The Desire for Spiritual Fulfilment Through Art Is Inherently Human
"Art is a form of nourishment (of consciousness, the spirit)," 31-year-old Susan Sontag wrote in her diary in 1964. "Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness," wrote Alain de Botton one-half a century later on in the excellent Art every bit Therapy. But perhaps the greatest meditation on how art serves the soul came more than than a century earlier, in 1910, when legendary Russian painter and fine art theorist Wassily Kandinsky (December 16, 1866–December xiii, 1944) published Concerning the Spiritual in Art (free download | public library) — an exploration of the deepest and most authentic motives for making art, the "internal necessity" that impels artists to create every bit a spiritual impulse and audiences to admire fine art as a spiritual hunger.
Kandinsky's words, penned in the period between the Industrial Revolution and the rising of the consumer social club, ring with remarkable poignancy today. He begins by considering art as a spiritual antidote to the values of materialism and introduces the notion of "stimmung," an most untranslatable concept best explained equally the essential spirit of nature, echoing Tolstoy's notion of emotional infectiousness every bit the truthful mensurate of art. Kandinsky writes:
[In bully art] the spectator does feel a corresponding thrill in himself. Such harmony or even contrast of emotion cannot be superficial or worthless; indeed the Stimmung of a motion-picture show tin deepen and purify that of the spectator. Such works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they "key information technology up," then to speak, to a certain meridian, as a tuning-key the strings of a musical instrument.
Bemoaning the trend of the general public to reduce art to technique and skill, Kandinsky argues that its true purpose is entirely different and adds to history's most cute definitions of art:
In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys. Whither is this lifetime tending? What is the message of the competent artist? … To harmonize the whole is the task of fine art.
And yet, Kandinsky admonishes, the notion of "fine art for art's sake" produces a "neglect of inner meanings" — a complaining perhaps even more than "lamentable and ominous" in our age of consistent commodification of art every bit a affair to transact effectually — to purchase, to own, to display — rather than an feel to accept. He writes:
The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is ane of the mightiest elements, is a complicated simply definite and easily definable move forwards and upwards. This movement is the move of feel. It may take dissimilar forms, but it holds at bottom to the aforementioned inner thought and purpose.
He goes on to offer a visual metaphor for our spiritual experience and how information technology relates to the notion of genius:
The life of the spirit may exist fairly represented in diagram equally a large astute-angled triangle divided horizontally into diff 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 forward and upward. Where the apex was today the second segment is tomorrow; what today can exist understood only past the noon and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true idea and feeling of the second segment.
At the apex of the top segment stands frequently i man, and but ane. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him equally charlatan or madman. And then in his lifetime stood Beethoven, alone and insulted.
[…]
In every segment of the triangle are artists. Each one of them who can encounter beyond the limits of his segment is a prophet to those about him, and helps the advance of the obstinate whole. But those who are blind, or those who retard the movement of the triangle for baser reasons, are fully understood by their fellows and acclaimed for their genius. The greater the segment (which is the same every bit proverb the lower it lies in the triangle) so the greater the number who understand the words of the artist. Every segment hungers consciously or, much more than oftentimes, unconsciously for their corresponding spiritual nutrient. This food is offered by the artists, and for this food the segment immediately below will tomorrow exist stretching out eager hands.
But he admonishes that our "spiritual food" should e'er exist accordingly suited to the segment we vest to, else it becomes indigestible and even toxic:
Too often information technology happens that i level of spiritual food suffices for the nourishment of those who are already in a college segment. But for them this food is poison; in small-scale quantities it depresses their souls gradually into a lower segment; in large quantities it hurls them all of a sudden into the depths ever lower and lower. Sienkiewicz, in i of his novels, compares the spiritual life to swimming; for the human who does non strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually against sinking, will mentally and morally go nether. In this strait a man's talent (again in the biblical sense) becomes a curse—and not simply the talent of the artist, but likewise of those who eat this poisoned food. The artist uses his strength to flatter his lower needs; in an ostensibly artistic class 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 frontward motion, but hinders information technology, dragging back those who are striving to press onward, and spreading pestilence abroad.
But the well-nigh culturally toxic issue of all, Kandinsky argues, takes place in periods when "art has no noble champion" and "the true spiritual food is wanting." Information technology is then that we brainstorm to mistake technical advances for spiritual growth and, dismissing the artists whom history would one day deem geniuses, nosotros come to worship at fake altars:
The lone visionaries are despised or regarded as abnormal and eccentric. Those who are not wrapped in lethargy and who feel vague longings for spiritual life and knowledge and progress, cry in harsh chorus, without whatsoever to comfort them. The night of the spirit falls more than and more darkly. Deeper becomes the misery of these blind and terrified guides, and their followers, tormented and unnerved by fear and doubt, prefer to this gradual concealment the final sudden leap into the blackness.
