Traditionally, painting has been a representational art form. Since the renaissance, the search for new and better techniques for representing objects has culminated in the photograph. Shortly after the photograph became a widely used technology, painters began to focus less on realistic representation. Abstract painting can be interpreted as a rejection of tradition, as a rejection of limiting the art of painting to representation. Abstract art is no longer art for the sake of the subject matter, it is “art for art’s sake!”
Throughout most of my college years, I thought of modern art with this lens. However, I had a paradigm shift after reading Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Kandinsky does much more than comment on aesthetics, style, and history. He describes a totally different worldview and the vocation of the artist within it. Concerning the Spiritual in Art discusses many profound ideas about the role of the artist, the purpose of art, and effect of color on the human spirit. One of the more subtle concepts that Kandinsky introduces in this book is the idea that material things are not just material, and therefore, painting is and never has been about representing only the material things. But before he gets into this idea, he recounts the state of affairs that the world of painting was in around the turn of the century. He writes,
“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.”
This is the way that Kandinsky, a hero of the modernist movement, viewed the modern art phenomenon. He reinforced the idea that as each trend came and went, art became more and more material. Painting was less about the “what,” and more about the “how.” What you were painting didn’t really matter, it was how you painted it, and the “how” kept changing as trends continued to leave people wanting more novelty. Kandinsky observes that this kind of art culture left the public behind, and so modern art became siloed in its own echo-chamber. It became art for art’s sake. Now Kandinsky asks the question that every modernist painter is wondering. Where do we go from here? How should we paint? His answer is not an easy one,
“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.”
Kandinsky argues that the style of painting, or the “how” is not what matters. It is the artist’s emotional connection to what is being created that is most important. According to Kandinsky, when the subject of the painting is no longer just material, art can be revitalized and reborn. The “spiritual food” he speaks about is the new painting which represents the soul of what is being depicted, not just its body.
Roger Scruton, in his book Beauty, comments,
“The mouth that speaks, the eyes that gaze, the skin that blushes, all are signs of freedom, character, and judgement, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within. The great portraitist will ensure that these high-points of bodily expression reveal not just the momentary thoughts but the long-term intentions, the moral stance and the self-conception of the individual who shines in them.”
Traditionally, the primary focus of a great painter was not to represent the material world accurately, it was to represent the soul accurately. Roger Scruton, a classicist writing in the twenty-first century, can agree with Kandinsky on this point of spiritual focus. But Kandinsky takes the idea farther still. In commenting on Cezanne’s work, Kandinsky says,
“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.”
Kandinsky’s conception of the word “soul” is clearly broader and more amorphous than the traditional anthropocentric understanding. He uses the phrase “inner life” to describe what Cezanne saw in a teacup, not what he made out of a teacup. Kandinsky is making a point about representation. It is not that Cezanne has chosen to sacrifice representation for imagination or artistic expression. It is that Cezanne can “see” more than other painters, and can therefore represent more than other painters. This is why Kandinsky considers him remarkable.
For Kandinsky, modernist painting was not a search for new techniques, new forms, or new styles of representation. It was a re-focusing on what was essential for all art in all time periods. Through different means, methods, and styles great painters throughout history have chosen to represent the inner life first. The outer appearance was a vehicle to serve this primary purpose. Wassily Kandinsky was one of the first abstract painters. His work is full of pulsating colors, lines, and dynamic mark-making of all shapes and sizes. The reason for his abstraction was not to escape from the represented subject, but to shift the subject from people and objects to feelings and ideas themselves. Instead of painting the inner life of a person place or thing, Kandinsky attempted to represent the “things” of the inner life. Painting is a timeless art because it has always been about illuminating and therefore valuing the inner life. Although Kandinsky’s work appears to be a rejection of tradition, I don’t believe that he intended it to be that way. I think, like other modernists at the time, Kandinsky was rejecting the calcification and stagnation of traditional painting, not the tradition itself. When the arts become absorbed in materialism, it is difficult to see a way forward that can restore a healthy culture of art and inspire the creativity of the next generation. According to Kandinsky, only by returning the soul of painting back to its body can the tradition of painting find its true purpose.