23 Thursday May 2013
“The Inventions and Sinfonias BWV 772–801, also known as the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, are a collection of thirty short keyboard compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): 15 inventions, which are 2-part contrapuntal pieces, and 15 sinfonias, which are 3-part contrapuntal pieces.” (wiki)
Sinfonia nr 4 is one of my favourites …. Relax and enjoy!
22 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Inspiration & Quotes, Painting, Works of Art
Tags
Soft Roughness (1933), by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Kandinsky’s idea on red :
“Taken by itself red is material, and like yellow, has no very deep appeal. Only when combined with something nobler does it acquire this deep appeal. It is dangerous to seek to deepen red by an admixture of black, for black quenches the glow, or at least reduces it considerably. But there remains brown, unemotional, disinclined for movement. An intermixture of red is outwardly barely audible, but there rings out a powerful inner harmony. Skillful blending can produce an inner appeal of extraordinary, indescribable beauty. The vermilion now rings like a great trumpet, or thunders like a drum.”
“Cool red (madder) like any other fundamentally cold colour, can be deepened – especially by an intermixture of azure. The character of the colour changes; the inward glow increases, the active element gradually disappears. But this active element is never so wholly absent as in deep green. There always remains a hint of renewed vigour, somewhere out of sight, waiting for a certain moment to burst forth afresh.”
_______
I am not too fond of the colour red, I find it a bit too sharp too striking. I neither wear clothes in red, nor buy flowers in red! However, I love poppies, they are in the wild and not for sale, that’s why I love them; also because of its delicate petals, its red becomes “softened”, the flowers almost appear too weak, yet they stand obstinately against the wind, so proud and admirable!
Similar to the painting “Soft Roughness” of Kandinsky, those red (deepened or softened red) are very appealing to me, I don’t feel harshness there but rather harmony. In my subjective opinion, I find Kandinsky applies perfectly his theoretical “skillful blending, intermixture”, to reach his “deepening” the meaning of the colour. Those red in “Soft Roughness” is irresistible! The greedy me just wonder, if the perfect rectangles in the painting are replaced by imperfect circles, will the painting be even more soothing, less angular?
_______
Related posts : Wassily Kandinsky on colours
21 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Inspiration & Quotes, Painting, Works of Art
Tags
Abstract Art, art, blue, colour, green, Kandinsky's Gelber Kreis, painting, Wassily Kandinsky, yellow
Gelber Kreis (yellow circle), by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
To me, this is a painting “love at first sight”, I got carried away when viewing it (why? it is a secret unique to herself) …. In fact, the colours there simply do magic to me and the form does tell a story. Well, I’d better cite here Kandinsky’s “colour theory” that he used to explain to readers :
“Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometrical form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insistent, aggressive character. The intensification of the yellow increases the painful shrillness of its note. Yellow is the typically earthly colour. It can never have profound meaning, An intermixture of blue makes it a sickly colour. It may be paralleled in human nature, with madness, not with melancholy or hypochondriacal mania, but rather with violent raving lunacy.”
“The warm colours approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him.” “If two circles are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator.”
I suppose Kandinsky did not exactly paint a few perfect circles in “Gelber Kreis” to illustrate his above idea, but rather those few round curved images, approach me like symbolic spiritual beings (also become meaningful), while the spreading and retreating movements remain, pretty mystically. At least that’s what I perceive.
________
Related posts : Wassily Kandinsky on colours
20 Monday May 2013
Posted in Painting, Works of Art
Tags
Over the weekend I continue reading Wassily Kandinsky on colours, and I still reflect on why blue and green are my preferred colours. When I read Kandinsky’s paintings “In Blue” and “Green Composition”, I am not yet overwhelmed, instead I thought my love for blue and green, is partly because of my admiration for Van Gogh’s paintings, especially his “Olive Trees in a Mountain Landscape” (16 June, 1889) and “The Starry Night” (17/18 June, 1889).
Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape (16 June, 1889)
The Starry Night (17/18 June, 1889)
It is those blue and green, so ‘cling to’ each other that I like, the interwoven movement being instigated by certain inner emotion (of the painter) that attracts me. The autumn previous to 1889, another painting of Van Gogh “The Starry Night over the Rhone” (28 September, 1888) moves me as well, also because of its blue and green, their pure, mystical inter-dependence!
