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"The circle, which I have so often painted recently, can sometimes be described as nothing other than romantic. The coming romanticism is truly profound--beautiful, meaningful, joyful. It is a block of ice with a burning flame inside. If people feel only the ice and not the flame, that is just too bad." - Wassily Kandinsky

The circle was Kandinsky's favorite geometric shape, and was presented in a beautiful way in his work Several Circles.

This painting initially caught my attention because of the brightness emanating from it, despite the dark background.  This light gives it depth and pulls a viewer into its world-- this world which first appeared to me to be space and planets and movement within the galaxy.

We see a large circle, positioned a bit off center to the top left, and a glowing aura surrounding it.  On top of this circle and around it, there are several other circles of varying colors and shades that all seem to fit together, despite being very different.  Each time circles overlap, this produces a different color, usually a combination of the two or three overlapping.  This gives a three dimensional effect; some circles are in the background, and some are in the front.  Also, we notice that all of the smaller circles seem to be pulled to larger ones, which in turn are pulled to the largest one.  This is probably an effect of the bright aura surrounding it, which adds weight to this part of the work, and also because of how our attention is initially drawn to larger circles, then to the small ones which we see are crowding around them.  We also see a faint gray-ish cloud in the bottom left and top right corners.  The shade of gray chosen for this gives the impression of the light from the aura near the center reflecting off of a mist which surrounds the circles, and keeps them all together.  This also gives the effect of a closed system in which the circles are drawn toward each other.  In these ways, Kandinsky has simulated both depth and movement, influencing our perception just by using simple techniques such as shape and color.

See this link for the quote, and this one for the image.


Decisive Rose / Decisive Pink


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