CORRECTION

I mistakenly attributed the quote in my previous blog post to the painter Wassily Kandinsky.  Thank you to my friend Alan Fletcher for pointing out that this was in fact said by the 19th century art critic and essayist, Walter Pater ("all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."  (From a book entitled, "The Renaissance."  You can see it in context here - it is about 4 or 5 paragraphs down).

I think I remembered it as Kandinsky because it seems to fit him: his paintings aim for a level of abstraction that is typical of music (except for program music, like the "Pastoral" Symphony or "Peter and the Wolf," or music with a text, i.e. vocal music).