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+Project Gutenberg's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by Wassily Kandinsky
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Concerning the Spiritual in Art
+
+Author: Wassily Kandinsky
+
+Posting Date: February 22, 2011 [EBook #5321]
+Release Date: March, 2004
+[This file was first posted on June 30, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Mamoun <mamounjo@umdnj.edu>, Charles
+Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreaders Website
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART
+
+BY WASSILY KANDINSKY [TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL T. H. SADLER]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+    LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS [NOT IN E-TEXT]
+    TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
+
+    PART I. ABOUT GENERAL AESTHETIC
+
+       I. INTRODUCTION
+      II. THE MOVEMENT OF THE TRIANGLE
+     III. SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION
+      IV. THE PYRAMID
+
+    PART II. ABOUT PAINTING
+
+       V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING OF COLOUR
+      VI. THE LANGUAGE OF FORM AND COLOUR
+     VII. THEORY
+    VIII. ART AND ARTISTS
+      IX. CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS [NOT IN E-TEXT]
+
+
+
+Mosaic in S. Vitale, Ravenna
+
+Victor and Heinrich Dunwegge: "The Crucifixion" (in the Alte
+Pinakothek, Munich)
+
+Albrecht Durer: "The Descent from the Cross" (in the Alte
+Pinakothek, Munich)
+
+Raphael: "The Canigiani Holy Family" (in the Alte Pinakothek,
+Munich)
+
+Paul Cezanne: "Bathing Women" (by permission of Messrs.
+Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)
+
+Kandinsky: Impression No. 4, "Moscow" (1911)
+
+          "Improvisation No. 29 (1912)
+          "Composition No. 2 (1910)
+          "Kleine Freuden" (1913)
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+It is no common thing to find an artist who, even if he be
+willing to try, is capable of expressing his aims and ideals with
+any clearness and moderation. Some people will say that any such
+capacity is a flaw in the perfect artist, who should find his
+expression in line and colour, and leave the multitude to grope
+its way unaided towards comprehension. This attitude is a relic
+of the days when "l'art pour l'art" was the latest battle cry;
+when eccentricity of manner and irregularity of life were more
+important than any talent to the would-be artist; when every one
+except oneself was bourgeois.
+
+The last few years have in some measure removed this absurdity,
+by destroying the old convention that it was middle-class to be
+sane, and that between the artist and the outer-world yawned a
+gulf which few could cross. Modern artists are beginning to
+realize their social duties. They are the spiritual teachers of
+the world, and for their teaching to have weight, it must be
+comprehensible. Any attempt, therefore, to bring artist and
+public into sympathy, to enable the latter to understand the
+ideals of the former, should be thoroughly welcome; and such an
+attempt is this book of Kandinsky's.
+
+The author is one of the leaders of the new art movement in
+Munich. The group of which he is a member includes painters,
+poets, musicians, dramatists, critics, all working to the same
+end--the expression of the SOUL of nature and humanity, or, as
+Kandinsky terms it, the INNERER KLANG.
+
+Perhaps the fault of this book of theory--or rather the
+characteristic most likely to give cause for attack--is the
+tendency to verbosity. Philosophy, especially in the hands of a
+writer of German, presents inexhaustible opportunities for vague
+and grandiloquent language. Partly for this reason, partly from
+incompetence, I have not primarily attempted to deal with the
+philosophical basis of Kandinsky's art. Some, probably, will find
+in this aspect of the book its chief interest, but better service
+will be done to the author's ideas by leaving them to the
+reader's judgement than by even the most expert criticism.
+
+The power of a book to excite argument is often the best proof of
+its value, and my own experience has always been that those new
+ideas are at once most challenging and most stimulating which
+come direct from their author, with no intermediate discussion.
+
+The task undertaken in this Introduction is a humbler but perhaps
+a more necessary one. England, throughout her history, has shown
+scant respect for sudden spasms of theory. Whether in politics,
+religion, or art, she demands an historical foundation for every
+belief, and when such a foundation is not forthcoming she may
+smile indulgently, but serious interest is immediately withdrawn.
+I am keenly anxious that Kandinsky's art should not suffer this
+fate. My personal belief in his sincerity and the future of his
+ideas will go for very little, but if it can be shown that he is
+a reasonable development of what we regard as serious art, that
+he is no adventurer striving for a momentary notoriety by the
+strangeness of his beliefs, then there is a chance that some
+people at least will give his art fair consideration, and that,
+of these people, a few will come to love it as, in my opinion, it
+deserves.
+
+Post-Impressionism, that vague and much-abused term, is now almost a
+household word. That the name of the movement is better known than the
+names of its chief leaders is a sad misfortune, largely caused by the
+over-rapidity of its introduction into England. Within the space of two
+short years a mass of artists from Manet to the most recent of Cubists
+were thrust on a public, who had hardly realized Impressionism. The
+inevitable result has been complete mental chaos. The tradition of which
+true Post-Impressionism is the modern expression has been kept alive
+down the ages of European art by scattered and, until lately, neglected
+painters. But not since the time of the so-called Byzantines, not since
+the period of which Giotto and his School were the final splendid
+blossoming, has the "Symbolist" ideal in art held general sway over the
+"Naturalist." The Primitive Italians, like their predecessors the
+Primitive Greeks, and, in turn, their predecessors the Egyptians, sought
+to express the inner feeling rather than the outer reality.
+
+This ideal tended to be lost to sight in the naturalistic revival
+of the Renaissance, which derived its inspiration solely from
+those periods of Greek and Roman art which were pre-occupied with
+the expression of external reality. Although the all-embracing
+genius of Michelangelo kept the "Symbolist" tradition alive, it
+is the work of El Greco that merits the complete title of
+"Symbolist." From El Greco springs Goya and the Spanish influence
+on Daumier and Manet. When it is remembered that, in the
+meantime, Rembrandt and his contemporaries, notably Brouwer, left
+their mark on French art in the work of Delacroix, Decamps and
+Courbet, the way will be seen clearly open to Cezanne and
+Gauguin.
+
+The phrase "symbolist tradition" is not used to express any
+conscious affinity between the various generations of artists. As
+Kandinsky says: "the relationships in art are not necessarily
+ones of outward form, but are founded on inner sympathy of
+meaning." Sometimes, perhaps frequently, a similarity of outward
+form will appear. But in tracing spiritual relationship only
+inner meaning must be taken into account.
+
+There are, of course, many people who deny that Primitive Art had an
+inner meaning or, rather, that what is called "archaic expression" was
+dictated by anything but ignorance of representative methods and
+defective materials. Such people are numbered among the bitterest
+opponents of Post-Impressionism, and indeed it is difficult to see how
+they could be otherwise. "Painting," they say, "which seeks to learn
+from an age when art was, however sincere, incompetent and uneducated,
+deliberately rejects the knowledge and skill of centuries." It will be
+no easy matter to conquer this assumption that Primitive art is merely
+untrained Naturalism, but until it is conquered there seems little hope
+for a sympathetic understanding of the symbolist ideal.
+
+The task is all the more difficult because of the analogy drawn by
+friends of the new movement between the neo-primitive vision and that of
+a child. That the analogy contains a grain of truth does not make it the
+less mischievous. Freshness of vision the child has, and freshness of
+vision is an important element in the new movement. But beyond this a
+parallel is non-existent, must be non-existent in any art other than
+pure artificiality. It is one thing to ape ineptitude in technique and
+another to acquire simplicity of vision. Simplicity--or rather
+discrimination of vision--is the trademark of the true
+Post-Impressionist. He OBSERVES and then SELECTS what is essential. The
+result is a logical and very sophisticated synthesis. Such a synthesis
+will find expression in simple and even harsh technique. But the process
+can only come AFTER the naturalist process and not before it. The child
+has a direct vision, because his mind is unencumbered by association and
+because his power of concentration is unimpaired by a multiplicity of
+interests. His method of drawing is immature; its variations from the
+ordinary result from lack of capacity.
+
+Two examples will make my meaning clearer. The child draws a landscape.
+His picture contains one or two objects only from the number before his
+eyes. These are the objects which strike him as important. So far, good.
+But there is no relation between them; they stand isolated on his paper,
+mere lumpish shapes. The Post-Impressionist, however, selects his
+objects with a view to expressing by their means the whole feeling of
+the landscape. His choice falls on elements which sum up the whole, not
+those which first attract immediate attention.
+
+Again, let us take the case of the definitely religious picture.
+
+[Footnote: Religion, in the sense of awe, is present in all true
+art. But here I use the term in the narrower sense to mean
+pictures of which the subject is connected with Christian or
+other worship.]
+
+It is not often that children draw religious scenes. More often battles
+and pageants attract them. But since the revival of the religious
+picture is so noticeable a factor in the new movement, since the
+Byzantines painted almost entirely religious subjects, and finally,
+since a book of such drawings by a child of twelve has recently been
+published, I prefer to take them as my example. Daphne Alien's religious
+drawings have the graceful charm of childhood, but they are mere
+childish echoes of conventional prettiness. Her talent, when mature,
+will turn to the charming rather than to the vigorous. There could be no
+greater contrast between such drawing and that of--say--Cimabue.
+Cimabue's Madonnas are not pretty women, but huge, solemn symbols. Their
+heads droop stiffly; their tenderness is universal. In Gauguin's "Agony
+in the Garden" the figure of Christ is haggard with pain and grief.
+These artists have filled their pictures with a bitter experience which
+no child can possibly possess. I repeat, therefore, that the analogy
+between Post-Impressionism and child-art is a false analogy, and that
+for a trained man or woman to paint as a child paints is an
+impossibility. [Footnote: I am well aware that this statement is at
+variance with Kandinsky, who has contributed a long article--"Uber die
+Formfrage"--to Der Blaue Reiter, in which he argues the parallel between
+Post-Impressionism and child vision, as exemplified in the work of Henri
+Rousseau. Certainly Rousseau's vision is childlike. He has had no
+artistic training and pretends to none. But I consider that his art
+suffers so greatly from his lack of training, that beyond a sentimental
+interest it has little to recommend it.]
+
+All this does not presume to say that the "symbolist" school of
+art is necessarily nobler than the "naturalist." I am making no
+comparison, only a distinction. When the difference in aim is
+fully realized, the Primitives can no longer be condemned as
+incompetent, nor the moderns as lunatics, for such a condemnation
+is made from a wrong point of view. Judgement must be passed, not
+on the failure to achieve "naturalism" but on the failure to
+express the inner meaning.
+
+The brief historical survey attempted above ended with the names of
+Cezanne and Gauguin, and for the purposes of this Introduction, for the
+purpose, that is to say, of tracing the genealogy of the Cubists and of
+Kandinsky, these two names may be taken to represent the modern
+expression of the "symbolist" tradition.
+
+The difference between them is subtle but goes very deep. For
+both the ultimate and internal significance of what they painted
+counted for more than the significance which is momentary and
+external. Cezanne saw in a tree, a heap of apples, a human face,
+a group of bathing men or women, something more abiding than
+either photography or impressionist painting could present. He
+painted the "treeness" of the tree, as a modern critic has
+admirably expressed it. But in everything he did he showed the
+architectural mind of the true Frenchman. His landscape studies
+were based on a profound sense of the structure of rocks and
+hills, and being structural, his art depends essentially on
+reality. Though he did not scruple, and rightly, to sacrifice
+accuracy of form to the inner need, the material of which his art
+was composed was drawn from the huge stores of actual nature.
+
+Gauguin has greater solemnity and fire than Cezanne. His pictures
+are tragic or passionate poems. He also sacrifices conventional
+form to inner expression, but his art tends ever towards the
+spiritual, towards that profounder emphasis which cannot be
+expressed in natural objects nor in words. True his abandonment
+of representative methods did not lead him to an abandonment of
+natural terms of expression--that is to say human figures, trees
+and animals do appear in his pictures. But that he was much
+nearer a complete rejection of representation than was Cezanne is
+shown by the course followed by their respective disciples.
+
+The generation immediately subsequent to Cezanne, Herbin,
+Vlaminck, Friesz, Marquet, etc., do little more than exaggerate
+Cezanne's technique, until there appear the first signs of
+Cubism. These are seen very clearly in Herbin. Objects begin to
+be treated in flat planes. A round vase is represented by a
+series of planes set one into the other, which at a distance
+blend into a curve. This is the first stage.
+
+The real plunge into Cubism was taken by Picasso, who, nurtured
+on Cezanne, carried to its perfectly logical conclusion the
+master's structural treatment of nature. Representation
+disappears. Starting from a single natural object, Picasso and
+the Cubists produce lines and project angles till their canvases
+are covered with intricate and often very beautiful series of
+balanced lines and curves. They persist, however, in giving them
+picture titles which recall the natural object from which their
+minds first took flight.
+
+With Gauguin the case is different. The generation of his disciples
+which followed him--I put it thus to distinguish them from his actual
+pupils at Pont Aven, Serusier and the rest--carried the tendency
+further. One hesitates to mention Derain, for his beginnings, full of
+vitality and promise, have given place to a dreary compromise with
+Cubism, without visible future, and above all without humour. But there
+is no better example of the development of synthetic symbolism than his
+first book of woodcuts.
+
+[Footnote: L'Enchanteur pourrissant, par Guillaume Apollinaire,
+avec illustrations gravees sur bois par Andre Derain. Paris,
+Kahnweiler, 1910.]
+
+Here is work which keeps the merest semblance of conventional
+form, which gives its effect by startling masses of black and
+white, by sudden curves, but more frequently by sudden angles.
+
+[Footnote: The renaissance of the angle in art is an interesting
+feature of the new movement. Not since Egyptian times has it been
+used with such noble effect. There is a painting of Gauguin's at
+Hagen, of a row of Tahitian women seated on a bench, that
+consists entirely of a telling design in Egyptian angles. Cubism
+is the result of this discovery of the angle, blended with the
+influence of Cezanne.]
+
+In the process of the gradual abandonment of natural form the
+"angle" school is paralleled by the "curve" school, which also
+descends wholly from Gauguin. The best known representative is
+Maurice Denis. But he has become a slave to sentimentality, and
+has been left behind. Matisse is the most prominent French artist
+who has followed Gauguin with curves. In Germany a group of young
+men, who form the Neue Kunstlevereinigung in Munich, work almost
+entirely in sweeping curves, and have reduced natural objects
+purely to flowing, decorative units.
+
+But while they have followed Gauguin's lead in abandoning
+representation both of these two groups of advance are lacking in
+spiritual meaning. Their aim becomes more and more decorative,
+with an undercurrent of suggestion of simplified form. Anyone who
+has studied Gauguin will be aware of the intense spiritual value
+of his work. The man is a preacher and a psychologist, universal
+by his very unorthodoxy, fundamental because he goes deeper than
+civilization. In his disciples this great element is wanting.
+Kandinsky has supplied the need. He is not only on the track of
+an art more purely spiritual than was conceived even by Gauguin,
+but he has achieved the final abandonment of all representative
+intention. In this way he combines in himself the spiritual and
+technical tendencies of one great branch of Post-Impressionism.
