guggenheim

Although the Guggenheim tends to make feel a bit neurotic by the time I reach the top, it served as an appropriate gallery for the timeline of Kandinsky's work. It was nice to see some figures in his earlier work and then watch the transformation of figures into total abstraction. One of his earlier paintings that really stood out to me was Riding Couple, a twinkling, romantic landscape with lovers riding a mystic horse in the foreground. I liked it partly because it's so dark in value than the majority of his paintings. I'm especially inspired by his application of paint on the leaves of the trees. In my own paintings, I've been investigating outlining forms, but haven't yet been successful. Although i'm not sure exactly how Kandinsky painted/layered the trees and leaves, it has inspired me to lay down a silhouette, painting sections of the forms in afterwards.
The looser, more organically abstract paintings that came next in the timeline got a little muddy for a minute, although I was brought back in when the landscapes became more linear. The progression of lines into total geometric abstractions I found to be the most interesting. I feel like these paintings allowed him to use the vibrant colors in more effectively - the precision in his outline and overlapping of shapes in combination with the glowing colors around the shapes I found to be much more successful than a handful of really vibrant colors juxtaposed together. I could help thinking of The Rugrats when seeing the last paintings in the exhibition. It seems to me like the 80's got a lot of inspiration form these confetti-like, collage-esque, pastel abstractions. ha.