Concerning The Spiritual in Art

Notes about Kandinsky’s ideas on connection between spiritual realm and art

"All means are sacred when they are dictated by inner necessity. All means are reprehensible when they do not spring from the fountain of inner necessity — The path on which we already find ourselves today, and which is the greatest good fortune of our time, is the path which leads us away from the outer appearance of things and brings us instead to the opposite goal: the goal of inner necessity.’’

1. every artist, as a creator, must express the essence of his own personality;

2. every artist, as a child of his time, must express the essence of his period;

3. every artist, as a servant of art, must express what is the general essence of art (that is, the element of pure and timeless art which is innate in all beings, peoples, and times, and which is expressed in the work of every artist, every people, and every period, and which, as the principal element of art, knows no time or space).

‘’Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek methods in sculpture achieve only a similarity of form, the work remaining soulless for all time. ‘’

‘’Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning. ‘’

‘’Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip. ‘’ After the period of materialist effort, which held the soul in check until it was shaken off as evil, the soul is emerging, purged by trials and sufferings. Shapeless emotions such as fear, joy, grief, etc., which belonged to this time of effort, will no longer greatly attract the artist.''

‘’In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys.''

Kandinsky’s Life of The Spirit as A Triangle Idea

The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area.

‘’The whole triangle is moving slowly, almost invisibly forwards and upwards. Where the apex was today the second segment is tomorrow; what today can be understood only by the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the second segment. ‘’

Here we see perhaps the most important sentences said about the nature of art : ‘’what today can be understood only by the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the second segment. ‘’

‘’At the apex of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and insulted. ‘’

In the next segment, Kandinsky tells about the downsides of this triangle:

‘’This simile of the triangle cannot be said to express every aspect of the spiritual life. For instance, there is never an absolute shadow-side to the picture, never a piece of unrelieved gloom. Even too often it happens that one level of spiritual food suffices for the nourishment of those who are already in a higher segment. But for them this food is poison; in small quantities it depresses their souls gradually into a lower segment; in large quantities it hurls them suddenly into the depths ever lower and lower. ‘’

So this is like a double edge sword, if the spiritual food is in a small quantity; it depresses the artist and on the other hand if it is in large quantities, it actually brings the artist into the depths even lower.

Sienkiewicz’s Swimming Idea of Spirituality

Sienkiewicz, in one of his novels, compares the spiritual life to swimming; for the man who does not strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually against sinking, will mentally and morally go under. In this strait a man's talent becomes a curse—and not only the talent of the artist, but also of those who eat this poisoned food. The artist uses his strength to flatter his lower needs; in an ostensibly artistic form he presents what is impure, draws the weaker elements to him, mixes them with evil, betrays men and helps them to betray themselves, while they convince themselves and others that they are spiritually thirsty, and that from this pure spring they may quench their thirst. Such art does not help the forward movement, but hinders it, dragging back those who are striving to press onward, and spreading pestilence abroad.

Identities are Interchangeable

The most modern musicians like Debussy create a spiritual impression, often taken from nature, but embodied in purely musical form. For this reason Debussy is often classed with the Impressionist painters on the ground that he resembles these painters in using natural phenomena for the purposes of his art.

Whatever truth there may be in this comparison merely accentuates the fact that the various arts of today learn from each other and often resemble each other.

Schoenberg realizes that the greatest freedom of all, the freedom of an unfettered art, can never be absolute. Every age achieves a certain measure of this freedom, but beyond the boundaries of its freedom the mightiest genius can never go.

A parallel course has been followed by the Impressionist movement in painting. It is seen in its dogmatic and most naturalistic form in so-called Neo-Impressionism. The theory of this is to put on the canvas the whole glitter and brilliance of nature, and not only an isolated aspect of her. These men sought for the "inner" by way of the "outer."

The Pyramid

In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the abstract, the non-material. Consciously or unconsciously they are obeying Socrates' command—Know thyself. This borrowing of method by one art from another, can only be truly successful when the application of the borrowed methods is not superficial but fundamental. One art must learn first how another uses its methods, so that the methods may afterwards be applied to the borrower's art from the beginning, and suitably. The artist must not forget that in him lies the power of true application of every method, but that that power must be developed.

So the arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental. Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will some day reach to heaven.