+
+The question most generally asked about Kandinsky's art is: "What
+is he trying to do?" It is to be hoped that this book will do
+something towards answering the question. But it will not do
+everything. This--partly because it is impossible to put into
+words the whole of Kandinsky's ideal, partly because in his
+anxiety to state his case, to court criticism, the author has
+been tempted to formulate more than is wise. His analysis of
+colours and their effects on the spectator is not the real basis
+of his art, because, if it were, one could, with the help of a
+scientific manual, describe one's emotions before his pictures
+with perfect accuracy. And this is impossible.
+
+Kandinsky is painting music. That is to say, he has broken down
+the barrier between music and painting, and has isolated the pure
+emotion which, for want of a better name, we call the artistic
+emotion. Anyone who has listened to good music with any enjoyment
+will admit to an unmistakable but quite indefinable thrill. He
+will not be able, with sincerity, to say that such a passage gave
+him such visual impressions, or such a harmony roused in him such
+emotions. The effect of music is too subtle for words. And the
+same with this painting of Kandinsky's. Speaking for myself, to
+stand in front of some of his drawings or pictures gives a keener
+and more spiritual pleasure than any other kind of painting. But
+I could not express in the least what gives the pleasure.
+Presumably the lines and colours have the same effect as harmony
+and rhythm in music have on the truly musical. That psychology
+comes in no one can deny. Many people--perhaps at present the
+very large majority of people--have their colour-music sense
+dormant. It has never been exercised. In the same way many people
+are unmusical--either wholly, by nature, or partly, for lack of
+experience. Even when Kandinsky's idea is universally understood
+there may be many who are not moved by his melody. For my part,
+something within me answered to Kandinsky's art the first time I
+met with it. There was no question of looking for representation;
+a harmony had been set up, and that was enough.
+
+Of course colour-music is no new idea. That is to say attempts have been
+made to play compositions in colour, by flashes and harmonies.
+[Footnote: Cf. "Colour Music," by A. Wallace Rimington. Hutchinson. 6s.
+net.] Also music has been interpreted in colour. But I do not know of
+any previous attempt to paint, without any reference to music,
+compositions which shall have on the spectator an effect wholly divorced
+from representative association. Kandinsky refers to attempts to paint
+in colour-counterpoint. But that is a different matter, in that it is
+the borrowing from one art by another of purely technical methods,
+without a previous impulse from spiritual sympathy.
+
+One is faced then with the conflicting claims of Picasso and
+Kandinsky to the position of true leader of non-representative
+art. Picasso's admirers hail him, just as this Introduction hails
+Kandinsky, as a visual musician. The methods and ideas of each
+rival are so different that the title cannot be accorded to both.
+In his book, Kandinsky states his opinion of Cubism and its fatal
+weakness, and history goes to support his contention. The origin
+of Cubism in Cezanne, in a structural art that owes its very
+existence to matter, makes its claim to pure emotionalism seem
+untenable. Emotions are not composed of strata and conflicting
+pressures. Once abandon reality and the geometrical vision
+becomes abstract mathematics. It seems to me that Picasso shares
+a Futurist error when he endeavours to harmonize one item of
+reality--a number, a button, a few capital letters--with a
+surrounding aura of angular projections. There must be a conflict
+of impressions, which differ essentially in quality. One trend of
+modern music is towards realism of sound. Children cry, dogs
+bark, plates are broken. Picasso approaches the same goal from
+the opposite direction. It is as though he were trying to work
+from realism to music. The waste of time is, to my mind, equally
+complete in both cases. The power of music to give expression
+without the help of representation is its noblest possession. No
+painting has ever had such a precious power. Kandinsky is
+striving to give it that power, and prove what is at least the
+logical analogy between colour and sound, between line and rhythm
+of beat. Picasso makes little use of colour, and confines himself
+only to one series of line effects--those caused by conflicting
+angles. So his aim is smaller and more limited than Kandinsky's
+even if it is as reasonable. But because it has not wholly
+abandoned realism but uses for the painting of feeling a
+structural vision dependent for its value on the association of
+reality, because in so doing it tries to make the best of two
+worlds, there seems little hope for it of redemption in either.
+
+As has been said above, Picasso and Kandinsky make an interesting
+parallel, in that they have developed the art respectively of
+Cezanne and Gauguin, in a similar direction. On the decision of
+Picasso's failure or success rests the distinction between
+Cezanne and Gauguin, the realist and the symbolist, the painter
+of externals and the painter of religious feeling. Unless a
+spiritual value is accorded to Cezanne's work, unless he is
+believed to be a religious painter (and religious painters need
+not paint Madonnas), unless in fact he is paralleled closely with
+Gauguin, his follower Picasso cannot claim to stand, with
+Kandinsky, as a prophet of an art of spiritual harmony.
+
+If Kandinsky ever attains his ideal--for he is the first to admit
+that he has not yet reached his goal--if he ever succeeds in
+finding a common language of colour and line which shall stand
+alone as the language of sound and beat stands alone, without
+recourse to natural form or representation, he will on all hands
+be hailed as a great innovator, as a champion of the freedom of
+art. Until such time, it is the duty of those to whom his work
+has spoken, to bear their testimony. Otherwise he may be
+condemned as one who has invented a shorthand of his own, and who
+paints pictures which cannot be understood by those who have not
+the key of the cipher. In the meantime also it is important that
+his position should be recognized as a legitimate, almost
+inevitable outcome of Post-Impressionist tendencies. Such is the
+recognition this Introduction strives to secure.
+
+
+MICHAEL T. H. SADLER
+
+
+
+REFERENCE
+
+
+
+Those interested in the ideas and work of Kandinsky and his
+fellow artists would do well to consult:
+
+DER BLAUE REITER, vol. i. Piper Verlag, Munich, 10 mk. This
+sumptuous volume contains articles by Kandinsky, Franz Marc,
+Arnold Schonberg, etc., together with some musical texts and
+numerous reproductions--some in colour--of the work of the
+primitive mosaicists, glass-painters, and sculptors, as well as
+of more modern artists from Greco to Kandinsky, Marc, and their
+friends. The choice of illustrations gives an admirable idea of
+the continuity and steady growth of the new painting, sculpture,
+and music.
+
+KLANGE. By Wassily Kandinsky. Piper Verlag, Munich, 30 mk. A most
+beautifully produced book of prose-poems, with a large number of
+illustrations, many in colour. This is Kandinsky's most recent
+work.
+
+Also the back and current numbers of Der Sturm, a weekly paper
+published in Berlin in the defence of the new art. Illustrations
+by Marc, Pechstein, le Fauconnier, Delaunay, Kandinsky, etc. Also
+poems and critical articles. Price per weekly number 25 pfg. Der
+Sturm has in preparation an album of reproductions of pictures
+and drawings by Kandinsky.
+
+For Cubism cf. Gleizes et Metzinger, "du Cubisme," and Guillaume
+Apollinaire, "Les Peintres Cubistes." Collection Les Arts. Paris,
+Figuiere, per vol. 3 fr. 50 c.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ELISABETH TICHEJEFF
+
+
+
+
+PART 1: ABOUT GENERAL AESTHETIC
+
+
+
+I. INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+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. Such imitation
+is mere aping. 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.
+
+There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity
+which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a
+similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual
+atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but
+later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one
+period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival
+of the external forms which served to express those inner
+feelings in an earlier age. An example of this today is our
+sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives. Like
+ourselves, these artists sought to express in their work only
+internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of
+external form.
+
+This all-important spark of inner life today is at present only a
+spark. 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.
+Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of
+darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul,
+when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a
+dream, and the gulf of darkness reality. This doubt, and the
+still harsh tyranny of the materialistic philosophy, divide our
+soul sharply from that of the Primitives. Our soul rings cracked
+when we seek to play upon it, as does a costly vase, long buried
+in the earth, which is found to have a flaw when it is dug up
+once more. For this reason, the Primitive phase, through which we
+are now passing, with its temporary similarity of form, can only
+be of short duration.
+
+These two possible resemblances between the art forms of today
+and those of the past will be at once recognized as diametrically
+opposed to one another. The first, being purely external, has no
+future. The second, being internal, contains the seed of the
+future within itself. 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. He
+will endeavour to awake subtler emotions, as yet unnamed. Living
+himself a complicated and comparatively subtle life, his work
+will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty
+emotions beyond the reach of words.
+
+The observer of today, however, is seldom capable of feeling such
+emotions. He seeks in a work of art a mere imitation of nature
+which can serve some definite purpose (for example a portrait in
+the ordinary sense) or a presentment of nature according to a
+certain convention ("impressionist" painting), or some inner
+feeling expressed in terms of natural form (as we say--a picture
+with Stimmung) [Footnote: Stimmung is almost untranslateable. It
+is almost "sentiment" in the best sense, and almost "feeling."
+Many of Corot's twilight landscapes are full of a beautiful
+"Stimmung." Kandinsky uses the word later on to mean the
+"essential spirit" of nature.--M.T.H.S.] All those varieties of
+picture, when they are really art, fulfil their purpose and feed
+the spirit. Though this applies to the first case, it applies
+more strongly to the third, where 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 picture can deepen and purify that of the spectator. Such
+works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they
+"key it up," so to speak, to a certain height, as a tuning-key
+the strings of a musical instrument. But purification, and
+extension in duration and size of this sympathy of soul, remain
+one-sided, and the possibilities of the influence of art are not
+exerted to their utmost.
+
+Imagine a building divided into many rooms. The building may be
+large or small. Every wall of every room is covered with pictures
+of various sizes; perhaps they number many thousands. They
+represent in colour bits of nature--animals in sunlight or
+shadow, drinking, standing in water, lying on the grass; near to,
+a Crucifixion by a painter who does not believe in Christ;
+flowers; human figures sitting, standing, walking; often they are
+naked; many naked women, seen foreshortened from behind; apples
+and silver dishes; portrait of Councillor So and So; sunset; lady
+in red; flying duck; portrait of Lady X; flying geese; lady in
+white; calves in shadow flecked with brilliant yellow sunlight;
+portrait of Prince Y; lady in green. All this is carefully
+printed in a book--name of artist--name of picture. People with
+these books in their hands go from wall to wall, turning over
+pages, reading the names. Then they go away, neither richer nor
+poorer than when they came, and are absorbed at once in their
+business, which has nothing to do with art. Why did they come? 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 send light into the darkness of men's
+hearts--such is the duty of the artist," said Schumann. "An
+artist is a man who can draw and paint everything," said Tolstoi.
+
+Of these two definitions of the artist's activity we must choose
+the second, if we think of the exhibition just described. On one
+canvas is a huddle of objects painted with varying degrees of
+skill, virtuosity and vigour, harshly or smoothly. To harmonize
+the whole is the task of art. With cold eyes and indifferent mind
+the spectators regard the work. Connoisseurs admire the "skill"
+(as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of
+painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry
+away.
+
+The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the
+pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said
+nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing. This condition
+of art is called "art for art's sake." This neglect of inner
+meanings, which is the life of colours, this vain squandering of
+artistic power is called "art for art's sake."
+
+The artist seeks for material reward for his dexterity, his power
+of vision and experience. His purpose becomes the satisfaction of
+vanity and greed. In place of the steady co-operation of artists
+is a scramble for good things. There are complaints of excessive
+competition, of over-production. Hatred, partisanship, cliques,
+jealousy, intrigues are the natural consequences of this aimless,
+materialist art.
+
+[Footnote: The few solitary exceptions do not destroy the truth
+of this sad and ominous picture, and even these exceptions are
+chiefly believers in the doctrine of art for art's sake. They
+serve, therefore, a higher ideal, but one which is ultimately a
+useless waste of their strength. External beauty is one element
+of a spiritual atmosphere. But beyond this positive fact (that
+what is beautiful is good) it has the weakness of a talent not
+used to the full. (The word talent is employed in the biblical
+sense.)]
+
+The onlooker turns away from the artist who has higher ideals and
+who cannot see his life purpose in an art without aims.
+
+Sympathy is the education of the spectator from the point of view
+of the artist. It has been said above that art is the child of
+its age. Such an art can only create an artistic feeling which is
+already clearly felt. This art, which has no power for the
+future, which is only a child of the age and cannot become a
+mother of the future, is a barren art. She is transitory and to
+all intent dies the moment the atmosphere alters which nourished
+her.
+
+The other art, that which is capable of educating further,
+springs equally from contemporary feeling, but is at the same
+time not only echo and mirror of it, but also has a deep and
+powerful prophetic strength.
+
+The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one
+of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and
+easily definable movement forwards and upwards. This movement is
+the movement of experience. It may take different forms, but it
+holds at bottom to the same inner thought and purpose.
+
+Veiled in obscurity are the causes of this need to move ever
+upwards and forwards, by sweat of the brow, through sufferings
+and fears. When one stage has been accomplished, and many evil
+stones cleared from the road, some unseen and wicked hand
+scatters new obstacles in the way, so that the path often seems
+blocked and totally obliterated. But there never fails to come to
+the rescue some human being, like ourselves in everything except
+that he has in him a secret power of vision.
+
+He sees and points the way. The power to do this he would
+sometimes fain lay aside, for it is a bitter cross to bear. But
+he cannot do so. Scorned and hated, he drags after him over the
+stones the heavy chariot of a divided humanity, ever forwards and
+upwards.
+
+Often, many years after his body has vanished from the earth, men
+try by every means to recreate this body in marble, iron, bronze,
+or stone, on an enormous scale. As if there were any intrinsic
+value in the bodily existence of such divine martyrs and servants
+of humanity, who despised the flesh and lived only for the
+spirit! But at least such setting up of marble is a proof that a
+great number of men have reached the point where once the being
+they would now honour, stood alone.
+
+
+
+II. THE MOVEMENT OF THE TRIANGLE
+
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+[Footnote: Weber, composer of Der Freischutz, said of Beethoven's
+Seventh Symphony: "The extravagances of genius have reached the
+limit; Beethoven is now ripe for an asylum." Of the opening
+phrase, on a reiterated "e," the Abbe Stadler said to his
+neighbour, when first he heard it: "Always that miserable 'e'; he
+seems to be deaf to it himself, the idiot!"]
+
+How many years will it be before a greater segment of the
+triangle reaches the spot where he once stood alone? Despite
+memorials and statues, are they really many who have risen to his
+level? [Footnote 2: Are not many monuments in themselves answers
+to that question?]
+
+In every segment of the triangle are artists. Each one of them
+who can see 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 as saying 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 often, unconsciously
+for their corresponding spiritual food. This food is offered by
+the artists, and for this food the segment immediately below will
+tomorrow be stretching out eager hands.
+
+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. 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 (again in the
+biblical sense) 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.
+
+Such periods, during which art has no noble champion, during
+which the true spiritual food is wanting, are periods of
+retrogression in the spiritual world. Ceaselessly souls fall from
+the higher to the lower segments of the triangle, and the whole
+seems motionless, or even to move down and backwards. Men
+attribute to these blind and dumb periods a special value, for
+they judge them by outward results, thinking only of material
+well-being. They hail some technical advance, which can help
+nothing but the body, as a great achievement. Real spiritual
+gains are at best under-valued, at worst entirely ignored.
