The impossibility and, in art, the uselessness of attempting to
copy an object exactly, the desire to give the object full
expression, are the impulses which drive the artist away from
"literal" colouring to purely artistic aims. And that brings us
to the question of composition. [Footnote: Here Kandinsky means
arrangement of the picture.--M.T.H.S.]

Pure artistic composition has two elements:

1. The composition of the whole picture.

2. The creation of the various forms which, by standing in
different relationships to each other, decide the composition of
the whole. [Footnote: The general composition will naturally
include many little compositions which may be antagonistic to
each other, though helping--perhaps by their very antagonism--the
harmony of the whole. These little compositions have themselves
subdivisions of varied inner meanings.] Many objects have to be
considered in the light of the whole, and so ordered as to suit
this whole. Singly they will have little meaning, being of
importance only in so far as they help the general effect. These
single objects must be fashioned in one way only; and this, not
because their own inner meaning demands that particular
fashioning, but entirely because they have to serve as building
material for the whole composition. [Footnote: A good example is
Cezanne's "Bathing Women," which is built in the form of a
triangle. Such building is an old principle, which was being
abandoned only because academic usage had made it lifeless. But
Cezanne has given it new life. He does not use it to harmonize