According to Kandinsky, at least a double-sound if not multiple centers are necessary to create complexity and depth. The artist explains that the double-sound is a means of achieving what he calls a primitive rhythm. By shifting the absolute sound of a point slightly off-center, the eye is activated to internally rectify the centering. Arnheim later furthered this idea by stating that when an overall balance is not achieved, an artwork remains in a state of ambiguity and undefinition. “Ambiguity confuses the artistic statement because it leaves the observer hovering between two or more assertions that do not add up to a whole.”3 Kandinsky uses this ambiguity to engage the viewer with a multitude of “sounds,” thereby performing grand symphonies of color and space.
Even though Kandinsky may have been a master of compositional balance in his geometric abstractions, his true equilibrium lies in his ability to maintain a representational framework while embracing a new form of abstract painting.
As he insists in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art,4 the painter cannot entirely relinquish natural objects without depriving himself of essential expressive means. He thereby maintained a perfect balancing act of abstract and natural forms to depict the landscapes of his mind and feelings, rather than of the external world. Both in the content of his paintings and in the trajectory of his artistic development, Kandinsky walked the tightrope between figuration and abstraction, ultimately paving the way for the development of abstract painting.