+
+The solitary 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 any to comfort them. The night of the
+spirit falls more 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 darkening
+the final sudden leap into the blackness.
+
+At such a time art ministers to lower needs, and is used for
+material ends. She seeks her substance in hard realities because
+she knows of nothing nobler. Objects, the reproduction of which
+is considered her sole aim, remain monotonously the same. The
+question "what?" disappears from art; only the question "how?"
+remains. By what method are these material objects to be
+reproduced? The word becomes a creed. Art has lost her soul.
+
+In the search for method the artist goes still further. Art
+becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists,
+and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work.
+For since the artist in such times has no need to say much, but
+only to be notorious for some small originality and consequently
+lauded by a small group of patrons and connoisseurs (which
+incidentally is also a very profitable business for him), there
+arise a crowd of gifted and skilful painters, so easy does the
+conquest of art appear. In each artistic circle are thousands of
+such artists, of whom the majority seek only for some new
+technical manner, and who produce millions of works of art
+without enthusiasm, with cold hearts and souls asleep.
+
+Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and
+more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top
+of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench
+themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far
+behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away.
+
+But despite all this confusion, this chaos, this wild hunt for
+notoriety, the spiritual triangle, slowly but surely, with
+irresistible strength, moves onwards and upwards.
+
+The invisible Moses descends from the mountain and sees the dance
+round the golden calf. But he brings with him fresh stores of
+wisdom to man.
+
+First by the artist is heard his voice, the voice that is
+inaudible to the crowd. Almost unknowingly the artist follows the
+call. Already in that very question "how?" lies a hidden seed of
+renaissance. For when this "how?" remains without any fruitful
+answer, there is always a possibility that the same "something"
+(which we call personality today) may be able to see in the
+objects about it not only what is purely material but also
+something less solid; something less "bodily" than was seen in
+the period of realism, when the universal aim was to reproduce
+anything "as it really is" and without fantastic imagination.
+
+[Footnote: Frequent use is made here of the terms "material" and
+"non-material," and of the intermediate phrases "more" or "less
+material." Is everything material? or is EVERYTHING spiritual?
+Can the distinctions we make between matter and spirit be nothing
+but relative modifications of one or the other? Thought which,
+although a product of the spirit, can be defined with positive
+science, is matter, but of fine and not coarse substance. Is
+whatever cannot be touched with the hand, spiritual? The
+discussion lies beyond the scope of this little book; all that
+matters here is that the boundaries drawn should not be too
+definite.]
+
+If the emotional power of the artist can overwhelm the "how?" and
+can give free scope to his finer feelings, then art is on the
+crest of the road by which she will not fail later on to find the
+"what" she has lost, the "what" which will show the way to the
+spiritual food of the newly awakened spiritual life. This "what?"
+will no longer be the material, objective "what" of the former
+period, but the internal truth of art, the soul without which the
+body (i.e. the "how") can never be healthy, whether in an
+individual or in a whole people.
+
+THIS "WHAT" IS THE INTERNAL TRUTH WHICH ONLY ART CAN DIVINE,
+WHICH ONLY ART CAN EXPRESS BY THOSE MEANS OF EXPRESSION WHICH ARE
+HERS ALONE.
+
+
+
+III. SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION
+
+
+
+The spiritual triangle moves slowly onwards and upwards. Today
+one of the largest of the lower segments has reached the point of
+using the first battle cry of the materialist creed. The dwellers
+in this segment group themselves round various banners in
+religion. They call themselves Jews, Catholics, Protestants, etc.
+But they are really atheists, and this a few either of the
+boldest or the narrowest openly avow. "Heaven is empty," "God is
+dead." In politics these people are democrats and republicans.
+The fear, horror and hatred which yesterday they felt for these
+political creeds they now direct against anarchism, of which they
+know nothing but its much dreaded name.
+
+In economics these people are Socialists. They make sharp the
+sword of justice with which to slay the hydra of capitalism and
+to hew off the head of evil.
+
+Because the inhabitants of this great segment of the triangle
+have never solved any problem independently, but are dragged as
+it were in a cart by those the noblest of their fellowmen who
+have sacrificed themselves, they know nothing of the vital
+impulse of life which they regard always vaguely from a great
+distance. They rate this impulse lightly, putting their trust in
+purposeless theory and in the working of some logical method.
+
+The men of the segment next below are dragged slowly higher,
+blindly, by those just described. But they cling to their old
+position, full of dread of the unknown and of betrayal. The
+higher segments are not only blind atheists but can justify their
+godlessness with strange words; for example, those of Virchow--so
+unworthy of a learned man--"I have dissected many corpses, but
+never yet discovered a soul in any of them."
+
+In politics they are generally republican, with a knowledge of
+different parliamentary procedures; they read the political
+leading articles in the newspapers. In economics they are
+socialists of various grades, and can support their "principles"
+with numerous quotations, passing from Schweitzer's EMMA via
+Lasalle's IRON LAW OF WAGES, to Marx's CAPITAL, and still
+further.
+
+In these loftier segments other categories of ideas, absent in
+these just described, begin gradually to appear--science and art,
+to which last belong also literature and music.
+
+In science these men are positivists, only recognizing those
+things that can be weighed and measured. Anything beyond that
+they consider as rather discreditable nonsense, that same
+nonsense about which they held yesterday the theories that today
+are proven.
+
+In art they are naturalists, which means that they recognize and
+value the personality, individuality and temperament of the
+artist up to a certain definite point. This point has been fixed
+by others, and in it they believe unflinchingly.
+
+But despite their patent and well-ordered security, despite their
+infallible principles, there lurks in these higher segments a
+hidden fear, a nervous trembling, a sense of insecurity. And this
+is due to their upbringing. They know that the sages, statesmen
+and artists whom today they revere, were yesterday spurned as
+swindlers and charlatans. And the higher the segment in the
+triangle, the better defined is this fear, this modern sense of
+insecurity. Here and there are people with eyes which can see,
+minds which can correlate. They say to themselves: "If the
+science of the day before yesterday is rejected by the people of
+yesterday, and that of yesterday by us of today, is it not
+possible that what we call science now will be rejected by the
+men of tomorrow?" And the bravest of them answer, "It is
+possible."
+
+Then people appear who can distinguish those problems that the
+science of today has not yet explained. And they ask themselves:
+"Will science, if it continues on the road it has followed for so
+long, ever attain to the solution of these problems? And if it
+does so attain, will men be able to rely on its solution?" In
+these segments are also professional men of learning who can
+remember the time when facts now recognized by the Academies as
+firmly established, were scorned by those same Academies. There
+are also philosophers of aesthetic who write profound books about
+an art which was yesterday condemned as nonsense. In writing
+these books they remove the barriers over which art has most
+recently stepped and set up new ones which are to remain for ever
+in the places they have chosen. They do not notice that they are
+busy erecting barriers, not in front of art, but behind it. And
+if they do notice this, on the morrow they merely write fresh
+books and hastily set their barriers a little further on. This
+performance will go on unaltered until it is realized that the
+most extreme principle of aesthetic can never be of value to the
+future, but only to the past. No such theory of principle can be
+laid down for those things which lie beyond, in the realm of the
+immaterial. That which has no material existence cannot be
+subjected to a material classification. That which belongs to the
+spirit of the future can only be realized in feeling, and to this
+feeling the talent of the artist is the only road. Theory is the
+lamp which sheds light on the petrified ideas of yesterday and of
+the more distant past. [Footnote: Cf. Chapter VII.] And as we
+rise higher in the triangle we find that the uneasiness
+increases, as a city built on the most correct architectural plan
+may be shaken suddenly by the uncontrollable force of nature.
+Humanity is living in such a spiritual city, subject to these
+sudden disturbances for which neither architects nor
+mathematicians have made allowance. In one place lies a great
+wall crumbled to pieces like a card house, in another are the
+ruins of a huge tower which once stretched to heaven, built on
+many presumably immortal spiritual pillars. The abandoned
+churchyard quakes and forgotten graves open and from them rise
+forgotten ghosts. Spots appear on the sun and the sun grows dark,
+and what theory can fight with darkness? And in this city live
+also men deafened by false wisdom who hear no crash, and blinded
+by false wisdom, so that they say "our sun will shine more
+brightly than ever and soon the last spots will disappear." But
+sometime even these men will hear and see.
+
+But when we get still higher there is no longer this
+bewilderment. There work is going on which boldly attacks those
+pillars which men have set up. There we find other professional
+men of learning who test matter again and again, who tremble
+before no problem, and who finally cast doubt on that very matter
+which was yesterday the foundation of everything, so that the
+whole universe is shaken. Every day another scientific theory
+finds bold discoverers who overstep the boundaries of prophecy
+and, forgetful of themselves, join the other soldiers in the
+conquest of some new summit and in the hopeless attack on some
+stubborn fortress. But "there is no fortress that man cannot
+overcome."
+
+On the one hand, FACTS are being established which the science of
+yesterday dubbed swindles. Even newspapers, which are for the
+most part the most obsequious servants of worldly success and of
+the mob, and which trim their sails to every wind, find
+themselves compelled to modify their ironical judgements on the
+"marvels" of science and even to abandon them altogether. Various
+learned men, among them ultra-materialists, dedicate their
+strength to the scientific research of doubtful problems, which
+can no longer be lied about or passed over in silence. [Footnote:
+Zoller, Wagner, Butleroff (St. Petersburg), Crookes (London),
+etc.; later on, C. H. Richet, C. Flammarion. The Parisian paper
+Le Matin, published about two years ago the discoveries of the
+two last named under the title "Je le constate, mais je ne
+l'explique pas." Finally there are C. Lombroso, the inventor of
+the anthropological method of diagnosing crime, and Eusapio
+Palladino.]
+
+On the other hand, the number is increasing of those men who put no
+trust in the methods of materialistic science when it deals with those
+questions which have to do with "non-matter," or matter which is not
+accessible to our minds. Just as art is looking for help from the
+primitives, so these men are turning to half-forgotten times in order to
+get help from their half-forgotten methods. However, these very methods
+are still alive and in use among nations whom we, from the height of our
+knowledge, have been accustomed to regard with pity and scorn. To such
+nations belong the Indians, who from time to time confront those learned
+in our civilization with problems which we have either passed by
+unnoticed or brushed aside with superficial words and explanations.
+[Footnote: Frequently in such cases use is made of the word hypnotism;
+that same hypnotism which, in its earlier form of mesmerism, was
+disdainfully put aside by various learned bodies.] Mme. Blavatsky was
+the first person, after a life of many years in India, to see a
+connection between these "savages" and our "civilization." From that
+moment there began a tremendous spiritual movement which today includes
+a large number of people and has even assumed a material form in the
+THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. This society consists of groups who seek to
+approach the problem of the spirit by way of the INNER knowledge. The
+theory of Theosophy which serves as the basis to this movement was set
+out by Blavatsky in the form of a catechism in which the pupil receives
+definite answers to his questions from the theosophical point of view.
+[Footnote: E. P. Blavatsky, The Key of Theosophy, London, 1889.]
+Theosophy, according to Blavatsky, is synonymous with ETERNAL TRUTH.
+"The new torchbearer of truth will find the minds of men prepared for
+his message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths
+he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival, which will remove the
+merely mechanical, material obstacles and difficulties from his path."
+And then Blavatsky continues: "The earth will be a heaven in the
+twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now," and with these
+words ends her book.
+
+When religion, science and morality are shaken, the two last by
+the strong hand of Nietzsche, and when the outer supports
+threaten to fall, man turns his gaze from externals in on to
+himself. Literature, music and 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 little point of light
+noticed by few and for the great majority non-existent. Perhaps
+they even grow dark in their turn, but on the other hand they
+turn away from the soulless life of the present towards those
+substances and ideas which give free scope to the non-material
+strivings of the soul.
+
+A poet of this kind in the realm of literature is Maeterlinck. He
+takes us into a world which, rightly or wrongly, we term
+supernatural. La Princesse Maleine, Les Sept Princesses, Les
+Aveugles, etc., are not people of past times as are the heroes in
+Shakespeare. They are merely souls lost in the clouds, threatened
+by them with death, eternally menaced by some invisible and
+sombre power.
+
+Spiritual darkness, the insecurity of ignorance and fear pervade
+the world in which they move. Maeterlinck is perhaps one of the
+first prophets, one of the first artistic reformers and seers to
+herald the end of the decadence just described. The gloom of the
+spiritual atmosphere, the terrible, but all-guiding hand, the
+sense of utter fear, the feeling of having strayed from the path,
+the confusion among the guides, all these are clearly felt in his
+works.[Footnote: To the front tank of such seers of the decadence
+belongs also Alfred Kubin. With irresistible force both Kubin's
+drawings and also his novel "Die Andere Seite" seem to engulf us
+in the terrible atmosphere of empty desolation.]
+
+This atmosphere Maeterlinck creates principally by purely
+artistic means. His material machinery (gloomy mountains,
+moonlight, marshes, wind, the cries of owls, etc.) plays really a
+symbolic role and helps to give  the inner note. [Footnote: When
+one of Maeterlinck's plays was produced in St. Petersburg under
+his own guidance, he himself at one of the rehearsals had a tower
+represented by a plain piece of hanging linen. It was of no
+importance to him to have elaborate scenery prepared. He did as
+children, the greatest imaginers of all time, always do in their
+games; for they use a stick for a horse or create entire
+regiments of cavalry out of chalks. And in the same way a chalk
+with a notch in it is changed from a knight into a horse. On
+similar lines the imagination of the spectator plays in the
+modern theatre, and especially in that of Russia, an important
+part. And this is a notable element in the transition from the
+material to the spiritual in the theatre of the future.]
+Maeterlinck's principal technical weapon is his use of words. The
+word may express an inner harmony. This inner harmony springs
+partly, perhaps principally, from the object which it names. But
+if the object is not itself seen, but only its name heard, the
+mind of the hearer receives an abstract impression only, that is
+to say as of the object dematerialized, and a corresponding
+vibration is immediately set up in the HEART.
+
+The apt use of a word (in its poetical meaning), repetition of this
+word, twice, three times or even more frequently, according to the need
+of the poem, will not only tend to intensify the inner harmony but also
+bring to light unsuspected spiritual properties of the word itself.
+Further than that, frequent repetition of a word (again a favourite game
+of children, which is forgotten in after life) deprives the word of its
+original external meaning. Similarly, in drawing, the abstract message
+of the object drawn tends to be forgotten and its meaning lost.
+Sometimes perhaps we unconsciously hear this real harmony sounding
+together with the material or later on with the non-material sense of
+the object. But in the latter case the true harmony exercises a direct
+impression on the soul. The soul undergoes an emotion which has no
+relation to any definite object, an emotion more complicated, I might
+say more super-sensuous than the emotion caused by the sound of a bell
+or of a stringed instrument. This line of development offers great
+possibilities to the literature of the future. In an embryonic form this
+word-power-has already been used in SERRES CHAUDES. [Footnote: SERRES
+CHAUDES, SUIVIES DE QUINZE CHANSONS, par Maurice Maeterlinck. Brussels.
