Michel Henry, one of the most interesting French philosophers at the turn of last century, wrote a book on Kandinsky called Seeing the Invisible. It is a great little book and was translated into English a few years ago. Kandinsky himself was as profound a philosopher of art as he was a profound artist: he wrote a number of books developing his theories of the meaning of art. They've all been translated into English. One of the most important is called Concerning the Spiritual in Art, written in 1910 (you can download it for free on the Project Gutenberg website).
Kandinsky was concerned with the feeling of color and line and the relation between them. So, we all know that red in a baby's room is probably not a good idea because it tends to make him or her anxious or upset; blue is a soothing color, etc. With lines there is something similar: a curve or an egg-shaped circle is peaceful or attractive, whereas a jagged line is unsettling. Kandinsky's thought and his art are based on an attempt to understand and implement the spiritual significance of the various "tonalities" related to each simple element available to an artist (line, point and color), particularly in their complex interaction with each other. If there is some "reality" to these tonalities, some reason for their particular significances, then there is something to what Kandinsky is saying in his books and showing us in his paintings - even if, to the untrained eye, his works just look like random scribbles and blotches. But that's the challenge of modern art in general, and Kandinsky is one of the best. Here are some more of Kandinsky's pieces that we saw:
