Arab cavalry 1905

Wassily Kandinsky made this artwork, Arab Cavalry, with gouache, watercolour and crayon, and you can tell he was having fun. The colours are a little bit off and jarring, but in a good way, right? Like, who said horses can’t have green saddles? Looking at the surface, the way the paint sits, it’s easy to see the hand of the artist. It is a loose and intuitive process, and he’s not trying to hide it. See that smear of orange next to the rider’s leg, how it just stops, and then starts again? It is almost like a doodle. This reminds me a little of the work of Paul Klee. Like Klee, Kandinsky finds ways to make the familiar strange and new. Ultimately, there is no one right answer here. Art is a conversation, a way of seeing and thinking that keeps evolving, right?