Dialogues on Color
mouth, drinking it off. He set it down hard and smiled unpleasantly. The other shook his head in dismay. “Your drawings there offend me. I hope no artists make the mistake of taking such a deformity seriously.” “And your refusal to face reality, though it be ugly, offends me. You do this in the home as well, Kandinsky. That Nina lives with a lot of paintings, and you, and a ghost of the child you won’t allow anyone to speak of.” At this the other man stood abruptly, his wooden seat clattering to the pavers behind him. “Malevich was right about you. You are the one who refuses to face reality. I am sorry I came.” He re-buttoned his jacket slowly and stooped to pick up his chair. Tatlin sat still, smirking up at the old man. The working woman, come to collect the bottle and cups, stood uncertainly before them. “Here,” Kandinsky sighed, pulling money from a pocket at his waist, “money for the drink and words for the soul.” He scattered the coins across the table, along with Steiner’s lecture on color, and walked away. Kandinksy Materialism has been my antagonist
at every major turning point in life. I began, of course, as a scientist of the material—I studied and achieved an elevated position in economics. But, thank God, fate intervened and I saw the world like a baby again when I was thirty years old. There were several artworks that came along, as periodic messengers, to open my eyes wider and wider. First there was the simple, primitive folk art of Vologda, in the North of my country. The effect of walking into rooms full of color was like walking into a painting. But the rupture for me was when I went to see those paintings of haystacks by Monet, upon their exhibition in Moscow. How disturbed I was by the liberty that man had taken! My intellect objected strenuously to his claim, by the simple means of a title in the exhibition catalog, that he had depicted there such a prosaic subject. Then, even as I angrily muttered and paced the gallery, my eyes were irresistibly drawn, as the tide is drawn to the moon, by those wondrous paintings. My spirit awoke that day to the power of color. I spent many weeks thereafter wrestling with myself over the very meaning of painting. My soul half hoped that my intellectual objections would win out. That I would prove
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