Kandinsky... was also an idea-besotted intellectual manque who followed many a half-baked notion down a blind alley, most spectacularly when he embraced theosophy, a pseudo-religion popular at the turn of the 20th century whose amorphous tenets played a part in his own turn to abstraction. ...theosophy preached the unimportance of the material world, inspiring Kandinsky to portray in his paintings an "immaterial" universe of spiritual "thought-forms"...

from: Kandinsky's mistake by Terry Teachout
source: Commentary, 1 March 2004
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2004 American Jewish Committee