The process of fermentation can be associated with abstract art on several metaphorical levels, including the transformation of forms and colors, as well as broader metaphorical possibilities arriving from etymological roots of the word fermentation, indicating the state of agitation. In one of his autobiographical texts, artist Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866–1944) wrote about the influence of science on his ideas about the world and his art, as well as the state of creative agitation:
A purely scientific event removed one of the most important obstacles from my path. It was the smashing of the atom that was equated, in my soul, with the collapse of the whole world. Suddenly the stoutest vaults crumbled. Everything became uncertain, precarious and insubstantial…. All the forms that I ever used would come to me “by themselves.”… Sometimes they kept away long and hard, and I had to wait patiently, and often with fear...