Abstraction

At last, a painting that copies nothing at all. Color and form alone, reaching the mind directly, the way music does. In 1911, Kandinsky wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art, putting the idea into words as well as paint. But who made the first abstract painting is still unsettled. For a long time the answer was Kandinsky's watercolor of 1910 — except it was actually painted in 1913, and some researchers suspect he backdated it himself. And there was someone else, painting where no one could see (see Hilma af Klint, to the right). That current is still running. Let me tell you about the sound that pushed the door. On 2 January 1911 a concert of Schoenberg's music was given in Munich, and Kandinsky went with friends to hear it. Music without a key: no note appointed to lead, the sound simply standing there on its own. What he painted afterwards was Impression III (Concert). The black mass in the picture reads as a grand piano, but the yellow around it is no longer a picture of anything. Music had managed for centuries without resembling something. Painting should be able to do the same — the door to abstraction may have been pushed by the ear rather than the eye.