Lignes Animées by František Kupka is a painting that initially resists description. Upon encountering it at the Centre Pompidou, I experienced more as a physical transportation than as a visual work. The Centre describes it as “hypnotic,” and even that is an understatement. To look upon it is to be spun into an embodied realm. of movement, color, and exploration. However, for the sake of this analysis, I will attempt to describe it.

The almost 6.5′ x 6.5′ abstract painting is comprised of lines of various length and width that circularly sweep towards one point. This point, located near the bottom left corner of the canvas, is marked by textural blobs of thick, multicolored paint, which obscure the meeting point of the various lines as they actually intersect. The lines that spiral outwards are mostly broken into chunks and are layered over one another in different colors. This layering establishes a sense of depth and perspective that contributes to the painting’s dizzying effect. Most of the lines fall within various shades of blue, though in the bottom right is a densely pecked section of orange line segments. Despite being so linear, however, the painting also has its fair share of organic shapes. From afar, these bulbous chunks appear rigid and rectangular. However, their organic form is revealed upon closer inspection. An even closer observation will reveal that each line chunk itself consists of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lines of the same color distinguished only by the sight glaze of the brushstroke.

Another crucial aspect of the painting is the large areas of black that occupy some of the top of the canvas. The shapes of these black sections seems to imply that it is the background, while the white that takes up most of the canvas is occurring over top of the black, another facet of the painting’s depth.

Ultimately, this description is unable to approach the visual power of the piece, which I believe comes from the way the various elements interact with one another. One relevant frame of analysis of this interrelation is scale. The painting itself is fairly large, but it is constituted of lines and shapes of a huge range of sizes. To use a biological metaphor, the painting is like a peeling of the skin that reveals each of its individual building blocks, from its tiny atoms to its bursting organs. Its smallest components, the individual lines that make up each section, also bear a resemblance to a colored iris, yet another small piece of anatomy. Yet taken as a whole, the work becomes grandly cosmic in scale, evoking the pull of a supermassive black hole or the swirling dust of an enormous nebula. The presence of a cosmic influence makes sense considering Kupka was explicitly inspired by astronomy and its imagery and principles. Earlier in his life he made a small work entitled Disques de Newton, which shares a motif of round, spiraling shapes and over-layer segments of color despite being much simpler than Lignes Animées. Personally, the simultaneous depiction of the two opposite ends of scale are one of the main reasons I find this work so compelling. Its capability to feel both sub-atomically human and galactically large establishes an emotional push and pull. It creates a unique viewing experience that can become meditative, anxiety-inducing, peaceful, or even extremely emotional depending on the viewer.

Another interesting aspect of the work that can’t be determined from any amount of viewing is the fact that it was actually reworked. It was first exhibited as a finished work in 1920, but then Kupka reworked it in the early 1930’s. Despite being a well-known fact, I was unable to find any images or descriptions of what the painting looked like before it was reworked. However, I suspect this reworking at the very least contributed to the strong sense of depth and layering that is present in the work.

I’m also incredibly compelled by the colors in the piece. As previously mentioned, the work is mostly comprised of shades of blue and white with small areas of orange and green. The use of complementary blue and orange draw the eye diagonally towards the bottom right corner, the most layered area of the piece. The oranges are layered on top of the background swathes of black, leading the eye counter clockwise and backwards into the depth of the piece. This guided movement contributes to the illusion of transportation in depth through the piece. The dialogue between motion and color utilized in this work is a common motif for Kupka that he developed in various works.

Another motif prevalent in Kupka’s works is music. Kupka was inspired by music and its literal and metaphorical forms. In some works, Kupka worked more literally off the shapes of music instruments such as the piano in pieces including his Abstraction series. These drawings used the literal motif of the black and white key, with each one demonstrating a duplication or deconstruction of the shape.

The allusion to music is less literally in Lignes Animées, but there is still an evident fluidity in the work that gives it a music-like quality. Its sweeping spirals seem almost orchestral, yet another depiction of grandeur in the painting.

In conclusion, I believe that each of these individual traits I enjoy in the piece contribute to what is overall most compelling about it, which is its shifting identity between abstraction and figurativism. Though its constitution of bold lines and circular shapes in a variety of colors does not refer exactly to any visual model, its embodied sense of movement, depth, and cosmic scale prevents it from existing solely in the abstract world. The piece does not reveal itself as something specific, but instead invites the viewer to embark on a meditative process of imagining that can call up any number of narratives and emotions. When I first looked at it, I felt myself drifting through space and time with the sudden awareness of my own inconsequence in the universe. But I think it is a painting that changes with the viewer as well, and I’m curious to see how my experience of the piece will change upon further visits.