Murnau with church I 1910

Wassily Kandinsky made Murnau with church I with oil paint and I can just imagine the rich smell of the oil and the turpentine! The colors are bright, sort of clashing, like the time he was living in. I can imagine him in the studio, wrestling with it, wiping it down and starting again, searching for what he called inner necessity. There's a steeple, it's true, but it’s just been liberated from its job of representing a steeple and now it's a feeling—of reaching perhaps. The color palette is cheerful with some blues and greens. The paint is buttery and thick, and that gives it a life of its own. I like the way he's got these vertical stripes at the bottom, pushing up against these gorgeous pastel blobs. You can see him in conversation with so many other painters, a little bit of the Fauves in there, a little bit of the German Expressionists, all those people trying to make a new world through paint. It's all about feeling and color, and somehow, a steeple.