A Russian painter of great strength but entirely different inspiration and technic was asked, “Do you like Kandinsky’s Improvisations?”
“Very much.”
“Do you understand them?”
“No.”
“Then why do you like them?”
“Because they give me pleasure and I am sure that as I look at them they excite in me the same pleasure they excited in him when he painted them; he has succeeded in conveying to me his own emotions and that is the most any artist can hope to do.”
Which brings us back to the proposition laid down in an earlier chapter: the emotional reaction to music and painting may be and usually is quite independent of the intellectual, and while it may be either increased or diminished in volume by understanding, it is necessarily changed in character.
Another artist, an Austrian, was asked:
“How do you like Kandinsky’s Improvisations?”