What Art Is Not Accessible to the Working Man
"Fine art is a form of nourishment (of consciousness, the spirit)," 31-twelvemonth-old Susan Sontag wrote in her diary in 1964. "Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness," wrote Alain de Botton half a century later in the fantabulous Art every bit Therapy. Merely perhaps the greatest meditation on how art serves the soul came more than a century earlier, in 1910, when legendary Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky (December 16, 1866–December thirteen, 1944) published Apropos the Spiritual in Art (costless download | public library) — an exploration of the deepest and most authentic motives for making fine art, the "internal necessity" that impels artists to create as a spiritual impulse and audiences to admire fine art as a spiritual hunger.
Kandinsky's words, penned in the flow between the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the consumer guild, ring with remarkable poignancy today. He begins by considering art equally a spiritual antidote to the values of materialism and introduces the notion of "stimmung," an almost untranslatable concept best explained as the essential spirit of nature, echoing Tolstoy's notion of emotional infectiousness as the true measure of art. Kandinsky writes:
[In great art] the spectator does feel a corresponding thrill in himself. Such harmony or fifty-fifty dissimilarity of emotion cannot be superficial or worthless; indeed the Stimmung of a picture tin deepen and purify that of the spectator. Such works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they "key it upwardly," so to speak, to a certain summit, as a tuning-central the strings of a musical instrument.
Bemoaning the tendency of the full general public to reduce art to technique and skill, Kandinsky argues that its truthful purpose is entirely different and adds to history's near cute definitions of art:
In each motion picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys. Whither is this lifetime tending? What is the bulletin of the competent artist? … To harmonize the whole is the task of art.
And nevertheless, Kandinsky admonishes, the notion of "art for art's sake" produces a "neglect of inner meanings" — a lament maybe even more "sad and ominous" in our age of consistent commodification of art as a affair to transact around — to purchase, to own, to display — rather than an experience to have. He writes:
The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated merely definite and easily definable motion forwards and upwards. This movement is the move of experience. It may take unlike forms, just it holds at bottom to the same inner thought and purpose.
He goes on to offer a visual metaphor for our spiritual experience and how it relates to the notion of genius:
The life of the spirit may exist fairly represented in diagram as a large astute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and surface area.
The whole triangle is moving slowly, almost invisibly forwards and upwards. Where the noon was today the 2nd segment is tomorrow; what today tin can be understood simply past the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the 2nd segment.
At the apex of the top segment stands oft 1 man, and only i. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy exercise not understand him. Angrily they abuse him every bit charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and insulted.
[…]
In every segment of the triangle are artists. Each one of them who can run into beyond the limits of his segment is a prophet to those almost him, and helps the accelerate of the obstinate whole. But those who are bullheaded, or those who retard the move of the triangle for baser reasons, are fully understood by their fellows and acclaimed for their genius. The greater the segment (which is the aforementioned equally 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 nutrient is offered by the artists, and for this food the segment immediately below will tomorrow be stretching out eager easily.
But he admonishes that our "spiritual food" should always be appropriately suited to the segment we belong to, else it becomes boxy and even toxic:
Too often it happens that one level of spiritual nutrient 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 big 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 human who does non strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually confronting sinking, volition mentally and morally become under. In this strait a man's talent (again in the biblical sense) becomes a curse—and not simply the talent of the artist, merely likewise of those who consume this poisoned food. The creative person uses his forcefulness to flatter his lower needs; in an ostensibly creative course he presents what is impure, draws the weaker elements to him, mixes them with evil, betrays men and helps them to betray themselves, while they convince themselves and others that they are spiritually thirsty, and that from this pure spring they may quench their thirst. Such art does not help the frontward motility, but hinders it, dragging back those who are striving to press onward, and spreading pestilence abroad.
Only the most culturally toxic effect of all, Kandinsky argues, takes identify in periods when "art has no noble champion" and "the true spiritual food is wanting." It is then that nosotros brainstorm to mistake technical advances for spiritual growth and, dismissing the artists whom history would one mean solar day deem geniuses, we come to worship at false altars:
The alone visionaries are despised or regarded equally aberrant and eccentric. Those who are not wrapped in sluggishness and who experience vague longings for spiritual life and knowledge and progress, weep in harsh chorus, without any to comfort them. The night of the spirit falls more and more than darkly. Deeper becomes the misery of these blind and terrified guides, and their followers, tormented and unnerved by fearfulness and uncertainty, adopt to this gradual darkening the terminal sudden leap into the black.
