Kochel – Straight Street 1909

Kochel - Straight Street was painted by Wassily Kandinsky, and the first thing to notice is the paint itself. It is applied with a kind of gleeful abandon. Kandinsky uses oil paint here, but not in the blended, illusionistic way we're accustomed to seeing. The pigment is thick, almost chunky, and the marks are left raw. It’s clear how much the materiality of paint – its inherent qualities of texture and color – mattered to Kandinsky. Look at the blue pyramid in the background: it's not so much a mountain as a monumental assertion of blueness. The same could be said of the pink hillside to the left, and the straight blue street from which the painting gets its name. Consider too, the sheer labor involved in traditional painting – grinding pigments, preparing canvases. Kandinsky was part of a generation that wanted to break free from the past, from the established techniques and modes of production, to make art more direct, more immediate, more alive. This directness is why the materiality of painting is so important to its meaning.