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A review by beths0103
The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art by Barb Rosenstock
4.0
As a child Vasily Kandinsky learned to be a proper Russian boy: studying hard in school, practicing piano, and sitting mannerly at a dinner table full of adults. But everything changed the day his aunt gave him a box of paints. Suddenly, colors came alive for Vasya, as each shade created new sounds in his ears.
Eventually growing weary of his adult life as a lawyer, Kandinsky quit his job teaching law in Moscow and moved to Munich to be a painter. The famous teachers he studied with didn't understand his art, and encouraged him to portray lifelike depictions of subjects instead. But Kandinsky wanted to explore his feelings through his art and the sounds they created in his mind.
So eventually Vasya worked up the courage to paint what he felt and heard rather than what he saw, and is now one of the most well-known creators of abstract art.
As I was reading The Noisy Paint Box, I thought to myself that Kandinsky's inspiration for his paintings sounded a lot like he had synesthesia, and when I reached the end of the book and read the author's note, I found myself correct in that assumption. Although this condition wasn't diagnosable during his lifetime, based on his experiencing sounds as colors and colors as sounds, it is highly likely he would have been diagnosed with the condition if he were alive today.
I really appreciated learning about Kandkinsky's life and work through reading The Noisy Paint Box because music has always been such an important part of my life, so the idea of an artist being inspired by music and seeing sounds as colors is a really fascinating idea to me.
Read the rest of my review on my blog
Eventually growing weary of his adult life as a lawyer, Kandinsky quit his job teaching law in Moscow and moved to Munich to be a painter. The famous teachers he studied with didn't understand his art, and encouraged him to portray lifelike depictions of subjects instead. But Kandinsky wanted to explore his feelings through his art and the sounds they created in his mind.
So eventually Vasya worked up the courage to paint what he felt and heard rather than what he saw, and is now one of the most well-known creators of abstract art.
As I was reading The Noisy Paint Box, I thought to myself that Kandinsky's inspiration for his paintings sounded a lot like he had synesthesia, and when I reached the end of the book and read the author's note, I found myself correct in that assumption. Although this condition wasn't diagnosable during his lifetime, based on his experiencing sounds as colors and colors as sounds, it is highly likely he would have been diagnosed with the condition if he were alive today.
I really appreciated learning about Kandkinsky's life and work through reading The Noisy Paint Box because music has always been such an important part of my life, so the idea of an artist being inspired by music and seeing sounds as colors is a really fascinating idea to me.
Read the rest of my review on my blog