On The Problem of Form

I once had a problem with green. I simply couldn't use that color. I just didn't like it, and the fact that I was a big fan of
Kandinsky, made me more than convinced about that. But then; during a roadtrip, I captured a few green sceneries. In this
particular wet, wet summer everything was so fresh and unbeliveable green. This fine hilltop was inhabited by black and
white cows, and made me recollect Kandinsky's words from his book "On the Problem of Form".

The expressionistic painter Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), ignored green in his works. He deemed green a "limiting element"
and the color of bourgeoisie based on its passive effect. Green is "similar to a fat and very healthy, motionless cow,
capable but of ruminating and watching the world with its stupid and dull eyes". (Kandinsky 1952)


Yellow and red rests in green.

Further comments by W. Kandinsky:
A well balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards
the centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but by
the world.

Green is the most restful colour that exists. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it
becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the active
warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colours green is the "burgeoisie" - self satisfied, immovable,
narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive energy of spring.

Top Photo "On The Hill" is in the Panoramio Contest for photo's uploaded for Google Earth.