This is the problem with my cunning plan of writing about the first image I see when randomly opening a catalogue.  Variegated Signs (1928) to the left fits nicely with stuff I've written about Kandinsky's interest in developing a new language, so I could go on about it a fair while, I think. But it's rather familiar and I'd end up rehearsing the same arguments. Deepened Impulse to the centre and Dull - Clear to the right, on the other hand, leave me wondering what to say. I've seen none of these paintings in the flesh, so limited to the B&W illustrations. 

Variegated Signs is a collection of motifs he'd been working on in recent years at the Bauhaus; Deepened Impulse, a series of discs and circles contained within an amorphous, cloud-like shape that are reminiscent of celestial bodies, recalls the interest he had in astronomy at least since a young man and his understanding of the connections between the smallest details of our world and the bigger, cosmic context of which we are part; and Dull - Clear, in both its title and in the painting, recalls his ongoing exploration into relations of opposition and contrast, and the quest to bring these together in synthesis, that runs throughout his oeuvre. 

But most striking is the variety of works on these pages, all done in 1928, each quite different from the others. Rows of signs, a constellation of circles, a conflict between a soft-edged disc and a series of hard-edged lines. What strikes me is how, in spite of the significant differences between the works, they are all so clearly 'Kandinskies.' It's hard to know to what extent this is familiarity, or is an actual continuity between them. Each is an utterance or series of utterances made possible by the vocabulary that constitutes the abstract language he's been developing - drawing on various sources - at the Bauhaus, since 1922. A connecting motif is the circle, tho that's of limited importance in Variegated Signs. Similarly, compare the two arcs, centre right of Dull - Clear with the two arcs in the motif, just in from top right, in Variegated Signs. Likewise, the proliferation of rectilinear lines set at right angles to each other in both paintings. Overall, it is the geometry of forms and the relations of simultaneous difference and similarity - as well as the particular shapes they make - that marks these out as Kandinskies, I think.

Struggled with this post - perhaps next time will deal me an easier work to talk about.