At such a fourth dimension art ministers to lower needs, and is used for fabric ends. She seeks her substance in hard realities because she knows of goose egg nobler… The artist in such times has no demand to say much, merely merely to be notorious for some small originality and consequently lauded past a pocket-size group of patrons and connoisseurs (which incidentally is besides a very assisting business for him)…
But despite all this defoliation, this anarchy, this wild hunt for notoriety, the spiritual triangle, slowly but surely, with irresistible forcefulness, moves onwards and upwards.
He and so turns to the spiritual essence of art and the artist's responsibility in bringing information technology forth:
If the emotional power of the artist can overwhelm the "how?" and can give gratis scope to his finer feelings, so fine art is on the crest of the road by which she will non neglect subsequently on to discover the "what" she has lost, the "what" which volition show the way to the spiritual food of the newly awakened spiritual life. This "what?" volition no longer exist the material, objective "what" of the sometime flow, just the internal truth of art, the soul without which the trunk (i.e. the "how") tin never exist healthy, whether in an individual or in a whole people.
This "what" is the internal truth which only fine art tin divine, which but art can limited by those means of expression which are hers alone.
Kandinsky considers art a kind of spiritual anchor when all other certitudes of life are unhinged by social and cultural upheaval:
When religion, scientific discipline and morality are shaken … and when the outer supports threaten to autumn, man turns his gaze from externals in on to himself. Literature, music and fine art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt. They reflect the dark picture of the present time and show the importance of what at first was only a trivial betoken of light noticed past few and for the great bulk not-real. Possibly they even grow dark in their plow, but on the other hand they turn abroad from the soulless life of the present towards those substances and ideas which give free telescopic to the non-material strivings of the soul.
And yet despite this eternal spiritual element, he recognizes that all fine art is inescapably a product of its time. Examining the music of Wagner, Debussy, and Schoenberg — each historic equally a genius in his own correct — Kandinsky writes:
The various arts of today learn from each other and often resemble each other… The greatest freedom of all, the freedom of an unfettered art, tin can never be absolute. Every age achieves a certain mensurate of this freedom, but beyond the boundaries of its freedom the mightiest genius can never go. Only the measure of liberty of each historic period must exist constantly enlarged.
A key source of this enlargement, Kandinsky suggests, is the cantankerous-pollination of the different arts, which inform and inspire one another:
The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the fine art that is truly monumental. Every homo 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 attain to heaven.
Kandinsky, who was greatly influenced by Goethe'due south theory of the emotional effect of colour and who was himself synesthetic, considers the powerful psychic effect of color in the cohesive spiritual experience of art:
Many colors accept been described as rough or gluey, others every bit smooth and uniform, and then that one feels inclined to stroke them (e.g., dark ultramarine, chromic oxide greenish, and rose madder). Every bit the distinction betwixt warm and common cold colors belongs to this connection. Some colors appear soft (rose madder), others difficult (cobalt greenish, bluish-green oxide), and then that even fresh from the tube they seem to be dry out. The expression "scented colors" is frequently met with. And finally the sound of colors is so definite that it would exist hard to observe anyone who would attempt to limited bright xanthous in the bass notes, or nighttime lake in the treble…
Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the paw which plays, touching i key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
He later adds:
The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and adult past frequent do. Merely as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended. And for this reason it is necessary for the artist to know the starting point for the exercise of his spirit.
Considering color and course the two weapons of painting, and defining class as "the outward expression of inner pregnant," Kandinsky examines their interplay in creating a spiritual effect:
This essential connection between color and form brings united states of america to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstruse and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accompaniment consideration of its beingness acute — or obtuse — angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circumvolve, a square, or any conceivable geometrical effigy [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell…
The mutual influence of class and colour at present becomes articulate. A yellow triangle, a blue circumvolve, a green square, or a greenish triangle, a yellow circumvolve, a blue square—all these are unlike and take different spiritual values.
In a footnote, he makes the case for the sensibility of minimalism:
Form oft is most expressive when least coherent. It is oft well-nigh expressive when outwardly most imperfect, maybe simply a stroke, a mere hint of outer meaning.
In considering the inherent aesthetic intelligence of nature, Kandinsky returns to his piano metaphor:
Every object has its own life and therefore its own appeal; man is continually subject to these appeals. But the results are often dubbed either sub- or super-conscious. Nature, that is to say the e'er-changing surroundings of man, sets in vibration the strings of the piano (the soul) past manipulation of the keys (the diverse objects with their several appeals).
Simply perhaps his most poignant insight has to do with the expectations of art:
There is no "must" in art, considering art is free.
Rather than a "must," Kandinsky argues, fine art springs from an inner need, the psychological trifecta of which he itemizes:
The inner need is built upwards of iii mystical elements:
- Every creative person, every bit a creator, has something in him which calls for expression (this is the chemical element of personality).
- Every artist, equally child of his historic period, is impelled to express the spirit of his age (this is the chemical element of style) — dictated past the menses and particular land to which the artist belongs (it is hundred-to-one how long the latter distinction volition continue to be).
- Every creative person, as a retainer of fine art, has to assistance the crusade of fine art (this is the element of pure artistry, which is constant in all ages and amongst all nationalities).