+Lacomblez.] As Maeterlinck uses them, words which seem at first to
+create only a neutral impression have really a more subtle value. Even a
+familiar word like "hair," if used in a certain way can intensify an
+atmosphere of sorrow or despair. And this is Maeterlinck's method. He
+shows that thunder, lightning and a moon behind driving clouds, in
+themselves material means, can be used in the theatre to create a
+greater sense of terror than they do in nature.
+
+The true inner forces do not lose their strength and effect so
+easily. [Footnote: A comparison between the work of Poe and
+Maeterlinck shows the course of artistic transition from the
+material to the abstract.] An the word which has two meanings,
+the first direct, the second indirect, is the pure material of
+poetry and of literature, the material which these arts alone can
+manipulate and through which they speak to the spirit.
+
+Something similar may be noticed in the music of Wagner. His
+famous leitmotiv is an attempt to give personality to his
+characters by something beyond theatrical expedients and light
+effect. His method of using a definite motiv is a purely musical
+method. It creates a spiritual atmosphere by means of a musical
+phrase which precedes the hero, which he seems to radiate forth
+from any distance. [Footnote: Frequent attempts have shown that
+such a spiritual atmosphere can belong not only to heroes but to
+any human being. Sensitives cannot, for example, remain in a room
+in which a person has been who is spiritually antagonistic to
+them, even though they know nothing of his existence.] 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. But it would be rash to say that this
+definition is an exhaustive statement of Debussy's significance.
+Despite his similarity with the Impressionists this musician is
+deeply concerned with spiritual harmony, for in his works one
+hears the suffering and tortured nerves of the present time. And
+further Debussy never uses the wholly material note so
+characteristic of programme music, but trusts mainly in the
+creation of a more abstract impression. Debussy has been greatly
+influenced by Russian music, notably by Mussorgsky. So it is not
+surprising that he stands in close relation to the young Russian
+composers, the chief of whom is Scriabin. The experience of the
+hearer is frequently the same during the performance of the works
+of these two musicians. He is often snatched quite suddenly from
+a series of modern discords into the charm of more or less
+conventional beauty. He feels himself often insulted, tossed
+about like a tennis ball over the net between the two parties of
+the outer and the inner beauty. To those who are not accustomed
+to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in
+general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.
+Almost alone in severing himself from conventional beauty is the
+Austrian composer, Arnold Schonberg. He says in his
+Harmonielehre: "Every combination of notes, every advance is
+possible, but I am beginning to feel that there are also definite
+rules and conditions which incline me to the use of this or that
+dissonance." [Footnote: "Die Musik," p. 104, from the
+Harmonielehre (Verlag der Universal Edition).] This means that
+Schonberg 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. But the measure of
+freedom of each age must be constantly enlarged. Schonberg is
+endeavouring to make complete use of his freedom and has already
+discovered gold mines of new beauty in his search for spiritual
+harmony. His music leads us into a realm where musical experience
+is a matter not of the ear but of the soul alone--and from this
+point begins the music of the future.
+
+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.
+
+It is interesting to notice three practically contemporary and
+totally different groups in painting. They are (1) Rossetti and
+his pupil Burne-Jones, with their followers; (2) Bocklin and his
+school; (3) Segantini, with his unworthy following of
+photographic artists. I have chosen these three groups to
+illustrate the search for the abstract in art. Rossetti sought to
+revive the non-materialism of the pre-Raphaelites. Bocklin busied
+himself with the mythological scenes, but was in contrast to
+Rossetti in that he gave strongly material form to his legendary
+figures. Segantini, outwardly the most material of the three,
+selected the most ordinary objects (hills, stones, cattle, etc.)
+often painting them with the minutest realism, but he never
+failed to create a spiritual as well as a material value, so that
+really he is the most non-material of the trio.
+
+These men sought for the "inner" by way of the "outer."
+
+By another road, and one more purely artistic, the great seeker
+after a new sense of form approached the same problem. Cezanne
+made a living thing out of a teacup, or rather in a teacup he
+realized the existence of something alive. He raised still life
+to such a point that it ceased to be inanimate.
+
+He painted these things as he painted human beings, because he
+was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in
+everything. His colour and form are alike suitable to the
+spiritual harmony. A man, a tree, an apple, all were used by
+Cezanne in the creation of something that is called a "picture,"
+and which is a piece of true inward and artistic harmony. The
+same intention actuates the work of one of the greatest of the
+young Frenchmen, Henri Matisse. He paints "pictures," and in
+these "pictures" endeavours to reproduce the divine.[Footnote:
+Cf. his article in KUNST UND KUNSTLER, 1909, No. 8.] To attain
+this end he requires as a starting point nothing but the object
+to be painted (human being or whatever it may be), and then the
+methods that belong to painting alone, colour and form.
+
+By personal inclination, because he is French and because he is
+specially gifted as a colourist, Matisse is apt to lay too much
+stress on the colour. Like Debussy, he cannot always refrain from
+conventional beauty; Impressionism is in his blood. One sees
+pictures of Matisse which are full of great inward vitality,
+produced by the stress of the inner need, and also pictures which
+possess only outer charm, because they were painted on an outer
+impulse. (How often one is reminded of Manet in this.) His work
+seems to be typical French painting, with its dainty sense of
+melody, raised from time to time to the summit of a great hill
+above the clouds.
+
+But in the work of another great artist in Paris, the Spaniard Pablo
+Picasso, there is never any suspicion of this conventional beauty.
+Tossed hither and thither by the need for self-expression, Picasso
+hurries from one manner to another. At times a great gulf appears
+between consecutive manners, because Picasso leaps boldly and is found
+continually by his bewildered crowd of followers standing at a point
+very different from that at which they saw him last. No sooner do they
+think that they have reached him again than he has changed once more. In
+this way there arose Cubism, the latest of the French movements, which
+is treated in detail in Part II. Picasso is trying to arrive at
+constructiveness by way of proportion. In his latest works (1911) he has
+achieved the logical destruction of matter, not, however, by dissolution
+but rather by a kind of a parcelling out of its various divisions and a
+constructive scattering of these divisions about the canvas. But he
+seems in this most recent work distinctly desirous of keeping an
+appearance of matter. He shrinks from no innovation, and if colour seems
+likely to balk him in his search for a pure artistic form, he throws it
+overboard and paints a picture in brown and white; and the problem of
+purely artistic form is the real problem of his life.
+
+In their pursuit of the same supreme end Matisse and Picasso
+stand side by side, Matisse representing colour and Picasso form.
+
+
+
+IV. THE PYRAMID
+
+
+
+And so at different points along the road are the different arts,
+saying what they are best able to say, and in the language which
+is peculiarly their own. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, the
+differences between them, there has never been a time when the
+arts approached each other more nearly than they do today, in
+this later phase of spiritual development.
+
+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. Consciously or
+unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material,
+setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements,
+with which it is their several privilege to work.
+
+And the natural result of this striving is that the various arts
+are drawing together. They are finding in Music the best teacher.
+With few exceptions music has been for some centuries the art
+which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural
+phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in
+musical sound.
+
+A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation,
+however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life,
+cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material
+of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply
+the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that
+modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract
+construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in
+motion.
+
+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.
+
+In manipulation of form music can achieve results which are
+beyond the reach of painting. On the other hand, painting is
+ahead of music in several particulars. Music, for example, has at
+its disposal duration of time; while painting can present to the
+spectator the whole content of its message at one moment.
+[Footnote: These statements of difference are, of course,
+relative; for music can on occasions dispense with extension of
+time, and painting make use of it.] Music, which is outwardly
+unfettered by nature, needs no definite form for its expression.
+
+[Footnote: How miserably music fails when attempting to express
+material appearances is proved by the affected absurdity of
+programme music. Quite lately such experiments have been made.
+The imitation in sound of croaking frogs, of farmyard noises, of
+household duties, makes an excellent music hall turn and is
+amusing enough. But in serious music such attempts are merely
+warnings against any imitation of nature. Nature has her own
+language, and a powerful one; this language cannot be imitated.
+The sound of a farmyard in music is never successfully
+reproduced, and is unnecessary waste of time. The Stimmung of
+nature can be imparted by every art, not, however, by imitation,
+but by the artistic divination of its inner spirit.]
+
+Painting today is almost exclusively concerned with the
+reproduction of natural forms and phenomena. Her business is now
+to test her strength and methods, to know herself as music has
+done for a long time, and then to use her powers to a truly
+artistic end.
+
+And 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.
+
+
+
+PART II: ABOUT PAINTING
+
+
+
+V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING OF COLOUR
+
+
+
+To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours,
+produces a dual result. In the first place one receives a PURELY
+PHYSICAL IMPRESSION, one of pleasure and contentment at the
+varied and beautiful colours. The eye is either warmed or else
+soothed and cooled. But these physical sensations can only be of
+short duration. They are merely superficial and leave no lasting
+impression, for the soul is unaffected. But although the effect
+of the colours is forgotten when the eye is turned away, the
+superficial impression of varied colour may be the starting point
+of a whole chain of related sensations.
+
+On the average man only the impressions caused by very familiar
+objects, will be purely superficial. A first encounter with any
+new phenomenon exercises immediately an impression on the soul.
+This is the experience of the child discovering the world, to
+whom every object is new. He sees a light, wishes to take hold of
+it, burns his finger and feels henceforward a proper respect for
+flame. But later he learns that light has a friendly as well as
+an unfriendly side, that it drives away the darkness, makes the
+day longer, is essential to warmth, cooking, play-acting. From
+the mass of these discoveries is composed a knowledge of light,
+which is indelibly fixed in his mind. The strong, intensive
+interest disappears and the various properties of flame are
+balanced against each other. In this way the whole world becomes
+gradually disenchanted. It is realized that trees give shade,
+that horses run fast and motor-cars still faster, that dogs bite,
+that the figure seen in a mirror is not a real human being.
+
+As the man develops, the circle of these experiences caused by
+different beings and objects, grows ever wider. They acquire an
+inner meaning and eventually a spiritual harmony. It is the same
+with colour, which makes only a momentary and superficial
+impression on a soul but slightly developed in sensitiveness. But
+even this superficial impression varies in quality. The eye is
+strongly attracted by light, clear colours, and still more
+strongly attracted by those colours which are warm as well as
+clear; vermilion has the charm of flame, which has always
+attracted human beings. Keen lemon-yellow hurts the eye in time
+as a prolonged and shrill trumpet-note the ear, and the gazer
+turns away to seek relief in blue or green.
+
+But to a more sensitive soul the effect of colours is deeper and
+intensely moving. And so we come to the second main result of
+looking at colours: THEIR PSYCHIC EFFECT. They produce a
+corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step
+towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical
+impression is of importance.
+
+Whether the psychic effect of colour is a direct one, as these last few
+lines imply, or whether it is the outcome of association, is perhaps
+open to question. The soul being one with the body, the former may well
+experience a psychic shock, caused by association acting on the latter.
+For example, red may cause a sensation analogous to that caused by
+flame, because red is the colour of flame. A warm red will prove
+exciting, another shade of red will cause pain or disgust through
+association with running blood. In these cases colour awakens a
+corresponding physical sensation, which undoubtedly works upon the soul.
+
+If this were always the case, it would be easy to define by
+association the effects of colour upon other senses than that of
+sight. One might say that keen yellow looks sour, because it
+recalls the taste of a lemon.
+
+But such definitions are not universally possible. There are many
+examples of colour working which refuse to be so classified. A
+Dresden doctor relates of one of his patients, whom he designates
+as an "exceptionally sensitive person," that he could not eat a
+certain sauce without tasting "blue," i.e. without experiencing a
+feeling of seeing a blue color. [Footnote: Dr. Freudenberg.
+"Spaltung der Personlichkeit" (Ubersinnliche Welt. 1908. No. 2,
+p. 64-65). The author also discusses the hearing of colour, and
+says that here also no rules can be laid down. But cf. L.
+Sabanejeff in "Musik," Moscow, 1911, No. 9, where the imminent
+possibility of laying down a law is clearly hinted at.] It would
+be possible to suggest, by way of explanation of this, that in
+highly sensitive people, the way to the soul is so direct and the
+soul itself so impressionable, that any impression of taste
+communicates itself immediately to the soul, and thence to the
+other organs of sense (in this case, the eyes). This would imply
+an echo or reverberation, such as occurs sometimes in musical
+instruments which, without being touched, sound in harmony with
+some other instrument struck at the moment.
+
+But not only with taste has sight been known to work in harmony.
+Many colours have been described as rough or sticky, others as
+smooth and uniform, so that one feels inclined to stroke them
+(e.g., dark ultramarine, chromic oxide green, and rose madder).
+Equally the distinction between warm and cold colours belongs to
+this connection. Some colours appear soft (rose madder), others
+hard (cobalt green, blue-green oxide), so that even fresh from
+the tube they seem to be dry.
+
+The expression "scented colours" is frequently met with. And
+finally the sound of colours is so definite that it would be hard
+to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass
+notes, or dark lake in the treble.
+
+[Footnote: Much theory and practice have been devoted to this
+question. People have sought to paint in counterpoint. Also
+unmusical children have been successfully helped to play the
+piano by quoting a parallel in colour (e.g., of flowers). On
+these lines Frau A. Sacharjin-Unkowsky has worked for several
+years and has evolved a method of "so describing sounds by
+natural colours, and colours by natural sounds, that colour could
+be heard and sound seen." The system has proved successful for
+several years both in the inventor's own school and the
+Conservatoire at St. Petersburg. Finally Scriabin, on more
+spiritual lines, has paralleled sound and colours in a chart not
+unlike that of Frau Unkowsky. In "Prometheus" he has given
+convincing proof of his theories. (His chart appeared in "Musik,"
+Moscow, 1911, No. 9.)]
+
+[Footnote: The converse question, i.e. the colour of sound, was
+touched upon by Mallarme and systematized by his disciple Rene
+Ghil, whose book, Traite du Verbe, gives the rules for
+"l'instrumentation verbale."--M.T.H.S.]
+
+The explanation by association will not suffice us in many, and
+the most important cases. Those who have heard of chromotherapy
+will know that coloured light can exercise very definite
+influences on the whole body. Attempts have been made with
+different colours in the treatment of various nervous ailments.
+They have shown that red light stimulates and excites the heart,
+while blue light can cause temporary paralysis. But when the
+experiments come to be tried on animals and even plants, the
+association theory falls to the ground. So one is bound to admit
+that the question is at present unexplored, but that colour can
+exercise enormous influence over the body as a physical organism.
+
+No more sufficient, in the psychic sphere, is the theory of
+association. Generally speaking, 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 hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause
+vibrations in the soul.