At such a time art ministers to lower needs, and is used for material ends. She seeks her substance in difficult realities because she knows of cipher nobler… The artist in such times has no need to say much, but only to be notorious for some small originality and consequently lauded past a small grouping of patrons and connoisseurs (which incidentally is also a very profitable business for him)…
Merely despite all this confusion, this chaos, this wild hunt for notoriety, the spiritual triangle, slowly merely surely, with irresistible strength, moves onwards and upwards.
He then turns to the spiritual essence of art and the artist's responsibility in bringing it forth:
If the emotional ability of the artist can overwhelm the "how?" and tin give free scope to his finer feelings, then art is on the crest of the road by which she will non fail after on to find the "what" she has lost, the "what" which volition show the fashion to the spiritual food of the newly awakened spiritual life. This "what?" will no longer exist the material, objective "what" of the old flow, but the internal truth of fine art, the soul without which the torso (i.eastward. the "how") can never be healthy, whether in an private or in a whole people.
This "what" is the internal truth which merely art can divine, which only art can express past those means of expression which are hers alone.
Kandinsky considers art a kind of spiritual anchor when all other certitudes of life are unhinged by social and cultural upheaval:
When religion, science and morality are shaken … 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 near sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt. They reflect the dark movie of the present time and show the importance of what at first was simply a little point of light noticed by few and for the smashing majority not-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 requite complimentary telescopic to the non-material strivings of the soul.
And even so despite this eternal spiritual element, he recognizes that all art is inescapably a product of its time. Examining the music of Wagner, Debussy, and Schoenberg — each celebrated every bit a genius in his own correct — Kandinsky writes:
The various arts of today learn from each other and oft resemble each other… The greatest freedom of all, the freedom of an unfettered art, tin can never be absolute. Every age achieves a certain measure of this freedom, merely beyond the boundaries of its liberty the mightiest genius can never become. Simply the measure of freedom of each age must be constantly enlarged.
A key source of this enlargement, Kandinsky suggests, is the cross-pollination of the different arts, which inform and inspire one another:
The arts are encroaching i upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will ascension the art that is truly monumental. Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in the edifice of the spiritual pyramid which will some day reach to heaven.
Kandinsky, who was profoundly influenced by Goethe'south theory of the emotional event of color and who was himself synesthetic, considers the powerful psychic effect of color in the cohesive spiritual feel of art:
Many colors have been described every bit rough or sticky, others every bit smooth and uniform, so that one feels inclined to stroke them (e.g., dark ultramarine, chromic oxide dark-green, and rose madder). Equally the distinction between warm and cold colors belongs to this connection. Some colors 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 colors" is frequently met with. And finally the sound of colors is then definite that information technology would be difficult to discover anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or nighttime lake in the treble…
Color is a power which direct influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching i key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
He later adds:
The spirit, like the body, tin be strengthened and developed past frequent do. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, then the spirit perishes if untended. And for this reason it is necessary for the artist to know the starting point for the do of his spirit.
Considering color and grade the 2 weapons of painting, and defining form as "the outward expression of inner meaning," Kandinsky examines their interplay in creating a spiritual effect:
This essential connection betwixt color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on colour. Class lonely, 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 example is similar with a circle, a foursquare, or any conceivable geometrical figure [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell…
The mutual influence of form and color now becomes clear. A yellow triangle, a blue circumvolve, a dark-green square, or a greenish triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square—all these are different and have different spiritual values.
In a footnote, he makes the case for the sensibility of minimalism:
Form often is near expressive when least coherent. It is frequently well-nigh expressive when outwardly most imperfect, perhaps simply a stroke, a mere hint of outer significant.
In considering the inherent aesthetic intelligence of nature, Kandinsky returns to his pianoforte metaphor:
Every object has its own life and therefore its own appeal; man is continually field of study 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 pianoforte (the soul) by manipulation of the keys (the diverse objects with their several appeals).
Just perhaps his virtually poignant insight has to exercise with the expectations of art:
There is no "must" in art, because fine art is free.
Rather than a "must," Kandinsky argues, art springs from an inner need, the psychological trifecta of which he itemizes:
The inner need is built up of 3 mystical elements:
- Every artist, every bit a creator, has something in him which calls for expression (this is the element of personality).
- Every artist, as kid of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his historic period (this is the chemical element of style) — dictated by the period and detail country to which the artist belongs (it is doubtful how long the latter distinction volition continue to exist).
- Every artist, every bit a servant of art, has to help the crusade of art (this is the chemical element of pure artistry, which is constant in all ages and amongst all nationalities).