A total understanding of the first 2 elements is necessary for a realization of the third.
Sharing in Schopenhauer's skepticism almost way, Kandinsky predicts that only the third element, "which knows neither period nor nationality," accounts for the timeless in art:
In the past and even today much talk is heard of "personality" in art. Talk of the coming "way" becomes more than frequent daily. But for all their importance today, these questions volition have disappeared later on a few hundred or 1000 years.
Only the tertiary element — that of pure artistry — volition remain forever. An Egyptian carving speaks to us today more subtly than it did to its chronological contemporaries; for they judged it with the hampering cognition of menstruum and personality. Simply we can judge purely as an expression of the eternal artistry.
Similarly — the greater the part played in a modern piece of work of fine art past the two elements of fashion and personality, the amend will information technology be appreciated by people today; but a modern work of art which is full of the third element, will fail to reach the contemporary soul. For many centuries have to pass away earlier the 3rd chemical element tin can exist received with understanding. But the creative person in whose work this third element predominates is the really great artist.
[…]
It is clear, therefore, that the inner spirit of art simply uses the outer form of whatever detail menses as a stepping-stone to further expression.
In short, the working of the inner need and the evolution of art is an ever-advancing expression of the eternal and objective in the terms of the periodic and subjective.
Therefore, Kandinsky points out, the truthful artist gives acceptance just to that inner need, and not to the expectations and conventions of the time:
The artist must be bullheaded to distinctions between "recognized" or "unrecognized" conventions of class, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must sentinel only the trend of the inner demand, and hearken to its words alone. Then he will with safety use means both sanctioned and forbidden past his contemporaries. All means are sacred which are called for past the inner need. All ways are sinful which obscure that inner demand.
This is too why theory invariably fails to capture the essential impulse of art. Kandinsky offers a cute, if inadvertent, disclaimer to his own theoretical treatise:
It is impossible to theorize nigh this ideal of fine art. In existent art theory does non precede practice, simply follows her. Everything is, at outset, a matter of feeling. Whatever theoretical scheme will be lacking in the essential of creation — the inner desire for expression — which cannot be adamant. Neither the quality of the inner need, nor its subjective form, tin can be measured nor weighed.
In another parenthetical, he considers the paradox of what we refer to as "beauty," which is more than of a theoretical agreement based on convention rather than a true spiritual response:
"Outer need" … never goes beyond conventional limits, nor produces other than conventional beauty. The "inner need" knows no such limits, and often produces results conventionally considered "ugly." Simply "ugly" itself is a conventional term, and only means "spiritually unsympathetic," being practical to some expression of an inner need, either outgrown or not notwithstanding attained. Just everything which fairly expresses the inner demand is beautiful.
[…]
That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.
In reflecting on the birthplace of art, he returns to the notion of creative freedom:
The work of art is born of the creative person in a mysterious and undercover way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its beingness casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful forcefulness, alike in its fabric and spiritual life. Information technology exists and has ability to create spiritual temper; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one. If its "form" is bad it means that the class is too feeble in meaning to call along corresponding vibrations of the soul… The artist is not just justified in using, but it is his duty to use only those forms which fulfill his own need… Such spiritual freedom is equally necessary in fine art as it is in life.
He brings everything full-circumvolve to the metaphor of the spiritual triangle, reexamining the essence of art and the core responsibility of the artist:
Art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, merely a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul — to, in fact, the raising of the spiritual triangle.
If art refrains from doing this work, a chasm remains unbridged, for no other ability tin take the place of art in this activeness. And at times when the human soul is gaining greater strength, art volition likewise abound in ability, for the ii are inextricably connected and complementary one to the other. Conversely, at those times when the soul tends to be choked by textile disbelief, fine art becomes purposeless and talk is heard that art exists for art's sake alone…
It is very important for the artist to gauge his position aright, to realize that he has a duty to his art and to himself, that he is not king of the castle simply rather a servant of a nobler purpose. He must search securely into his ain soul, develop and tend it, and then that his fine art has something to clothe, and does not remain a glove without a mitt. The creative person must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal simply rather the adapting of form to its inner pregnant.
[…]
The artist is not built-in to a life of pleasance. He must non alive idle; he has a difficult piece of work to perform, and i which often proves a cross to be borne. He must realize that his every deed, feeling, and idea are raw just sure material from which his work is to arise, that he is complimentary in art but not in life.
The artist has a triple responsibleness to the non-artists: (1) He must repay the talent which he has; (2) his deeds, feelings, and thoughts, as those of every human being, create a spiritual atmosphere which is either pure or poisonous. (3) These deeds and thoughts are materials for his creations, which themselves practise influence on the spiritual atmosphere.
Apropos the Spiritual in Art , a spectacular read in its entirety, is in the public domain and is thus available every bit a complimentary download. Complement it with Tolstoy on emotional infectiousness and Oscar Wilde on art, then revisit the 7 psychological functions of art.
Source: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/06/02/kandinsky-concerning-the-spiritual-in-art/
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