Schaffende Hände: Wassily Kandinsky in der Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf

For many years, the local PBS station used to carry a half-hour show several times a week in which a painter would paint a picture. As he painted his landscapes, he would refer to the 'happy little clouds' and other features in anthropomorphic terms. I used to watch this show occasionally, to watch how a landscape would emerge and to wonder how the constant babble had any bearing whatsoever on the mysterious process.

Watching this movie, which purports to be the hand of Kandinsky -- one of the leading abstractionist painters of the era -- painting a canvas in Kandinsky's style, I was struck by the lack of distraction of the constant babble of the painter, but alas, the process is even more mysterious than ever. I have no idea of what I am to take away from this short documentary, but I doubt I did.