Spirit in Art

Author: Wassily Kandinsky
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: Music, this magical realm, Schopenhauer regarded as a "mirror of the will itself," and also the goal of Symbolist art in the late 19th century to the World War I. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky emphasizes the position of music on the spiritual triangle. He believed: "For centuries, music has been an art that expresses the artist's soul in sound, rather than replicating natural phenomena. A painter who is dissatisfied with representation and longs to express inner life would also envy the immaterial music in today's art. Naturally, he would apply the methods of music to his own art. As a result, there emerged the modern desire for melodic painting, mathematical abstract structures, and polyphonic colors." Music became the apex of the golden pyramid, synonymous with the spiritual world, and art returned to Schopenhauer's proposition: music is the jewel on the crown of art. Concerning the Spiritual in Art is Kandinsky's theoretical work that elaborates on his abstract art principles. In this book, he adopts the dualistic view of mind and body, following the esoteric scholars' perspective, believing that the spirit (soul) is the origin of the world, while matter is merely a veil covering the true world, through which people can only see the shining spirit. Kandinsky believed that artists possess this talent because art is an activity of the soul, a rare and unnoticed "soul vibration," "a special state of the soul hidden beneath natural forms."