Untitled (Improvisation) 1911 - 1912

Curator: Looking at Wassily Kandinsky's "Untitled (Improvisation)" from 1911-1912, done with watercolor and drawing techniques, I immediately feel this nervous energy, like an orchestra tuning up before a performance. It's exciting and slightly chaotic. Editor: Exactly! Chaos is definitely a part of it. Those fractured shapes and lines evoke, for me, primal urges breaking to the surface. I mean, we're at the cusp of World War I, right? Curator: Precisely. Kandinsky was deeply interested in the spiritual in art, you know, in expressing inner emotional states. Editor: The way the watercolor bleeds, almost uncontrolled in places, echoes that turmoil. Is that intentional do you think, a liberation from traditional form representing, like, a psychic landscape? Curator: I like that "psychic landscape." Yes, I feel he's mapping interiority. He saw synesthesia as integral to artmaking— that sounds and colours evoke emotions – so this “improvisation” is trying to directly render emotion, not a thing in the world. Editor: Yes! See, I see a skull emerging faintly from that brown smudge at the bottom corner, shadowed and tucked into the earth with a hint of dread, as a memory we repress or avoid. This symbol, placed beneath layers of unconscious experience, highlights mortality. What a moment in history to explore oblivion! Curator: Oh, that's so interesting – I hadn't seen it. I love that the work can be both free-flowing and also invite this level of layered interpretation. Editor: That's where art history thrives! We impose layers on layers as the meaning morphs through culture. Curator: The emotional core of this "Improvisation" – despite its abstract form – becomes more legible through shared impressions, which is lovely. Editor: It becomes a space we create between one another – mirroring what’s happening in our subconscious from the depths of history and experience.