Daring the Abstract in Art

Abstract

It was chance that persuaded Kandinsky of the emotive power of abstract painting. He had failed to recognize one of his own works because it happened to be wrong way up, but found that it evoked feelings that were not there before.

In the following years he hesitated between an abstract with meaning, i.e., a symbolic language, which was the path that Klee took, and a pure abstract, that worked by unknowable chance.

What was Marcel Duchamp looking for with his incongruous “ready-made”s and his strange gamble where he “drew with chance”? And why did the composer Xenakis, when he wanted to escape the reflexes of tonal harmony, resort to bringing chance into the process of composing?