The Psychological Working of Color

To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colors, produces a dual result. In the first place one receives a PURELY PHYSICAL IMPRESSION, one of pleasure and contentment at the varied and beautiful colors. The superficial impression of varied color may be the starting point of a whole chain of related sensations.

The Language of Form and Color

‘’FORM IS THE OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF THIS INNER MEANING’’

"Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty"

‘’Musical sound acts directly on the soul and finds an echo there because, though to varying extents, music is innate in man. ‘’

These two quotations show the deep relationship between the arts, and especially between music and painting. Goethe said that painting must count this relationship her main foundation, and by this prophetic remark he seems to foretell the position in which painting is today.

Painting has two weapons at it’s disposal:

1.Color

2.Form

Form can stand alone as representing an object (either real or otherwise) or as a purely abstract limit to a space or a surface but color cannot stand alone; it cannot dispense with boundaries of some kind.

A never-ending extent of red can only be seen in the mind; when the word red is heard, the color is evoked without definite boundaries. If such are necessary they have deliberately to be imagined. But such red, as is seen by the mind and not by the eye, exercises at once a definite and an indefinite impression on the soul, and produces spiritual harmony. An analogous case is the sound of a trumpet which one hears when the word "trumpet" is pronounced. This sound is audible to the soul, without the distinctive character of a trumpet heard in the open air or in a room.

This essential connection between color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion.

The mutual influence of form and color now becomes clear. A yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square—all these are different and have different spiritual values.

Since colors and forms are well-nigh innumerable, their combination and their influences are likewise unending. The material is inexhaustible.

Form, in the narrow sense, is nothing but the separating line between surfaces of color. That is its outer meaning. But it has also an inner meaning, of varying intensity and properly speaking, FORM IS THE OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF THIS INNER MEANING. SO IT IS EVIDENT THAT FORM-HARMONY MUST REST ONLY ON A CORRESPONDING VIBRATION OF THE HUMAN SOUL; AND THIS IS A SECOND GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF THE INNER NEED.

The two aspects of form just mentioned define its two aims. The task of limiting surfaces (the outer aspect) is well performed if the inner meaning is fully expressed.

At this point, we can come to conclusion that :

(1) Either form aims at so limiting surfaces as to fashion of them some material object;

(2) Or form remains abstract, describing only a non-material, spiritual entity. Such non-material entities, with life and value as such, are a circle, a triangle, a rhombus, a trapeze, etc., many of them so complicated as to have no mathematical denomination.

The impossibility and, in art, the uselessness of attempting to copy an object exactly, the desire to give the object full expression, are the impulses which drive the artist away from "literal" coloring to purely artistic aims. And that brings us to the question of composition.

Pure artistic composition has two elements:

1. The composition of the whole picture.

2. The creation of the various forms which, by standing in different relationships to each other, decide the composition of the whole.

So the abstract idea is creeping into art, although, only yesterday, it was scorned and obscured by purely material ideals. Its gradual advance is natural enough, for in proportion as the organic form falls into the background, the abstract ideal achieves greater prominence.

When it comes to color, Color provides a whole wealth of possibilities of her own, and when combined with form, yet a further series of possibilities. And all these will be expressions of the inner need.

The inner need is built up of three mystical elements:

1.Every artist, as a creator, has something in him which calls for expression (this is the element of personality)

2. Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age (this is the element of style)

3. Every artist, as a servant of art, has to help the cause of art (this is the element of pure artistry, which is constant in all ages and among all nationalities).

In the past and even today much talk is heard of "personality" in art. Talk of the coming "style" becomes more frequent daily. But for all their importance today, these questions will have disappeared after a few hundred or thousand years. In the future times is a better expression.

But the most important point of all this is : Only the third element—that of pure artistry—will remain for ever.

Every artist chooses, from the forms which reflect his own time, those which are sympathetic to him, and expresses himself through them. So the subjective element is the definite and external expression of the inner, objective element.

In short, the working of the inner need and the development of art is an ever-advancing expression of the eternal and objective in the terms of the periodic and subjective.

The artist must be blind to distinctions between "recognized" or "unrecognized" conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.

He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and hearken to its words alone. Then he will with safety employ means both sanctioned and forbidden by his contemporaries. All means are sacred which are called for by the inner need. All means are sinful which obscure that inner need.

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