+
+IT IS EVIDENT THEREFORE THAT COLOUR HARMONY MUST REST ONLY ON A
+CORRESPONDING VIBRATION IN THE HUMAN SOUL; AND THIS IS ONE OF THE
+GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF THE INNER NEED.
+
+[Footnote: The phrase "inner need" (innere Notwendigkeit) means
+primarily the impulse felt by the artist for spiritual
+expression. Kandinsky is apt, however, to use the phrase
+sometimes to mean not only the hunger for spiritual expression,
+but also the actual expression itself.--M.T.H.S.]
+
+
+
+VI. THE LANGUAGE OF FORM AND COLOUR
+
+
+
+The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with
+concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and
+spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his
+affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the
+music. (The Merchant of Venice, Act v, Scene I.)
+
+Musical sound acts directly on the soul and finds an echo there because,
+though to varying extents, music is innate in man.
+
+[Footnote: Cf. E. Jacques-Dalcroze in The Eurhythmics of
+Jacques-Dalcroze. London, Constable.--M.T.H.S.]
+
+"Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and
+plenty" (Delacroix). [Footnote: Cf. Paul Signac, D'Eugene Delacroix au
+Neo-Impressionisme. Paris. Floury. Also compare an interesting article
+by K. Schettler: "Notizen uber die Farbe." (Decorative Kunst, 1901,
+February).]
+
+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. She stands, in fact, at the first stage of the
+road by which she will, according to her own possibilities, make
+art an abstraction of thought and arrive finally at purely
+artistic composition. [Footnote: By "Komposition" Kandinsky here
+means, of course, an artistic creation. He is not referring to
+the arrangement of the objects in a picture.--M.T.H.S.]
+
+Painting has two weapons at her disposal:
+
+     1. Colour.
+     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.
+
+Colour cannot stand alone; it cannot dispense with boundaries of some
+kind. [Footnote: Cf. A. Wallace Rimington. Colour music (OP. CIT.) where
+experiments are recounted with a colour organ, which gives symphonies of
+rapidly changing colour without boundaries--except the unavoidable ones
+of the white curtain on which the colours are reflected.--M.T.H.S.] A
+never-ending extent of red can only be seen in the mind; when the word
+red is heard, the colour 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. I say
+"indefinite," because in itself it has no suggestion of warmth or cold,
+such attributes having to be imagined for it afterwards, as
+modifications of the original "redness." I say "definite," because the
+spiritual harmony exists without any need for such subsequent attributes
+of warmth or cold. 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, played alone or with other instruments, in the
+hands of a postilion, a huntsman, a soldier, or a professional musician.
+
+But when red is presented in a material form (as in painting) it
+must possess (1) some definite shade of the many shades of red
+that exist and (2) a limited surface, divided off from the other
+colours, which are undoubtedly there. The first of these
+conditions (the subjective) is affected by the second (the
+objective), for the neighbouring colours affect the shade of red.
+
+This essential connection between colour and form brings us to
+the question of the influences of form on colour. Form alone,
+even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of
+inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration
+of its being 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 circle, a square, or any conceivable
+geometrical figure. [Footnote: The angle at which the triangle
+stands, and whether it is stationary or moving, are of importance
+to its spiritual value. This fact is specially worthy of the
+painter's consideration.] As above, with the red, we have here a
+subjective substance in an objective shell.
+
+The mutual influence of form and colour 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.
+
+It is evident that many colours are hampered and even nullified
+in effect by many forms. On the whole, keen colours are well
+suited by sharp forms (e.g., a yellow triangle), and soft, deep
+colours by round forms (e.g., a blue circle). But it must be
+remembered that an unsuitable combination of form and colour is
+not necessarily discordant, but may, with manipulation, show the
+way to fresh possibilities of harmony.
+
+Since colours 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 colour. That is its outer meaning. But it has
+also an inner meaning, of varying intensity, [Footnote: It is
+never literally true that any form is meaningless and "says
+nothing." Every form in the world says something. But its message
+often fails to reach us, and even if it does, full understanding
+is often withheld from us.] and, properly speaking, FORM IS THE
+OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF THIS INNER MEANING. To use once more the
+metaphor of the piano--the artist is the hand which, by playing
+on this or that key (i.e., form), affects the human soul in this
+or that way. 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.
+
+[Footnote: The phrase "full expression" must be clearly
+understood. Form often is most expressive when least coherent. It
+is often most expressive when outwardly most imperfect, perhaps
+only a stroke, a mere hint of outer meaning.]
+
+The outer task may assume many different shapes; but it will
+never fail in one of two purposes: (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.
+
+Between these two extremes lie the innumerable forms in which
+both elements exist; with a preponderance either of the abstract
+or the material. These intermediate forms are, at present, the
+store on which the artist has to draw. Purely abstract forms are
+beyond the reach of the artist at present; they are too
+indefinite for him. To limit himself to the purely indefinite
+would be to rob himself of possibilities, to exclude the human
+element and therefore to weaken his power of expression.
+
+On the other hand, there exists equally no purely material form.
+A material object cannot be absolutely reproduced. For good or
+evil, the artist has eyes and hands, which are perhaps more
+artistic than his intentions and refuse to aim at photography
+alone. Many genuine artists, who cannot be content with a mere
+inventory of material objects, seek to express the objects by
+what was once called "idealization," then "selection," and which
+tomorrow will again be called something different.
+
+[Footnote: The motive of idealization is so to beautify the organic form
+as to bring out its harmony and rouse poetic feeling. "Selection" aims
+not so much at beautification as at emphasizing the character of the
+object, by the omission of non-essentials. The desire of the future will
+be purely the expression of the inner meaning. The organic form no
+longer serves as direct object, but as the human words in which a divine
+message must be written, in order for it to be comprehensible to human
+minds.]
+
+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" colouring to purely artistic aims. And that brings us
+to the question of composition. [Footnote: Here Kandinsky means
+arrangement of the picture.--M.T.H.S.]
+
+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. [Footnote: The general composition will naturally
+include many little compositions which may be antagonistic to
+each other, though helping--perhaps by their very antagonism--the
+harmony of the whole. These little compositions have themselves
+subdivisions of varied inner meanings.] Many objects have to be
+considered in the light of the whole, and so ordered as to suit
+this whole. Singly they will have little meaning, being of
+importance only in so far as they help the general effect. These
+single objects must be fashioned in one way only; and this, not
+because their own inner meaning demands that particular
+fashioning, but entirely because they have to serve as building
+material for the whole composition. [Footnote: A good example is
+Cezanne's "Bathing Women," which is built in the form of a
+triangle. Such building is an old principle, which was being
+abandoned only because academic usage had made it lifeless. But
+Cezanne has given it new life. He does not use it to harmonize
+his groups, but for purely artistic purposes. He distorts the
+human figure with perfect justification. Not only must the whole
+figure follow the lines of the triangle, but each limb must grow
+narrower from bottom to top. Raphael's "Holy Family" is an
+example of triangular composition used only for the harmonizing
+of the group, and without any mystical motive.]
+
+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.
+
+But the organic form possesses all the same an inner harmony of
+its own, which may be either the same as that of its abstract
+parallel (thus producing a simple combination of the two
+elements) or totally different (in which case the combination may
+be unavoidably discordant). However diminished in importance the
+organic form may be, its inner note will always be heard; and for
+this reason the choice of material objects is an important one.
+The spiritual accord of the organic with the abstract element may
+strengthen the appeal of the latter (as much by contrast as by
+similarity) or may destroy it.
+
+Suppose a rhomboidal composition, made up of a number of human
+figures. The artist asks himself: Are these human figures an
+absolute necessity to the composition, or should they be replaced
+by other forms, and that without affecting the fundamental
+harmony of the whole? If the answer is "Yes," we have a case in
+which the material appeal directly weakens the abstract appeal.
+The human form must either be replaced by another object which,
+whether by similarity or contrast, will strengthen the abstract
+appeal, or must remain a purely non-material symbol. [Footnote:
+Cf. Translator's Introduction, pp. xviii and xx.--M.T.H.S.]
+
+Once more the metaphor of the piano. For "colour" or "form"
+substitute "object." 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 ever-changing surroundings of man,
+sets in vibration the strings of the piano (the soul) by
+manipulation of the keys (the various objects with their several
+appeals).
+
+The impressions we receive, which often appear merely chaotic,
+consist of three elements: the impression of the colour of the
+object, of its form, and of its combined colour and form, i.e. of
+the object itself.
+
+At this point the individuality of the artist comes to the front
+and disposes, as he wills, these three elements. IT IS CLEAR,
+THEREFORE, THAT THE CHOICE OF OBJECT (i.e. OF ONE OF THE ELEMENTS
+IN THE HARMONY OF FORM) MUST BE DECIDED ONLY BY A CORRESPONDING
+VIBRATION IN THE HUMAN SOUL; AND THIS IS A THIRD GUIDING
+PRINCIPLE OF THE INNER NEED.
+
+The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its
+appeal. In any composition the material side may be more or less
+omitted in proportion as the forms used are more or less
+material, and for them substituted pure abstractions, or largely
+dematerialized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted
+forms, the deeper and more confidently will he advance into the
+kingdom of the abstract. And after him will follow the gazer at
+his pictures, who also will have gradually acquired a greater
+familiarity with the language of that kingdom.
+
+Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint
+solely in abstractions? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of
+the material and the non-material shows us the answer to this
+question. As every word spoken rouses an inner vibration, so
+likewise does every object represented. To deprive oneself of
+this possibility is to limit one's powers of expression. That is
+at any rate the case at present. But besides this answer to the
+question, there is another, and one which art can always employ
+to any question beginning with "must": There is no "must" in art,
+because art is free.
+
+With regard to the second problem of composition, the creation of
+the single elements which are to compose the whole, it must be
+remembered that the same form in the same circumstances will
+always have the same inner appeal. Only the circumstances are
+constantly varying. It results that: (1) The ideal harmony alters
+according to the relation to other forms of the form which causes
+it. (2) Even in similar relationship a slight approach to or
+withdrawal from other forms may affect the harmony. [Footnote:
+This is what is meant by "an appeal of motion." For example, the
+appeal of an upright triangle is more steadfast and quiet than
+that of one set obliquely on its side.] Nothing is absolute.
+Form-composition rests on a relative basis, depending on (1) the
+alterations in the mutual relations of forms one to another, (2)
+alterations in each individual form, down to the very smallest.
+Every form is as sensitive as a puff of smoke, the slightest
+breath will alter it completely. This extreme mobility makes it
+easier to obtain similar harmonies from the use of different
+forms, than from a repetition of the same one; though of course
+an exact replica of a spiritual harmony can never be produced. So
+long as we are susceptible only to the appeal of a whole
+composition, this fact is of mainly theoretical importance. But
+when we become more sensitive by a constant use of abstract forms
+(which have no material interpretation) it will become of great
+practical significance. And so as art becomes more difficult, its
+wealth of expression in form becomes greater and greater. At the
+same time the question of distortion in drawing falls out and is
+replaced by the question how far the inner appeal of the
+particular form is veiled or given full expression. And once more
+the possibilities are extended, for combinations of veiled and
+fully expressed appeals suggest new LEITMOTIVEN in composition.
+
+Without such development as this, form-composition is impossible.
+To anyone who cannot experience the inner appeal of form (whether
+material or abstract) such composition can never be other than
+meaningless. Apparently aimless alterations in form-arrangement
+will make art seem merely a game. So once more we are faced with
+the same principle, which is to set art free, the principle of
+the inner need.
+
+When features or limbs for artistic reasons are changed or
+distorted, men reject the artistic problem and fall back on the
+secondary question of anatomy. But, on our argument, this
+secondary consideration does not appear, only the real, artistic
+question remaining. These apparently irresponsible, but really
+well-reasoned alterations in form provide one of the storehouses
+of artistic possibilities.
+
+The adaptability of forms, their organic but inward variations,
+their motion in the picture, their inclination to material or
+abstract, their mutual relations, either individually or as parts
+of a whole; further, the concord or discord of the various
+elements of a picture, the handling of groups, the combinations
+of veiled and openly expressed appeals, the use of rhythmical or
+unrhythmical, of geometrical or non-geometrical forms, their
+contiguity or separation--all these things are the material for
+counterpoint in painting.
+
+But so long as colour is excluded, such counterpoint is confined
+to black and white. Colour 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)--dictated by the period
+and particular country to which the artist belongs (it is
+doubtful how long the latter distinction will continue to exist).
+(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).
+
+A full understanding of the first two elements is necessary for a
+realization of the third. But he who has this realization will
+recognize that a rudely carved Indian column is an expression of
+the same spirit as actuates any real work of art of today.
+
+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.
+
+Only the third element--that of pure artistry--will remain for
+ever. An Egyptian carving speaks to us today more subtly than it
+did to its chronological contemporaries; for they judged it with
+the hampering knowledge of period and personality. But we can
+judge purely as an expression of the eternal artistry.
+
+Similarly--the greater the part played in a modern work of art by
+the two elements of style and personality, the better will it 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 before the third
+element can be received with understanding. But the artist in
+whose work this third element predominates is the really great
+artist.
+
+Because the elements of style and personality make up what is
+called the periodic characteristics of any work of art, the
+"development" of artistic forms must depend on their separation
+from the element of pure artistry, which knows neither period nor
+nationality. But as style and personality create in every epoch
+certain definite forms, which, for all their superficial
+differences, are really closely related, these forms can be
+spoken of as one side of art--the SUBJECTIVE. 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.
+
+The inevitable desire for outward expression of the OBJECTIVE
+element is the impulse here defined as the "inner need." The
+forms it borrows change from day to day, and, as it continually
+advances, what is today a phrase of inner harmony becomes
+tomorrow one of outer harmony. It is clear, therefore, that the
+inner spirit of art only uses the outer form of any particular
+period as a stepping-stone to further expression.
+
+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.
+
+Because the objective is forever exchanging the subjective
+expression of today for that of tomorrow, each new extension of
+liberty in the use of outer form is hailed as the last and
+supreme. At present we say that an artist can use any form he
+wishes, so long as he remains in touch with nature. But this
+limitation, like all its predecessors, is only temporary. From
+the point of view of the inner need, no limitation must be made.
+The artist may use any form which his expression demands; for his
+inner impulse must find suitable outward expression.
+
+So we see that a deliberate search for personality and "style" is
+not only impossible, but comparatively unimportant. The close
+relationship of art throughout the ages, is not a relationship in
+outward form but in inner meaning. And therefore the talk of
+schools, of lines of "development," of "principles of art," etc.,
+is based on misunderstanding and can only lead to confusion.
+
+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.
+
+It is impossible to theorize about this ideal of art. In real art
+theory does not precede practice, but follows her. Everything is,
+at first, a matter of feeling. Any theoretical scheme will be
+lacking in the essential of creation--the inner desire for
+expression--which cannot be determined. Neither the quality of
+the inner need, nor its subjective form, can be measured nor
+weighed.
