The further development, which is pending in painting, will still have to suffer many seeming contradictions and diversions, as was the case with music, which today we know already as pure art. The past teaches us that the development of humanity consists in the increasing _spirituality_ of various factors. Among these factors art takes the first place. Among the arts painting is following the road that leads it from the _practical_-efficiency to the _intellectual_-efficiency. From the _subject-picture_ to the _pure composition_. To better understand the foregoing take the “Improvisation No. 30.”[52] It is a very pure example of _compositional_ painting, but it [Illustration: KANDINSKY Improvisation No. 30] is not _absolutely pure_, in that it contains many more or less obvious suggestions of familiar forms and objects. Some workmen who happened to be handling the painting, referred to it as the “War Picture,” and many casual observers insist it is an impression of war or of a battle field. This is because two cannon are quite plain in the lower right-hand corner, and the two oblong blue masses projecting from the cannons’ mouths would seem to be the smoke of the discharges. Then, too, the seeming cataclysmic effect, the suggestion of a helmet, a tottering tower, banners, aerial flashes or fireworks, all accentuate the impression of conflict and explosions. If one looks long enough in this mood it is not difficult to read into the canvas all sorts of interpretations of a warlike character. Yet the painting was “improvised”--_composed_ with no _direct_ intention of suggesting war. In his own personal note book wherein he keeps a record of all his work, Kandinsky identifies the picture by a hasty pencil sketch and the words, “Blue Splashes,” or “Masses,” and “Cannons.” Of the painting he says in a letter: The designation “Cannons,” selected by me _for my own use_, is not to be conceived as indicating the “contents” of the picture. These contents are indeed what the spectator _lives_, or _feels_ while under the effect of the _form and color combinations_ of the picture. This picture is nearly in the shape of a cross. The centre--somewhat below the middle--is formed by a large, irregular blue plane. (The blue color in itself counteracts the impression caused by the cannons!) Below this centre there is a muddy-gray, ragged second centre almost equal in importance to the first one. The four corners extending the oblique cross into the corners of the picture are heavier than the two centres, especially heavier than the first, and they vary from each other in characteristics, in lines, contours, and colors. Thus the picture becomes lighter, or looser in the centre, and heavier, or tighter towards the corners.