Document – Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual Element in Art (1912)

Document

Imagine a building, either large or small, divided into a number of rooms, each of which is filled with paintings of various sizes. Thousands of paintings, perhaps. They represent aspects of Nature, seen in full array of colors. A group of animals in sunlight or in shadow, either drinking water or standing in it, or perhaps lying on some grass. Nearby is a painting of a Crucifixion by an artist who does not believe in Christ. Then paintings of flowers, or of human beings, sitting, standing, walking, often naked. Numerous paintings, foreshortened from behind, of naked women. Apples and silverware. A formal portrait of Sir So-and-So. Sunsets. A woman in pink. A duck in flight. A portrait of Lady X. Flying geese. A woman in white. A scene of cattle in dappled sunshine, bright light and shade. A portrait of Ambassador This-and-That. A woman dressed in green. Every image is carefully reproduced in a book that lists each picture’s title and the artist who painted it. People go through the rooms, from wall to wall, turning the pages of the book they hold, and reading names and title. Then they all leave, neither richer nor poorer, and resume their normal affairs, none of which have anything to do with art. Why did they come?

Every painting captures, mysteriously, the whole of a life—a life of agonies, doubts, moments of enthusiasm and inspiration. What is the direction of that life? What is the cry of the artist’s soul—assuming that the soul was involved in the painting’s creation? “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts is every artist’s duty,” wrote Schumann. “A [true] painter,” wrote Tolstoy, “[is one] who draws and paints everything.”

Considering the exhibition just described, we opt for the second of these judgments. Objects are re-created on canvas with varying degrees of skill, virtuosity, and energy; they are painted perhaps roughly, perhaps smoothly. To present the whole object harmoniously on the canvas is what makes a painting a work of art. Connoisseurs may admire a painter’s technique (as one might admire the skills of a tight-rope walker) or enjoy the quality of the painting (as one might enjoy a pastry), but those with hungry souls may still walk away [from a particular work] no less hungry.

Viewers of art must be educated to appreciate the point of view of the true artist. “Art is the product of its time,” goes the saying; but this type of art merely repeats and reproduces what is already popular among the contemporary audience. Not being germinative, it can only be the product of its time, not the fertile source of the future. It is castrated art, ephemeral, and morally dead the moment present conditions change.

There is another type of art, however, one capable of future growth even as it arises from the sensations of the moment. It echoes and reflects the present but possesses a prophetic force that has the potential for profound and pervasive change in the future.

The spiritual life to which this type of art belongs (and in which it is one of the most powerful elements) is a highly complex but distinct movement above and beyond the immediate present. At the same time, it can be simply translated. The movement is one of cognition, and while it may take a variety of forms it remains true to its essential identity and purpose.

. . .

Whenever the foundations of religion, science, and morality are shaken (the last one by the strong hand of Nietzsche), and when other foundations appear threatened, most men shift their attention away from external matters and direct their gaze inward upon themselves. Literature, music, and art are the most responsive areas in which this sort of spiritual revolution first appears, for they both reflect the darkness of the present moment and point to the significance of what was at first a mere speck of light noticed only by a few and unseen by the overwhelming majority of people. These arts may even grow dark in their turn for a while, but they turn away from the soulless-ness of the present and towards those activities and ideas that liberate the non-materialistic strivings of the soul.

One such artist, in the realm of literature, is Maeterlinck, who leads us into a world that some (justly or not) call fantastic or transcendent.ⁱ “La Princesse Maleine,” “Les Sept Princesses,” or “Les Aveugles” are not figures from the past as are, for example, the heroes in Shakespeare. Rather, they are spirits lost in a fog that threatens to choke them to death, eternally menaced by a somber force invisible to them. A spiritual darkness pervades the world through which they move, a darkness comprised of the insecurity produced by ignorance and fear. Maeterlinck may be the first of the artist-prophets, one of the first visionaries to foresee this type of cultural decadence. Spiritual gloom, the sense of a terrible hand pushing the world forward, the all-pervading fear, the feeling of being lost and without a sure guide—all these are clearly evident in his works.

. . .

In the works of another great artist, the Spaniard Pablo Picasso who now lives in Paris, there is no trace at all of conventional beauty. Constantly on the search for a new means of self-expression, he rushes from one innovation to another, often leaving so great a gulf between his different styles that his bewildered admirers are always finding him in a different place, artistically, from where they last saw him, and no sooner do they think they have him “placed” than he once more transforms himself. This is how Cubism came into being. . . . In his most recent works, Picasso has achieved nothing less than the annihilation of matter, not by dissolving it to nothingness but by a kind of parceling out of its perspectives and scattering them about the canvas. His latest work maintains an appearance of solidity, as though of a desire for it. But no innovation is too much for him. If the use of color stands in the way of his quest for pure artistic form, he simply throws it overboard and paints in brown and white. The problem of pure artistic form is the central problem of his life’s work.

. . .

Each of the arts is at a different stage of development, each expressing what it can in the language that is peculiarly its own. But in spite of the differences between them—and perhaps because of them—there has never been a time when the arts come towards greater communion than they do today, as expressions of our spiritual development. Each carries the seed for a striving after the abstract and immaterial, such that, whether they realize it or not, modern artists are obeying Socrates’ dictum: “Know thyself.” Consciously or unconsciously today’s artists are examining their disciplines, testing them, weighing their spiritual value. The natural result of this, is that modern arts are drawing towards each other. Music is their best teacher. For several centuries now, with a few exceptions, music has been the art form most consistently dedicated not to reproducing the phenomena of nature but rather to express the artist’s soul in sound.

Painters who no longer find satisfaction in mere representation (no matter how skilled it may be) and who yearn to express their spiritual life, can only envy the ease with which music—the most immaterial of arts—achieves this. A painter, of course, can try to apply to his art the techniques of modern music. The result of this is the search for rhythm in modern painting, for mathematical and abstract form, patterns of color, or color set in motion. But the sharing of techniques between artistic disciplines can only work when the effort is fundamental instead of superficial. The artist must first learn how a particular technique was used within the other discipline, so that a suitable sort of innovation can be imported into his own medium. Every artist must remember that he alone has the power to make a true application of each new method—but the method must be developed. . . . This is how the arts of today are approaching one another, and the proper encounter of them will result in art that is truly magnificent. Every artist who investigates the spiritual possibilities of his medium contributes vitally to the development of the spiritual triangle that will one day reach Heaven.

Review

1. 1. What is the artist’s duty to capture in a painting?

2. 2. How and why did Picasso adapt his style so quickly and launch innovative changes in his art?