+
+[Footnote: The many-sided genius of Leonardo devised a system of
+little spoons with which different colours were to be used, thus
+creating a kind of mechanical harmony. One of his pupils, after
+trying in vain to use this system, in despair asked one of his
+colleagues how the master himself used the invention. The
+colleague replied: "The master never uses it at all."
+(Mereschowski, LEONARDO DA VINCI).]
+
+Such a grammar of painting can only be temporarily guessed at,
+and should it ever be achieved, it will be not so much according
+to physical rules (which have so often been tried and which today
+the Cubists are trying) as according to the rules of the inner
+need, which are of the soul.
+
+The inner need is the basic alike of small and great problems in
+painting. We are seeking today for the road which is to lead us
+away from the outer to the inner basis.
+
+[Footnote: The term "outer," here used, must not be confused with
+the term "material" used previously. I am using the former to
+mean "outer need," which 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." But "ugly" itself is a conventional term, and
+only means "spiritually unsympathetic," being applied to some
+expression of an inner need, either outgrown or not yet attained.
+But everything which adequately expresses the inner need is
+beautiful.]
+
+The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by
+frequent exercise. Just 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.
+
+The starting point is the study of colour and its effects on men.
+
+There is no need to engage in the finer shades of complicated
+colour, but rather at first to consider only the direct use of
+simple colours.
+
+To begin with, let us test the working on ourselves of individual
+colours, and so make a simple chart, which will facilitate the
+consideration of the whole question.
+
+Two great divisions of colour occur to the mind at the outset:
+into warm and cold, and into light and dark. To each colour there
+are therefore four shades of appeal--warm and light or warm and
+dark, or cold and light or cold and dark.
+
+Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a colour means an approach
+respectively to yellow or to blue. This distinction is, so to
+speak, on one basis, the colour having a constant fundamental
+appeal, but assuming either a more material or more non-material
+quality. The movement is an horizontal one, the warm colours
+approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him.
+
+The colours, which cause in another colour this horizontal
+movement, while they are themselves affected by it, have another
+movement of their own, which acts with a violent separative
+force. This is, therefore, the first antithesis in the inner
+appeal, and the inclination of the colour to yellow or to blue,
+is of tremendous importance.
+
+The second antithesis is between white and black; i.e., the
+inclination to light or dark caused by the pair of colours just
+mentioned. These colours have once more their peculiar movement
+to and from the spectator, but in a more rigid form (see Fig. 1).
+
+
+
+FIGURE I
+
+
+
+ First Pair of antitheses.           (inner appeal acting on
+         A and B.                           the spirit)
+
+
+A.       Warm               Cold
+        Yellow              Blue      = First antithesis
+
+Two movements:
+
+        (i) horizontal
+
+Towards the spectator <-----<<< >>>-----> Away from the spectator
+     (bodily)                                  (spiritual)
+
+                        Yellow      Blue
+
+      (ii)          Ex-         and        concentric
+
+
+B.  Light                      Dark
+    White                      Black       = Second Antithesis
+
+
+Two movements:
+
+     (i) discordant
+
+Eternal discord, but with                Absolute discord, devoid
+ possibilities for the    White   Black  of possibilities for the
+    future (birth)                         future (death)
+
+    (ii) ex-and concentric, as in case of yellow and blue, but
+         more rigid.
+
+
+
+Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the first
+antithesis--an ex-and concentric movement. If two circles are
+drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief
+concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out
+from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The
+blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail
+retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator.
+[Footnote: These statements have no scientific basis, but are
+founded purely on spiritual experience.]
+
+In the case of light and dark colours the movement is emphasized.
+That of the yellow increases with an admixture of white, i.e., as
+it becomes lighter. That of the blue increases with an admixture
+of black, i.e., as it becomes darker. This means that there can
+never be a dark-coloured yellow. The relationship between white
+and yellow is as close as between black and blue, for blue can be
+so dark as to border on black. Besides this physical
+relationship, is also a spiritual one (between yellow and white
+on one side, between blue and black on the other) which marks a
+strong separation between the two pairs.
+
+An attempt to make yellow colder produces a green tint and checks
+both the horizontal and excentric movement. The colour becomes
+sickly and unreal. The blue by its contrary movement acts as a
+brake on the yellow, and is hindered in its own movement, till
+the two together become stationary, and the result is green.
+Similarly a mixture of black and white produces gray, which is
+motionless and spiritually very similar to green.
+
+But while green, yellow, and blue are potentially active, though
+temporarily paralysed, in gray there is no possibility of
+movement, because gray consists of two colours that have no
+active force, for they stand the, one in motionless discord, the
+other in a motionless negation, even of discord, like an endless
+wall or a bottomless pit.
+
+Because the component colours of green are active and have a
+movement of their own, it is possible, on the basis of this
+movement, to reckon their spiritual appeal.
+
+The first movement of yellow, that of approach to the spectator
+(which can be increased by an intensification of the yellow), and
+also the second movement, that of over-spreading the boundaries,
+have a material parallel in the human energy which assails every
+obstacle blindly, and bursts forth aimlessly in every direction.
+
+Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometrical form, has a
+disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insistent,
+aggressive character. [Footnote: It is worth noting that the
+sour-tasting lemon and shrill-singing canary are both yellow.]
+The intensification of the yellow increases the painful
+shrillness of its note.
+
+[Footnote: Any parallel between colour and music can only be
+relative. Just as a violin can give various shades of tone,--so
+yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.
+But in making such parallels, I am assuming in each case a pure
+tone of colour or sound, unvaried by vibration or dampers, etc.]
+
+Yellow is the typically earthly colour. It can never have
+profound meaning. An intermixture of blue makes it a sickly
+colour. It may be paralleled in human nature, with madness, not
+with melancholy or hypochondriacal mania, but rather with violent
+raving lunacy.
+
+The power of profound meaning is found in blue, and first in its
+physical movements (1) of retreat from the spectator, (2) of
+turning in upon its own centre. The inclination of blue to depth
+is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is
+deeper.
+
+Blue is the typical heavenly colour.
+
+[Footnote: ...The halos are golden for emperors and prophets
+(i.e. for mortals), and sky-blue for symbolic figures (i.e.
+spiritual beings); (Kondakoff, Histoire de l'An Byzantine
+consideree principalement dans les miniatures, vol. ii, p. 382,
+Paris, 1886-91).]
+
+The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest.
+
+[Footnote: Supernatural rest, not the earthly contentment of
+green. The way to the supernatural lies through the natural. And
+we mortals passing from the earthly yellow to the heavenly blue
+must pass through green.]
+
+When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly
+human.
+
+[Footnote: As an echo of grief violet stand to blue as does green
+in its production of rest.]
+
+When it rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its
+appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music a light
+blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello; a still darker a
+thunderous double bass; and the darkest blue of all-an organ.
+
+A well-balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The
+horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the
+centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore
+motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but
+by the world. Green is the most restful colour that exists. On
+exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after
+a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green
+are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the
+active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the
+hierarchy of colours green is the "bourgeoisie"-self-satisfied,
+immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when
+nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive
+energy of spring (cf. Fig. 2).
+
+Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a
+corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green
+keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former
+increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the
+inclination to depth. In music the absolute green is represented
+by the placid, middle notes of a violin.
+
+Black and white have already been discussed in general terms.
+More particularly speaking, white, although often considered as
+no colour (a theory largely due to the Impressionists, who saw no
+white in nature as a symbol of a world from which all colour as a
+definite attribute has disappeared).
+
+[Footnote: Van Gogh, in his letters, asks whether he may not
+paint a white wall dead white. This question offers no difficulty
+to the non-representative artist who is concerned only with the
+inner harmony of colour. But to the impressionist-realist it
+seems a bold liberty to take with nature. To him it seems as
+outrageous as his own change from brown shadows to blue seemed to
+his contemporaries. Van Gogh's question marks a transition from
+Impressionism to an art of spiritual harmony, as the coming of
+the blue shadow marked a transition from academism to
+Impressionism. (Cf. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. Constable,
+London.)]
+
+This world is too far above us for its harmony to touch our
+souls. A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds its
+life from our understanding. White, therefore, has this harmony
+of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in
+music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead
+silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the
+appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in
+the ice age.
+
+A totally dead silence, on the other hand, a silence with no
+possibilities, has the inner harmony of black. In music it is
+represented by one of those profound and final pauses, after
+which any continuation of the melody seems the dawn of another
+world. Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral
+pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is
+the silence of death. Outwardly black is the colour with least
+harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the
+minutest shades of other colours stand clearly forward. It
+differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every
+colour is in discord, or even mute altogether.
+
+[Footnote: E.g. vermilion rings dull and muddy against white, but
+against black with clear strength. Light yellow against white is
+weak, against black pure and brilliant.]
+
+Not without reason is white taken as symbolizing joy and spotless
+purity, and black grief and death. A blend of black and white
+produces gray which, as has been said, is silent and motionless,
+being composed of two inactive colours, its restfulness having
+none of the potential activity of green. A similar gray is
+produced by a mixture of green and red, a spiritual blend of
+passivity and glowing warmth.
+
+[Footnote: Gray = immobility and rest. Delacroix sought to
+express rest by a mixture of green and red (cf. Signac, sup.
+cit.).]
+
+The unbounded warmth of red has not the irresponsible appeal of
+yellow, but rings inwardly with a determined and powerful
+intensity. It glows in itself, maturely, and does not distribute
+its vigour aimlessly (see Fig. 2).
+
+The varied powers of red are very striking. By a skillful use of
+it in its different shades, its fundamental tone may be made warm
+or cold.
+
+[Footnote: Of course every colour can be to some extent varied
+between warm and cold, but no colour has so extensive a scale of
+varieties as red.]
+
+Light warm red has a certain similarity to medium yellow, alike
+in texture and appeal, and gives a feeling of strength, vigour,
+determination, triumph. In music, it is a sound of trumpets,
+strong, harsh, and ringing.
+
+Vermilion is a red with a feeling of sharpness, like glowing
+steel which can be cooled by water. Vermilion is quenched by
+blue, for it can support no mixture with a cold colour. More
+accurately speaking, such a mixture produces what is called a
+dirty colour, scorned by painters of today. But "dirt" as a
+material object has its own inner appeal, and therefore to avoid
+it in painting, is as unjust and narrow as was the cry of
+yesterday for pure colour. At the call of the inner need that
+which is outwardly foul may be inwardly pure, and vice versa.
+
+The two shades of red just discussed are similar to yellow,
+except that they reach out less to the spectator. The glow of red
+is within itself. For this reason it is a colour more beloved
+than yellow, being frequently used in primitive and traditional
+decoration, and also in peasant costumes, because in the open air
+the harmony of red and green is very beautiful. Taken by itself
+this red is material, and, like yellow, has no very deep appeal.
+Only when combined with something nobler does it acquire this
+deep appeal. It is dangerous to seek to deepen red by an
+admixture of black, for black quenches the glow, or at least
+reduces it considerably.
+
+But there remains brown, unemotional, disinclined for movement.
+An intermixture of red is outwardly barely audible, but there
+rings out a powerful inner harmony. Skillful blending can produce
+an inner appeal of extraordinary, indescribable beauty. The
+vermilion now rings like a great trumpet, or thunders like a
+drum.
+
+Cool red (madder) like any other fundamentally cold colour, can
+be deepened--especially by an intermixture of azure. The
+character of the colour changes; the inward glow increases, the
+active element gradually disappears. But this active element is
+never so wholly absent as in deep green. There always remains a
+hint of renewed vigour, somewhere out of sight, waiting for a
+certain moment to burst forth afresh. In this lies the great
+difference between a deepened red and a deepened blue, because in
+red there is always a trace of the material. A parallel in music
+are the sad, middle tones of a cello. A cold, light red contains
+a very distinct bodily or material element, but it is always
+pure, like the fresh beauty of the face of a young girl. The
+singing notes of a violin express this exactly in music.
+
+Warm red, intensified by a suitable yellow, is orange. This blend
+brings red almost to the point of spreading out towards the
+spectator. But the element of red is always sufficiently strong
+to keep the colour from flippancy. Orange is like a man,
+convinced of his own powers. Its note is that of the angelus, or
+of an old violin.
+
+Just as orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow, so
+violet is red withdrawn from humanity by blue. But the red in
+violet must be cold, for the spiritual need does not allow of a
+mixture of warm red with cold blue.
+
+Violet is therefore both in the physical and spiritual sense a
+cooled red. It is consequently rather sad and ailing. It is worn
+by old women, and in China as a sign of mourning. In music it is
+an English horn, or the deep notes of wood instruments (e.g. a
+bassoon).
+
+[Footnote: Among artists one often hears the question, "How are
+you?" answered gloomily by the words "Feeling very violet."]
+
+The two last mentioned colours (orange and violet) are the fourth
+and last pair of antitheses of the primitive colours. They stand
+to each other in the same relation as the third antitheses--green
+and red--i.e., as complementary colours (see Fig. 2).
+
+
+
+FIGURE II
+
+
+
+Second Pair of antitheses    (physical appeal of complementary
+       C and D                            colours)
+
+C.       Red            Green       = Third antithesis
+       Movement                 of the spiritually extinguished
+                                         First antithesis
+
+
+Motion within itself   [CIRCLE]  = Potentiality of motion
+                                 = Motionlessness
+
+                          Red
+
+Ex-and concentric movements are absent
+                     In optical blend    = Gray
+In mechanical blend of white and black   = Gray
+
+D.      Orange            Violet           = Fourth antithesis
+
+Arise out of the first antithesis from:
+
+1. Active element of the yellow in red   = Orange
+2. Passive element of the blue in red    = Violet
+
+<---Orange---Yellow<--<--<--Red-->-->-->Blue---Violet--->
+
+     In excentric      Motion within      In Concentric
+       direction          itself             direction
+
+
+
+As in a great circle, a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol
+of eternity, of something without end) the six colours appear
+that make up the three main antitheses. And to right and left
+stand the two great possibilities of silence--death and birth
+(see Fig. 3).
+
+
+
+FIGURE III.
+
+
+                      A
+                    Yellow
+                   /      \
+                  /        \
+                 /          \
+                D            C
+   B          Orange       Green        B
+ White          |            |        Black
+                |            |
+                |            |
+                C            D
+               Red         Violet
+                 \          /
+                  \        /
+                   \  A   /
+                     Blue
+
+
+The antitheses as a circle between two poles, i.e., the life of
+colours between birth and death.
+
+(The capital letters designate the pairs of antitheses.)
+
+
+
+It is clear that all I have said of these simple colours is very
+provisional and general, and so also are those feelings (joy,
+grief, etc.) which have been quoted as parallels of the colours.
+For these feelings are only the material expressions of the soul.
+Shades of colour, like those of sound, are of a much finer
+texture and awake in the soul emotions too fine to be expressed
+in words. Certainly each tone will find some probable expression
+in words, but it will always be incomplete, and that part which
+the word fails to express will not be unimportant but rather the
+very kernel of its existence. For this reason words are, and will
+always remain, only hints, mere suggestions of colours. In this
+impossibility of expressing colour in words with the consequent
+need for some other mode of expression lies the opportunity of
+the art of the future. In this art among innumerable rich and
+varied combinations there is one which is founded on firm fact,
+and that is as follows. The actual expression of colour can be
+achieved simultaneously by several forms of art, each art playing
+its separate part, and producing a whole which exceeds in
+richness and force any expression attainable by one art alone.
