SOURCE: "Kandinsky and Problems of Abstraction," in Artforum, Vol. XVII, No. 3, November, 1978, pp. 58-63.

In the following essay, Mackie explores the role of abstract form in Kandinsky's art and artistic philosophy.

In a very sympathetic article Hilton Kramer once voiced his misgivings (and disappointments) about Kandinsky, arriving at the view that he populated naturalistic (19th-century landscape) space with abstract forms and was unable to come to terms with the pictorial implications of the tendency of abstract forms to flatten space.¹ Implicit in this criticism, of course, is the assumption that abstract forms demand a certain kind of spatial treatment, and this assumption, in turn, is part of a view about the nature and purpose of abstraction itself. Kandinsky was well aware that abstract forms suggest a narrowing of spatial depth, but he obviously did not think that they demanded it, as at least two passages from Concerning the...