combination of colours hitherto considered discordant, is merely
a further development. For example, the use, side by side, of red
and blue, colours in themselves of no physical relationship, but
from their very spiritual contrast of the strongest effect, is
one of the most frequent occurrences in modern choice of harmony.
[Footnote: Cf. Gauguin, Noa Noa, where the artist states his
disinclination when he first arrived in Tahiti to juxtapose red
and blue.] Harmony today rests chiefly on the principle of
contrast which has for all time been one of the most important
principles of art. But our contrast is an inner contrast which
stands alone and rejects the help (for that help would mean
destruction) of any other principles of harmony. It is
interesting to note that this very placing together of red and
blue was so beloved by the primitive both in Germany and Italy
that it has till today survived, principally in folk pictures of
religious subjects. One often sees in such pictures the Virgin in
a red gown and a blue cloak. It seems that the artists wished to
express the grace of heaven in terms of humanity, and humanity in
terms of heaven. Legitimate and illegitimate combinations of
colours, contrasts of various colours, the over-painting of one
colour with another, the definition of coloured surfaces by
boundaries of various forms, the overstepping of these
boundaries, the mingling and the sharp separation of surfaces,
all these open great vistas of artistic possibility.

One of the first steps in the turning away from material objects
into the realm of the abstract was, to use the technical artistic
term, the rejection of the third dimension, that is to say, the
attempt to keep a picture on a single plane. Modelling was
abandoned. In this way the material object was made more abstract