+The immense possibilities of depth and strength to be gained by
+combination or by discord between the various arts can be easily
+realized.
+
+It is often said that admission of the possibility of one art
+helping another amounts to a denial of the necessary differences
+between the arts. This is, however, not the case. As has been
+said, an absolutely similar inner appeal cannot be achieved by
+two different arts. Even if it were possible the second version
+would differ at least outwardly. But suppose this were not the
+case, that is to say, suppose a repetition of the same appeal
+exactly alike both outwardly and inwardly could be achieved by
+different arts, such repetition would not be merely superfluous.
+To begin with, different people find sympathy in different forms
+of art (alike on the active and passive side among the creators
+or the receivers of the appeal); but further and more important,
+repetition of the same appeal thickens the spiritual atmosphere
+which is necessary for the maturing of the finest feelings, in
+the same way as the hot air of a greenhouse is necessary for the
+ripening of certain fruit. An example of this is the case of the
+individual who receives a powerful impression from constantly
+repeated actions, thoughts or feelings, although if they came
+singly they might have passed by unnoticed. [Footnote: This idea
+forms, of course, the fundamental reason for advertisement.] We
+must not, however, apply this rule only to the simple examples of
+the spiritual atmosphere. For this atmosphere is like air, which
+can be either pure or filled with various alien elements. Not
+only visible actions, thoughts and feelings, with outward
+expression, make up this atmosphere, but secret happenings of
+which no one knows, unspoken thoughts, hidden feelings are also
+elements in it. Suicide, murder, violence, low and unworthy
+thoughts, hate, hostility, egotism, envy, narrow "patriotism,"
+partisanship, are elements in the spiritual atmosphere.
+
+[Footnote: Epidemics of suicide or of violent warlike feeling,
+etc., are products of this impure atmosphere.]
+
+And conversely, self-sacrifice, mutual help, lofty thoughts,
+love, un-selfishness, joy in the success of others, humanity,
+justness, are the elements which slay those already enumerated as
+the sun slays the microbes, and restore the atmosphere to purity.
+
+[Footnote: These elements likewise have their historical
+periods.]
+
+The second and more complicated form of repetition is that in
+which several different elements make mutual use of different
+forms. In our case these elements are the different arts summed
+up in the art of the future. And this form of repetition is even
+more powerful, for the different natures of men respond to the
+different elements in the combination. For one the musical form
+is the most moving and impressive; for another the pictorial, for
+the third the literary, and so on. There reside, therefore, in
+arts which are outwardly different, hidden forces equally
+different, so that they may all work in one man towards a single
+result, even though each art may be working in isolation.
+
+This sharply defined working of individual colours is the basis
+on which various values can be built up in harmony. Pictures will
+come to be painted--veritable artistic arrangements, planned in
+shades of one colour chosen according to artistic feeling. The
+carrying out of one colour, the binding together and admixture of
+two related colours, are the foundations of most coloured
+harmonies. From what has been said above about colour working,
+from the fact that we live in a time of questioning, experiment
+and contradiction, we can draw the easy conclusion that for a
+harmonization on the basis of individual colours our age is
+especially unsuitable. Perhaps with envy and with a mournful
+sympathy we listen to the music of Mozart. It acts as a welcome
+pause in the turmoil of our inner life, as a consolation and as a
+hope, but we hear it as the echo of something from another age
+long past and fundamentally strange to us. The strife of colours,
+the sense of balance we have lost, tottering principles,
+unexpected assaults, great questions, apparently useless
+striving, storm and tempest, broken chains, antitheses and
+contradictions, these make up our harmony. The composition
+arising from this harmony is a mingling of colour and form each
+with its separate existence, but each blended into a common life
+which is called a picture by the force of the inner need. Only
+these individual parts are vital. Everything else (such as
+surrounding conditions) is subsidiary. The combination of two
+colours is a logical outcome of modern conditions. The
+combination of colours hitherto considered discordant, is merely
+a further development. For example, the use, side by side, of red
+and blue, colours in themselves of no physical relationship, but
+from their very spiritual contrast of the strongest effect, is
+one of the most frequent occurrences in modern choice of harmony.
+[Footnote: Cf. Gauguin, Noa Noa, where the artist states his
+disinclination when he first arrived in Tahiti to juxtapose red
+and blue.] Harmony today rests chiefly on the principle of
+contrast which has for all time been one of the most important
+principles of art. But our contrast is an inner contrast which
+stands alone and rejects the help (for that help would mean
+destruction) of any other principles of harmony. It is
+interesting to note that this very placing together of red and
+blue was so beloved by the primitive both in Germany and Italy
+that it has till today survived, principally in folk pictures of
+religious subjects. One often sees in such pictures the Virgin in
+a red gown and a blue cloak. It seems that the artists wished to
+express the grace of heaven in terms of humanity, and humanity in
+terms of heaven. Legitimate and illegitimate combinations of
+colours, contrasts of various colours, the over-painting of one
+colour with another, the definition of coloured surfaces by
+boundaries of various forms, the overstepping of these
+boundaries, the mingling and the sharp separation of surfaces,
+all these open great vistas of artistic possibility.
+
+One of the first steps in the turning away from material objects
+into the realm of the abstract was, to use the technical artistic
+term, the rejection of the third dimension, that is to say, the
+attempt to keep a picture on a single plane. Modelling was
+abandoned. In this way the material object was made more abstract
+and an important step forward was achieved--this step forward
+has, however, had the effect of limiting the possibilities of
+painting to one definite piece of canvas, and this limitation has
+not only introduced a very material element into painting, but
+has seriously lessened its possibilities.
+
+Any attempt to free painting from this material limitation
+together with the striving after a new form of composition must
+concern itself first of all with the destruction of this theory
+of one single surface--attempts must be made to bring the picture
+on to some ideal plane which shall be expressed in terms of the
+material plane of the canvas. [Footnote: Compare the article by
+Le Fauconnier in the catalogue of the second exhibition of the
+Neue Kunstlervereinigung, Munich, 1910-11.] There has arisen out
+of the composition in flat triangles a composition with plastic
+three-dimensional triangles, that is to say with pyramids; and
+that is Cubism. But there has arisen here also the tendency to
+inertia, to a concentration on this form for its own sake, and
+consequently once more to an impoverishment of possibility. But
+that is the unavoidable result of the external application of an
+inner principle.
+
+A further point of great importance must not be forgotten. There
+are other means of using the material plane as a space of three
+dimensions in order to create an ideal plane. The thinness or
+thickness of a line, the placing of the form on the surface, the
+overlaying of one form on another may be quoted as examples of
+artistic means that may be employed. Similar possibilities are
+offered by colour which, when rightly used, can advance or
+retreat, and can make of the picture a living thing, and so
+achieve an artistic expansion of space. The combination of both
+means of extension in harmony or concord is one of the richest
+and most powerful elements in purely artistic composition.
+
+
+
+VII. THEORY
+
+
+
+From the nature of modern harmony, it results that never has
+there been a time when it was more difficult than it is today to
+formulate a complete theory, [Footnote: Attempts have been made.
+Once more emphasis must be laid on the parallel with music. For
+example, cf. "Tendances Nouvelles," No. 35, Henri Ravel: "The
+laws of harmony are the same for painting and music."] or to lay
+down a firm artistic basis. All attempts to do so would have one
+result, namely, that already cited in the case of Leonardo and
+his system of little spoons. It would, however, be precipitate to
+say that there are no basic principles nor firm rules in
+painting, or that a search for them leads inevitably to
+academism. Even music has a grammar, which, although modified
+from time to time, is of continual help and value as a kind of
+dictionary.
+
+Painting is, however, in a different position. The revolt from
+dependence on nature is only just beginning. Any realization of
+the inner working of colour and form is so far unconscious. The
+subjection of composition to some geometrical form is no new idea
+(cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely abstract
+basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and
+aimless. The artist must train not only his eye but also his
+soul, so that he can test colours for themselves and not only by
+external impressions.
+
+If we begin at once to break the bonds which bind us to nature,
+and devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and
+abstract form, we shall produce works which are mere decoration,
+which are suited to neckties or carpets. Beauty of Form and
+Colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of
+pure aesthetes or even of naturalists, who are obsessed with the
+idea of "beauty." It is because of the elementary stage reached
+by our painting that we are so little able to grasp the inner
+harmony of true colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations
+are there, certainly, but they get no further than the nerves,
+because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they
+call forth are too weak. When we remember, however, that
+spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the
+firmest basis of human thought, is tottering, that dissolution of
+matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure
+composition is not far away.
+
+It must not be thought that pure decoration is lifeless. It has
+its inner being, but one which is either incomprehensible to us,
+as in the case of old decorative art, or which seems mere
+illogical confusion, as a world in which full-grown men and
+embryos play equal roles, in which beings deprived of limbs are
+on a level with noses and toes which live isolated and of their
+own vitality. The confusion is like that of a kaleidoscope, which
+though possessing a life of its own, belongs to another sphere.
+Nevertheless, decoration has its effect on us; oriental
+decoration quite differently to Swedish, savage, or ancient
+Greek. It is not for nothing that there is a general custom of
+describing samples of decoration as gay, serious, sad, etc., as
+music is described as Allegro, Serioso, etc., according to the
+nature of the piece.
+
+Probably conventional decoration had its beginnings in nature.
+But when we would assert that external nature is the sole source
+of all art, we must remember that, in patterning, natural objects
+are used as symbols, almost as though they were mere
+hieroglyphics. For this reason we cannot gauge their inner
+harmony. For instance, we can bear a design of Chinese dragons in
+our dining or bed rooms, and are no more disturbed by it than by
+a design of daisies.
+
+It is possible that towards the close of our already dying epoch
+a new decorative art will develop, but it is not likely to be
+founded on geometrical form. At the present time any attempt to
+define this new art would be as useless as pulling a small bud
+open so as to make a fully blown flower. Nowadays we are still
+bound to external nature and must find our means of expression in
+her. But how are we to do it? In other words, how far may we go
+in altering the forms and colours of this nature?
+
+We may go as far as the artist is able to carry his emotion, and
+once more we see how immense is the need for true emotion. A few
+examples will make the meaning of this clearer.
+
+A warm red tone will materially alter in inner value when it is
+no longer considered as an isolated colour, as something
+abstract, but is applied as an element of some other object, and
+combined with natural form. The variety of natural forms will
+create a variety of spiritual values, all of which will harmonize
+with that of the original isolated red. Suppose we combine red
+with sky, flowers, a garment, a face, a horse, a tree.
+
+A red sky suggests to us sunset, or fire, and has a consequent
+effect upon us--either of splendour or menace. Much depends now
+on the way in which other objects are treated in connection with
+this red sky. If the treatment is faithful to nature, but all the
+same harmonious, the "naturalistic" appeal of the sky is
+strengthened. If, however, the other objects are treated in a way
+which is more abstract, they tend to lessen, if not to destroy,
+the naturalistic appeal of the sky. Much the same applies to the
+use of red in a human face. In this case red can be employed to
+emphasize the passionate or other characteristics of the model,
+with a force that only an extremely abstract treatment of the
+rest of the picture can subdue.
+
+A red garment is quite a different matter; for it can in reality
+be of any colour. Red will, however, be found best to supply the
+needs of pure artistry, for here alone can it be used without any
+association with material aims. The artist has to consider not
+only the value of the red cloak by itself, but also its value in
+connection with the figure wearing it, and further the relation
+of the figure to the whole picture. Suppose the picture to be a
+sad one, and the red-cloaked figure to be the central point on
+which the sadness is concentrated--either from its central
+position, or features, attitude, colour, or what not. The red
+will provide an acute discord of feeling, which will emphasize
+the gloom of the picture. The use of a colour, in itself sad,
+would weaken the effect of the dramatic whole. [Footnote: Once
+more it is wise to emphasize the necessary inadequacy of these
+examples. Rules cannot be laid down, the variations are so
+endless. A single line can alter the whole composition of a
+picture.] This is the principle of antithesis already defined.
+Red by itself cannot have a sad effect on the spectator, and its
+inclusion in a sad picture will, if properly handled, provide the
+dramatic element. [Footnote: The use of terms like "sad" and
+"joyful" are only clumsy equivalents for the delicate spiritual
+vibrations of the new harmony. They must be read as necessarily
+inadequate.]
+
+Yet again is the case of a red tree different. The fundamental
+value of red remains, as in every case. But the association of
+"autumn" creeps in.
+
+The colour combines easily with this association, and there is no
+dramatic clash as in the case of the red cloak.
+
+Finally, the red horse provides a further variation. The very
+words put us in another atmosphere. The impossibility of a red
+horse demands an unreal world. It is possible that this
+combination of colour and form will appeal as a freak--a purely
+superficial and non-artistic appeal--or as a hint of a fairy
+story [Footnote: An incomplete fairy story works on the mind as
+does a cinematograph film.]--once more a non-artistic appeal. To
+set this red horse in a careful naturalistic landscape would
+create such a discord as to produce no appeal and no coherence.
+The need for coherence is the essential of harmony--whether
+founded on conventional discord or concord. The new harmony
+demands that the inner value of a picture should remain unified
+whatever the variations or contrasts of outward form or colour.
+The elements of the new art are to be found, therefore, in the
+inner and not the outer qualities of nature.
+
+The spectator is too ready to look for a meaning in a picture--i.e.,
+some outward connection between its various parts. Our materialistic age
+has produced a type of spectator or "connoisseur," who is not content to
+put himself opposite a picture and let it say its own message. Instead
+of allowing the inner value of the picture to work, he worries himself
+in looking for "closeness to nature," or "temperament," or "handling,"
+or "tonality," or "perspective," or what not. His eye does not probe the
+outer expression to arrive at the inner meaning. In a conversation with
+an interesting person, we endeavour to get at his fundamental ideas and
+feelings. We do not bother about the words he uses, nor the spelling of
+those words, nor the breath necessary for speaking them, nor the
+movements of his tongue and lips, nor the psychological working on our
+brain, nor the physical sound in our ear, nor the physiological effect
+on our nerves. We realize that these things, though interesting and
+important, are not the main things of the moment, but that the meaning
+and idea is what concerns us. We should have the same feeling when
+confronted with a work of art. When this becomes general the artist will
+be able to dispense with natural form and colour and speak in purely
+artistic language.
+
+To return to the combination of colour and form, there is another
+possibility which should be noted. Non-naturalistic objects in a
+picture may have a "literary" appeal, and the whole picture may
+have the working of a fable. The spectator is put in an
+atmosphere which does not disturb him because he accepts it as
+fabulous, and in which he tries to trace the story and undergoes
+more or less the various appeals of colour. But the pure inner
+working of colour is impossible; the outward idea has the mastery
+still. For the spectator has only exchanged a blind reality for a
+blind dreamland, where the truth of inner feeling cannot be felt.
