Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop

Hear, O children of beauty and seekers of vision, the words of Wassily Kandinsky, the painter of spirit and prophet of abstraction, who declared: “Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?” These words were not idle sentiment, but a cry from the soul of an artist who sought to lift humanity beyond the prison of reason, into the realm where the heart and spirit are free to roam.

For behold, Kandinsky believed that art is not meant merely to be analyzed, dissected, or explained, but to be experienced. The mind, with its endless calculations and judgments, often blinds the heart to the mysteries unfolding before it. But when one listens to music with open ears, when one beholds painting with unclouded eyes, one is transported beyond the known, beyond the ordinary, into a world not yet imagined. To Kandinsky, this was the true measure of art’s worth—not whether it could be explained, but whether it could awaken the soul to new realities.

Consider the symphonies of Beethoven. Deaf in his later years, he composed not from sound but from the fire of his inner spirit. His Ninth Symphony, with its thunderous “Ode to Joy,” was not meant to be reasoned out line by line, but to sweep the listener into a vast, unknown world of triumph, unity, and exaltation. Many have tried to analyze its structure, but the true power of the work lies in the experience of being carried away by it, as if walking into another dimension. This is what Kandinsky meant: art is a gateway, not a puzzle.

So too with Kandinsky’s own paintings. Many in his day mocked his abstraction, calling it chaos, for they searched with their minds for meaning and found none. But those who silenced their thoughts and allowed themselves to feel were transported. They saw colors move like symphonies, shapes breathing as though alive, canvases opening into worlds unseen. He wished not to paint objects, but to paint the inner essence, to give sight to the invisible. In this way, he echoed his own words: art that allows the viewer to “walk about” in a hitherto unknown world has already fulfilled its purpose.

Mark this wisdom well: in life, as in art, the deepest experiences cannot be grasped by reason alone. Love, awe, wonder—these cannot be explained, yet they shape our existence more than logic ever could. Kandinsky’s command to “stop thinking” is not a rejection of reason, but an invitation to step beyond it, to embrace mystery, and to let art reveal what lies beyond the reach of words. For when the soul is lifted to places it has never walked before, what more could one desire?

The lesson is plain: do not approach music and painting—or any art—with the cold tools of analysis alone. Instead, surrender to them. Allow yourself to be moved, even bewildered, even undone. Ask not, “What does this mean?” but, “Where has this taken me?” If it has led you to wonder, to beauty, to a glimpse of something beyond the ordinary, then you have touched the essence of art, and you have touched the essence of life.

Practical wisdom calls for this: the next time you hear a song, or stand before a canvas, resist the urge to judge or define. Let the sound flow through you. Let the colors speak in silence. Close your mind for a moment and open your spirit. Allow art to carry you into the unknown, and do not fear its mystery. For in these journeys lie renewal, healing, and vision.

Thus, beloved, remember Kandinsky’s words: lend your ears, open your eyes, stop thinking, and walk into new worlds. For art is not here to be conquered, but to conquer us, to lift us beyond ourselves into realms of beauty we never dreamed were possible. And when it has done this, what more indeed could we ask?