Big Ideas, Small Steps

Posted By Michael D'Elicio ~ 28th January 2009

I once went to a Wassily Kandinsky exhibit in Manhattan.  It tracked his progress from his early painting years (he had only begun serious art after the age of 30) to his great works later in life.

His first efforts were Impressionistic, and impressive in their own right as a member of the movement.  But as he progressed, his paintings became more and more abstract.  They dealt more with colors and shapes, and less with depictions of reality.  There reached, I felt, a crisis in the exhibit, where he was almost splashing colors onto the canvas with no rhyme or reason.  It felt sloppy and frustrated, and I doubt whether I would have cared for them other than in such a retrospective.

After the most scattered piece, and chronologically a year or two later,  came a classic Kandinsky (much like the photo to the side of this entry).   The amazing thing for me was that I could see the frustrated piece inside of it – only starker, harder lines, cleaner cuts, and a more focused idea of what he was trying to say.

Kandinsky dealt in cosmic ideas – physics, time, reality.  But it took him over 45 years of work to master his original concepts.  I tell this story as a word of comfort for anyone struggling with trying to create their own brand or their own voice.  Relax…sometimes it takes a while.  Just keep working.