The Starry Night over the Rhone (28 September, 1888), “…. Finally the starry sky painted at night under a gas jet. The sky is greenish blue, the water royal blue, the ground mauve. The town is blue and violet, the gas is yellow and its reflections are russet-gold down to greenish bronze. On the blue-green expanse of sky, the Great Bear sparkles green and pink, its discreet pallor contrasts with the harsh gold of the gas.” (Vincent to Theo, 29 September, 1888)
________
Related post on colours : Wassily Kandinsky on Blue and Green
18 Saturday May 2013
Posted in Travels
While I am writing the final part of my travel account on Toledo (Spain), I still wonder why I am so enchanted by the place, its undefinable atmostphere! To most tourists Toledo is just a day-trip destination arriving in the morning and leave before sunset. To me, it is a place I just don’t feel knowing it at all, even after spending some days there. A place full of history (and legends), the complicated, twisting and bitter history. I am keen to read history, as I am almost sure that no one could live a life wiser without knowing the past, which mirrors the present even if it may not repeat itself, yet so often history does!
In that late afternoon, I were sitting at Zocodover Plaza (the square) which is the old marketplace of Toledo. The sunlight reflected on the windows of the buildings around the Plaza, and I saw other buildings through those reflections; the only inharmony was the big yellow McDonald signatory hanged above the café. Yet what more inharmonious was its past, what could be more clashing at that particular spot where I sat? Well, was it once the place where the Spanish Inquisition – “act of faith” (auto da fe) took place? Reader could find out his/her own version in explaining the Inquisition, as there exists different versions of “truth”! …. What strikes me is a brief saying where the burnings at the stake of those converted “only outwardly” from Judaism, were those forced converts being handed out by other Jews (apart from the Christians). I thought that was another kind of “anti-Semites”! Indeed, there once existed a very special definition of fidelity (or infidelity) ….! Does history really belong to the past? I just wonder in today’s Toledo (or in the world), if there is genuine coexistence of three religious faiths, or is it just a false and hideous façade of tolerance?
To finalise my rough travel account on Toledo, I list below a few other sites that worth so much :
- Mezquita Cristo de la Luz, one of the two mosques left in Toledo, at least a thousand year old, I spent some time to figure out how its 9 vaults, 12 horseshoe arches, 4 columns, work out a marvelous ceiling, the counting once confused me!
- Iglesia de los Jesuitas, a truly beautiful serene church that one could visit its tower with a marvellous view of the city.
- San Juan de los Reyes Monasrerio, with a surreal two-level cloisters in beautiful design, and the German cross vaults; enclosing a very lovely garden (photos below).
- Catedral de Toledo, I suppose no visitor will leave Toledo without seeing this important and immense structure. It deserves a book on every single detail there (wiki descriptive information).
And still the list is long, including Alcazar, Museum of Santa Cruz …., much to be discovered. Toledo, it is indeed a land of Marzipan and Swords!
________
Toledo (Part 1) ; Toledo (Part 2) ; Toledo (Part 3) ; Toledo (Part 4) ; Toledo (Part 5)
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in Inspiration & Quotes, Painting, Works of Art
Tags
Abstract Art, art, colour, green, painting, Wassily Kandinsky
“A well-balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but by the world. Green is the most restful colour that exists. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colours green is the “bourgeoisie”-self-satisfied, immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive energy of spring.
Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the inclination to depth. In music the absolute green is represented by the placid, middle notes of a violin.”
~ Wassily Kandinsky
Green-Emptiness (1930), by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), oil on canvas, 35 x 40 cm
I love the colour green (next to blue), it is very true when Kandinsky describes green as restful, but I do not quite feel it becomes wearisome after a time. In fact lemon green in early spring is very tempting to me as it is so hopeful, it lasts not long though.
_______
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in Inspiration & Quotes, Painting, Works of Art
Tags
“The power of profound meaning is found in blue, and first in its physical movements (1) of retreat from the spectator, (2) of turning in upon its own centre. The inclination of blue to depth is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper.
Blue is the typical heavenly colour.
When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human.
When it rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its appeal to men grows weaker and more distant.
In music a light blue is like a flute; a darker blue a cello; a still darker a thunderous double bass; and the darkest blue of all – an organ.”
~ Wassily Kandinsky
I am excited by Kandinsky’s description on the colour blue, I love blue, Kandinsky plays cello and his saying “a darker blue a cello” delights me. I presume he speaks about the profound inner emotion that cello projects.
_______
