The cow

In 1914 Kandinsky wrote a lecture for an art society in Cologne that he never delivered, and in it he looked back at pictures like this one. In 1910, he explained, he had dissolved objects to a greater or lesser degree within the same picture, so that they would not all be recognised at once and their feeling would reach the viewer gradually, one after another. The Cow is a good test. In the foreground stands a big white and yellow cow, turned to the right, and a young farm woman is milking her. Yet white and yellow fill everything around the animal too, and it takes a while to find. Behind it rises a white mountain that seems to carry on the line of the cow's back. Its peak is crowned by a white wall, which may recall the old town wall of Murnau, and behind that wall appears a crowd of Orthodox domes, a vision of Russia set down in the Bavarian foothills.