“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”

— Oscar Wilde

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“Value differences in painting always cut in; color differences always go side by side. Laterally. Color differences can illustrate three dimensional form, but using color in terms of hue belongs more properly to painting than modelling with dark and light [as in sculpting] does.”

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“The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

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“Let's give this entity which you call soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.
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That is the old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their religion. Except for the Egyptians this will have no special connotation. And they can adapt to it.
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“You know well enough what I mean by youth and age;—something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the grass a thousand feet above it.”

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“Since the form is only an expression of the content and the content is different with different artists, it is then clear that there can be many different forms at the same time which are equally good. Necessity creates the form. Fish which live at great depths have no eyes. The elephant has a trunk. The chameleon changes its color, and so forth.”

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“The impressions we receive, which often appear merely chaotic, consist of three elements; the impression of the color of the object, its form, and of its combined color and form, i. e., of the object itself. At this point the individuality of the artist comes to the front and disposes, as he wills, these three elements. It is clear, therefore, that the choice of object (i. e., of one of the elements in the harmony of form) must be decided only by a corresponding vibration in the human soul..”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, Munich, 1910; as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 450
1910 - 1915

“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”

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Oscar Wilde 812

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