A total understanding of the start two elements is necessary for a realization of the third.
Sharing in Schopenhauer's skepticism about mode, Kandinsky predicts that merely the third element, "which knows neither menses nor nationality," accounts for the timeless in fine art:
In the past and fifty-fifty today much talk is heard of "personality" in art. Talk of the coming "style" becomes more frequent daily. Only for all their importance today, these questions will take disappeared after a few hundred or thousand years.
Just the third element — that of pure artistry — will remain forever. An Egyptian carving speaks to united states of america today more subtly than it did to its chronological contemporaries; for they judged it with the hampering knowledge of period and personality. Merely nosotros tin can judge purely as an expression of the eternal artistry.
Similarly — the greater the role played in a modernistic work of fine art by the 2 elements of style and personality, the ameliorate will it exist 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 accept to pass away before the 3rd element tin can be received with understanding. Merely the artist in whose work this third element predominates is the really great artist.
[…]
It is articulate, therefore, that the inner spirit of fine art only uses the outer form of any particular menses every bit a stepping-rock to further expression.
In brusque, 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.
Therefore, Kandinsky points out, the true artist gives acceptance only to that inner need, and non to the expectations and conventions of the time:
The artist must be blind to distinctions between "recognized" or "unrecognized" conventions of form, deaf to the transitory pedagogy and demands of his particular age. He must watch just the trend of the inner need, and hearken to its words lone. Then he volition with safety employ means both sanctioned and forbidden by his contemporaries. All means are sacred which are called for past the inner need. All means are sinful which obscure that inner need.
This is likewise why theory invariably fails to capture the essential impulse of art. Kandinsky offers a beautiful, if inadvertent, disclaimer to his own theoretical treatise:
Information technology is impossible to theorize about this ideal of art. In existent fine art theory does not precede exercise, merely follows her. Everything is, at first, a matter of feeling. Whatsoever theoretical scheme volition 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, tin exist measured nor weighed.
In another parenthetical, he considers the paradox of what we refer to as "beauty," which is more of a theoretical agreement based on convention rather than a true spiritual response:
"Outer need" … never goes across conventional limits, nor produces other than conventional beauty. The "inner need" knows no such limits, and often produces results conventionally considered "ugly." Merely "ugly" itself is a conventional term, and only ways "spiritually unsympathetic," being applied to some expression of an inner need, either outgrown or non yet attained. But everything which fairly expresses the inner need is cute.
[…]
That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.
In reflecting on the birthplace of art, he returns to the notion of creative freedom:
The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret manner. From him it gains life and beingness. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful force, akin in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has power to create spiritual temper; and from this inner standpoint 1 judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one. If its "form" is bad it means that the class is besides feeble in meaning to call forth corresponding vibrations of the soul… The artist is not only justified in using, but it is his duty to employ merely those forms which fulfill his own need… Such spiritual freedom is as necessary in art as it is in life.
He brings everything full-circle to the metaphor of the spiritual triangle, reexamining the essence of art and the core responsibility of the artist:
Art is non vague product, transitory and isolated, but a ability which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the homo soul — to, in fact, the raising of the spiritual triangle.
If art refrains from doing this work, a chasm remains unbridged, for no other ability 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 2 are inextricably connected and complementary one to the other. Conversely, at those times when the soul tends to be choked by material disbelief, fine art becomes purposeless and talk is heard that fine art exists for art's sake alone…
It is very important for the artist to approximate his position aright, to realize that he has a duty to his art and to himself, that he is not king of the castle merely rather a retainer of a nobler purpose. He must search securely into his ain soul, develop and tend it, so that his art has something to clothe, and does not remain a glove without a paw. 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.
[…]
The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and i which often proves a cross to be borne. He must realize that his every deed, feeling, and thought are raw simply certain fabric from which his work is to arise, that he is free in fine art simply not in life.
The creative person has a triple responsibility to the non-artists: (1) He must repay the talent which he has; (2) his deeds, feelings, and thoughts, equally those of every human being, create a spiritual atmosphere which is either pure or poisonous. (3) These deeds and thoughts are materials for his creations, which themselves exercise influence on the spiritual atmosphere.
Concerning the Spiritual in Art , a spectacular read in its entirety, is in the public domain and is thus bachelor every bit a free download. Complement it with Tolstoy on emotional infectiousness and Oscar Wilde on art, so revisit the 7 psychological functions of art.
Source: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/06/02/kandinsky-concerning-the-spiritual-in-art/
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