The fourth dimension

Magnet #725 - Kandinsky's Several Circles

Last year, the Guggenheim did a pretty great retrospective on Kandinsky's work, and I learned a great deal more than I ever knew about his work, and the man, too. Good stuff.

One thing I didn't know was that Kandinsky was on the faculty at the Bauhaus in Germany, so he's included in the great, albeit crowded, exhibit at the MoMA.

My favorite of all his work, though, are his illustrations, his geometric drawings. They're amazing, and the closer in you get to the drawings (without having security breathing down your neck) the more details you can pull out. I could seriously spend hours looking at them, they're very cool, and make me want to break out the protractor and the ruler and some colored pencils. My drawings would never come out this way, but whatevs.

I picked up this magnetic bookmark the Guggenheim - and yes, I'm very afraid that we're branching into magnetic bookmarks, because all the museums have them, so I'm totally gonna have to start collecting them. Anyway, this is Kandinsky's Several Circles, which was prominent in much of his work. He just liked circles. And circles.

Here's why, according to the Gugg site:

“The circle,” claimed Kandinsky, “is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”

Mind you, I haven't a clue what it means, I don't want to think about it, he lost me at synthesis. Oiy. Especially because I thought time was the fourth dimension.

Of course, that could be because I spend too much time watching Doctor Who.