+
+We must find, therefore, a form of expression which excludes the
+fable and yet does not restrict the free working of colour in any
+way. The forms, movement, and colours which we borrow from nature
+must produce no outward effect nor be associated with external
+objects. The more obvious is the separation from nature, the more
+likely is the inner meaning to be pure and unhampered.
+
+The tendency of a work of art may be very simple, but provided it
+is not dictated by any external motive and provided it is not
+working to any material end, the harmony will be pure. The most
+ordinary action--for example, preparation for lifting a heavy
+weight--becomes mysterious and dramatic, when its actual purpose
+is not revealed. We stand and gaze fascinated, till of a sudden
+the explanation bursts suddenly upon us. It is the conviction
+that nothing mysterious can ever happen in our everyday life that
+has destroyed the joy of abstract thought. Practical
+considerations have ousted all else. It is with this fact in view
+that the new dancing is being evolved--as, that is to say, the
+only means of giving in terms of time and space the real inner
+meaning of motion. The origin of dancing is probably purely
+sexual. In folk-dances we still see this element plainly. The
+later development of dancing as a religious ceremony joins itself
+to the preceding element and the two together take artistic form
+and emerge as the ballet.
+
+The ballet at the present time is in a state of chaos owing to
+this double origin. Its external motives--the expression of love
+and fear, etc.--are too material and naive for the abstract ideas
+of the future. In the search for more subtle expression, our
+modern reformers have looked to the past for help. Isadora Duncan
+has forged a link between the Greek dancing and that of the
+future. In this she is working on parallel lines to the painters
+who are looking for inspiration from the primitives.
+
+[Footnote: Kandinsky's example of Isadora Duncan is not perhaps
+perfectly chosen. This famous dancer founds her art mainly upon a
+study of Greek vases and not necessarily of the primitive period.
+Her aims are distinctly towards what Kandinsky calls
+"conventional beauty," and what is perhaps more important, her
+movements are not dictated solely by the "inner harmony," but
+largely by conscious outward imitation of Greek attitudes. Either
+Nijinsky's later ballets: Le Sacre du Printemps, L'Apres-midi
+d'un Faune, Jeux, or the idea actuating the Jacques Dalcroze
+system of Eurhythmics seem to fall more into line with
+Kandinsky's artistic forecast. In the first case "conventional
+beauty" has been abandoned, to the dismay of numbers of writers
+and spectators, and a definite return has been made to primitive
+angles and abruptness. In the second case motion and dance are
+brought out of the souls of the pupils, truly spontaneous, at
+the call of the "inner harmony." Indeed a comparison between
+Isadora Duncan and M. Dalcroze is a comparison between the
+"naturalist" and "symbolist" ideals in art which were outlined in
+the introduction to this book.--M.T.H.S.]
+
+In dance as in painting this is only a stage of transition. In
+dancing as in painting we are on the threshold of the art of the
+future. The same rules must be applied in both cases.
+Conventional beauty must go by the board and the literary element
+of "story-telling" or "anecdote" must be abandoned as useless.
+Both arts must learn from music that every harmony and every
+discord which springs from the inner spirit is beautiful, but
+that it is essential that they should spring from the inner
+spirit and from that alone.
+
+The achievement of the dance-art of the future will make possible
+the first ebullition of the art of spiritual harmony--the true
+stage-composition.
+
+The composition for the new theatre will consist of these three
+elements:
+
+     (1) Musical movement
+     (2) Pictorial movement
+     (3) Physical movement
+
+and these three, properly combined, make up the spiritual
+movement, which is the working of the inner harmony. They will be
+interwoven in harmony and discord as are the two chief elements
+of painting, form and colour.
+
+Scriabin's attempt to intensify musical tone by corresponding use of
+colour is necessarily tentative. In the perfected stage-composition the
+two elements are increased by the third, and endless possibilities of
+combination and individual use are opened up. Further, the external can
+be combined with the internal harmony, as Schonberg has attempted in his
+quartettes. It is impossible here to go further into the developments of
+this idea. The reader must apply the principles of painting already
+stated to the problem of stage-composition, and outline for himself the
+possibilities of the theatre of the future, founded on the immovable
+principle of the inner need.
+
+From what has been said of the combination of colour and form,
+the way to the new art can be traced. This way lies today between
+two dangers. On the one hand is the totally arbitrary application
+of colour to geometrical form--pure patterning. On the other hand
+is the more naturalistic use of colour in bodily form--pure
+phantasy. Either of these alternatives may in their turn be
+exaggerated. Everything is at the artist's disposal, and the
+freedom of today has at once its dangers and its possibilities.
+We may be present at the conception of a new great epoch, or we
+may see the opportunity squandered in aimless extravagance.
+
+[Footnote: On this question see my article "Uber die Formfrage"--in "Der
+Blaue Reiter" (Piper-Verlag, 1912). Taking the work of Henri Rousseau as
+a starting point, I go on to prove that the new naturalism will not only
+be equivalent to but even identical with abstraction.]
+
+That art is above nature is no new discovery. [Footnote: Cf. "Goethe",
+by Karl Heinemann, 1899, p. 684; also Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis"; also
+Delacroix, "My Diary".] New principles do not fall from heaven, but are
+logically if indirectly connected with past and future. What is
+important to us is the momentary position of the principle and how best
+it can be used. It must not be employed forcibly. But if the artist
+tunes his soul to this note, the sound will ring in his work of itself.
+The "emancipation" of today must advance on the lines of the inner need.
+It is hampered at present by external form, and as that is thrown aside,
+there arises as the aim of composition-construction. The search for
+constructive form has produced Cubism, in which natural form is often
+forcibly subjected to geometrical construction, a process which tends to
+hamper the abstract by the concrete and spoil the concrete by the
+abstract.
+
+The harmony of the new art demands a more subtle construction
+than this, something that appeals less to the eye and more to the
+soul. This "concealed construction" may arise from an apparently
+fortuitous selection of forms on the canvas. Their external lack
+of cohesion is their internal harmony. This haphazard arrangement
+of forms may be the future of artistic harmony. Their fundamental
+relationship will finally be able to be expressed in mathematical
+form, but in terms irregular rather than regular.
+
+
+
+VIII. ART AND ARTISTS
+
+
+
+The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret
+way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence
+casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful
+strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and
+has power to create spiritual atmosphere; 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 form is too feeble in
+meaning to call forth corresponding vibrations of the soul.
+
+[Footnote: So-called indecent pictures are either incapable of
+causing vibrations of the soul (in which case they are not art)
+or they are so capable. In the latter case they are not to be
+spurned absolutely, even though at the same time they gratify
+what nowadays we are pleased to call the "lower bodily tastes."]
+Therefore a picture is not necessarily "well painted" if it
+possesses the "values" of which the French so constantly speak.
+It is only well painted if its spiritual value is complete and
+satisfying. "Good drawing" is drawing that cannot be altered
+without destruction of this inner value, quite irrespective of
+its correctness as anatomy, botany, or any other science. There
+is no question of a violation of natural form, but only of the
+need of the artist for such form. Similarly colours are used not
+because they are true to nature, but because they are necessary
+to the particular picture. In fact, the artist is not only
+justified in using, but it is his duty to use only those forms
+which fulfil his own need. Absolute freedom, whether from anatomy
+or anything of the kind, must be given the artist in his choice
+of material. Such spiritual freedom is as necessary in art as it
+is in life. [Footnote: This freedom is man's weapon against the
+Philistines. It is based on the inner need.]
+
+Note, however, that blind following of scientific precept is less
+blameworthy than its blind and purposeless rejection. The former
+produces at least an imitation of material objects which may be
+of some use.
+
+[Footnote: Plainly, an imitation of nature, if made by the hand
+of an artist, is not a pure reproduction. The voice of the soul
+will in some degree at least make itself heard. As contrasts one
+may quote a landscape of Canaletto and those sadly famous heads
+by Denner.--(Alte Pinakothek, Munich.)]
+
+The latter is an artistic betrayal and brings confusion in its
+train. The former leaves the spiritual atmosphere empty; the
+latter poisons it.
+
+Painting is an art, and art is not vague production, transitory
+and isolated, but 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 power can take the place of art in this activity.
+And at times when the human soul is gaining greater strength, art
+will also grow in power, for the two are inextricably connected
+and complementary one to the other. Conversely, at those times
+when the soul tends to be choked by material disbelief, art
+becomes purposeless and talk is heard that art exists for art's
+sake alone.
+
+[Footnote: This cry "art for art's sake," is really the best
+ideal such an age can attain to. It is an unconscious protest
+against materialism, against the demand that everything should
+have a use and practical value. It is further proof of the
+indestructibility of art and of the human soul, which can never
+be killed but only temporarily smothered.]
+
+Then is the bond between art and the soul, as it were, drugged
+into unconsciousness. The artist and the spectator drift apart,
+till finally the latter turns his back on the former or regards
+him as a juggler whose skill and dexterity are worthy of
+applause. 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 but rather a servant
+of a nobler purpose. He must search deeply into his own soul,
+develop and tend it, so that his art has something to clothe, and
+does not remain a glove without a hand.
+
+THE ARTIST MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, FOR MASTERY OVER FORM IS
+NOT HIS GOAL BUT RATHER THE ADAPTING OF FORM TO ITS INNER
+MEANING.
+
+[Footnote: Naturally this does not mean that the artist is to
+instill forcibly into his work some deliberate meaning. As has
+been said the generation of a work of art is a mystery. So long
+as artistry exists there is no need of theory or logic to direct
+the painter's action. The inner voice of the soul tells him what
+form he needs, whether inside or outside nature. Every artist
+knows, who works with feeling, how suddenly the right form
+flashes upon him. Bocklin said that a true work of art must be
+like an inspiration; that actual painting, composition, etc., are
+not the steps by which the artist reaches self-expression.]
+
+The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live
+idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a
+cross to be borne. He must realize that his every deed, feeling,
+and thought are raw but sure material from which his work is to
+arise, that he is free in art but not in life.
+
+The artist has a triple responsibility to the non-artists: (1) He
+must repay the talent which he has; (2) his deeds, feelings, and
+thoughts, as those of every man, create a spiritual atmosphere
+which is either pure or poisonous. (3) These deeds and thoughts
+are materials for his creations, which themselves exercise
+influence on the spiritual atmosphere. The artist is not only a
+king, as Peladan says, because he has great power, but also
+because he has great duties.
+
+If the artist be priest of beauty, nevertheless this beauty is to
+be sought only according to the principle of the inner need, and
+can be measured only according to the size and intensity of that
+need.
+
+THAT IS BEAUTIFUL WHICH IS PRODUCED BY THE INNER NEED, WHICH
+SPRINGS FROM THE SOUL.
+
+Maeterlinck, one of the first warriors, one of the first modern
+artists of the soul, says: "There is nothing on earth so curious
+for beauty or so absorbent of it, as a soul. For that reason few
+mortal souls withstand the leadership of a soul which gives to
+them beauty." [Footnote: De la beaute interieure.]
+
+And this property of the soul is the oil, which facilitates the
+slow, scarcely visible but irresistible movement of the triangle,
+onwards and upwards.
+
+
+
+IX. CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+The first five illustrations in this book show the course of
+constructive effort in painting. This effort falls into two
+divisions:
+
+(1) Simple composition, which is regulated according to an
+obvious and simple form. This kind of composition I call the
+MELODIC.
+
+(2) Complex composition, consisting of various forms, subjected
+more or less completely to a principal form. Probably the
+principal form may be hard to grasp outwardly, and for that
+reason possessed of a strong inner value. This kind of
+composition I call the SYMPHONIC.
+
+Between the two lie various transitional forms, in which the
+melodic principle predominates. The history of the development is
+closely parallel to that of music.
+
+If, in considering an example of melodic composition, one forgets
+the material aspect and probes down into the artistic reason of
+the whole, one finds primitive geometrical forms or an
+arrangement of simple lines which help toward a common motion.
+This common motion is echoed by various sections and may be
+varied by a single line or form. Such isolated variations serve
+different purposes. For instance, they may act as a sudden check,
+or to use a musical term, a "fermata." [Footnote: E.g., the
+Ravenna mosaic which, in the main, forms a triangle. The upright
+figures lean proportionately to the triangle. The outstretched
+arm and door-curtain are the "fermate."] Each form which goes to
+make up the composition has a simple inner value, which has in
+its turn a melody. For this reason I call the composition
+melodic. By the agency of Cezanne and later of Hodler [Footnote:
+English readers may roughly parallel Hodler with Augustus John
+for purposes of the argument.--M.T.H.S.] this kind of composition
+won new life, and earned the name of "rhythmic." The limitations
+of the term "rhythmic" are obvious. In music and nature each
+manifestation has a rhythm of its own, so also in painting. In
+nature this rhythm is often not clear to us, because its purpose
+is not clear to us. We then speak of it as unrhythmic. So the
+terms rhythmic and unrhythmic are purely conventional, as also
+are harmony and discord, which have no actual existence.
+[Footnote: As an example of plain melodic construction with a
+plain rhythm, Cezanne's "Bathing Women" is given in this book.]
+
+Complex rhythmic composition, with a strong flavour of the
+symphonic, is seen in numerous pictures and woodcuts of the past.
+One might mention the work of old German masters, of the
+Persians, of the Japanese, the Russian icons, broadsides, etc.
+[Footnote: This applies to many of Hodler's pictures.]
+
+In nearly all these works the symphonic composition is not very
+closely allied to the melodic. This means that fundamentally
+there is a composition founded on rest and balance. The mind
+thinks at once of choral compositions, of Mozart and Beethoven.
+All these works have the solemn and regular architecture of a
+Gothic cathedral; they belong to the transition period.
+
+As examples of the new symphonic composition, in which the
+melodic element plays a subordinate part, and that only rarely, I
+have added reproductions of four of my own pictures.
+
+They represent three different sources of inspiration:
+
+(1) A direct impression of outward nature, expressed in purely
+artistic form. This I call an "Impression."
+
+(2) A largely unconscious, spontaneous expression of inner
+character, the non-material nature. This I call an
+"Improvisation."
+
+(3) An expression of a slowly formed inner feeling, which
+comes to utterance only after long maturing. This I call a
+"Composition." In this, reason, consciousness, purpose, play
+an overwhelming part. But of the calculation nothing appears,
+only the feeling. Which kind of construction, whether
+conscious or unconscious, really underlies my work, the
+patient reader will readily understand.
+
+Finally, I would remark that, in my opinion, we are fast
+approaching the time of reasoned and conscious composition, when
+the painter will be proud to declare his work constructive. This
+will be in contrast to the claim of the Impressionists that they
+could explain nothing, that their art came upon them by
+inspiration. We have before us the age of conscious creation, and
+this new spirit in painting is going hand in hand with the spirit
+of thought towards an epoch of great spiritual leaders.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by 
+Wassily Kandinsky
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #5321 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5321)
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