Art, Kandinsky, and Self-transformation
by Dr. John Algeo
Dr. John Algeo is international vice president of The Theosophical Society, and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, where he was Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor of English until his retirement. He has been a Fulbright Research Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow at the University of London. He is a past President of the American Dialect Society, the American Name Society, and the Dictionary Society of North America. He was editor of American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society, for ten years and is the author of numerous academic books and articles dealing with the history of the English language, British-American differences, and current usage, most recently the forthcoming Cambridge University Press book British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns. He is author of the book Reincarnation Explored, co-author of The Power of Thought, and editor of The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky and of the forthcoming new edition of G. R. S. Mead’s Echoes from the Gnosis. He has been the editor of the Quest magazine and presents Theosophical courses and lectures around the world.
Wassily Kandinsky, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, is known as the father of modern abstract art. Some art critics think that, because abstract art does not depict physical objects, it is non-representational that is, it does not depict anything but is concerned solely with technique: with line, colour, and shape. But that is not what Kandinsky thought. He maintained that abstract art represents the inner side of reality rather than the outer form, the esoteric rather than the exoteric. And he also maintained that because abstract art is concerned with the inner side, it can be a means for self-transformation. Given his view of the purpose of art, it is not surprising that Kandinsky was deeply influenced by Theosophy.
Kandinsky wrote a manifesto for abstract art, called Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Uber das Geistige in der Kunst). In it he showed something of the influence Theosophy had on him by a reference to both Theosophy and H.P. Blavatsky:
Madame 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 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 [The Key toTheosophy,1889 ].
Theosophy, according to Blavatsky, is synonymous with eternal truth.
In his manifesto for abstract art, Kandinsky set forth a number of strikingly Theosophical ideas, of which seven are mentioned here.
I. Spirit or Inner Reality and Subtle Worlds
By the word ‘spiritual’ in the title of his book, Kandinsky meant ‘conscious, aware, purposeful, meaningful’ in contrast to what he called the ‘nightmare of materialism’, which he associated with despair, ‘lack of purpose and aim’, atheism, positivism in science, and naturalism or realism in art. For Kandinsky, naturalistic, representational art depicts only the surface appearance of things and thus loses the inner meaning that he sought to express in his abstractions.
Kandinsky also posited the existence of subtle worlds of matter, in which feelings and thoughts have form and existence as material entities: ‘Thought … although a product of the spirit, can be defined with positive science, as matter, but of fine and not coarse substance.’
Kandinsky’s paintings fall into four periods, partly reflecting their kind of meaning and corresponding to the four planes of human existence recognized in Theosophy:
1. physical, objective paintings that are impressionist or symbolic (before 1910).
2. emotional, abstract paintings of two sorts: (a) improvisations (‘unconscious, spontaneous expression of inner character, the non-material nature’ that contain no recognizable objects, but coloured shapes that express feelings) and (b) compositions (‘an expression of a slowly formed inner feeling, tested and worked over repeatedly’ that include recognizable objects, but ones that have been ‘stripped’ and ‘veiled’) (1910s).
3. mental, geometrical paintings from the Bauhaus period (1920s).
4. intuitional, biomorphic paintings (1930 and after).
2. Meaning and Purpose
Everything in the universe has meaning and purpose in it: ‘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.’
3. The Inner Life and the One Life
Kandinsky thought that all things, even supposedly dead matter, are vital and alive. Thus he praised the French painter Cezanne for his perception of the inner life of things: ‘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.
The casual reader might mistake those words for metaphor. But Kandinsky intended them literally. Cezanne did not simply paint a teacup with such skill that it seemed to be alive – that is not what Kandinsky is saying. Rather he says that Cezanne ‘realized the existence of something alive’. Cezanne captured on canvas something real – the life of the ‘inanimate’ because ‘he was endowed with the gift of divining’ it. Teacups, like all objects, have a life in them. Only the diviner, the seer, can perceive it. As Kandinsky put it in an essay, ‘On the Question of Form’, ‘Even dead matter is living spirit’.
4. Evolution and the Teachers
Kandinsky viewed history as cyclical, a succession of periods of culture, each with its own unique style of art and its own unique characteristics. In the course of cyclical history, all Nature is evolving towards greater consciousness. Kandinsky said that, in the process of evolution, some human beings have developed ‘a deep and powerful prophetic strength’ and ‘a secret power of vision’; those advanced souls point the way to others. Kandinsky likened humanity to a triangle whose base consists of the mass of humanity. At the apex of the triangle are a few beings, and ultimately often a single 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.’ Despite the abuse and rejection, the teacher at the apex, by personal effort, succeeds in inspiring and motivating those below, so that eventually they rise towards his position. In turn they inspire those still lower in the triangle to follow, so that eventually the entire triangle moves upwards – all as the result of the labour of the few or of the one with vision at the top.
Kandinsky’s triangle of humanity is Theosophical in two ways. First, it envisions humanity as consisting of persons at different levels of progress, at different stages of spiritual evolution. And second, it envisions each level of humanity as aiding and assisting those who are less advanced, helping them to progress, along with the self-sacrificing individual of sorrows, the Bodhisattva, at the top, who lives only to raise the rest of humanity to greater spirituality – that is, to greater self-awareness.
5. Progressivism
The consequence of the upward movement of the triangle and the labours of the Bodhisattva-s at its apex is the gradual improvement of the human condition. Kandinsky quoted with approval Blavatsky’s vision of the future betterment of humankind at the end of The Key to Theosophy:
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. (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 13-14).
For Kandinsky, the improvement of the world and the human condition is the purpose of art. That improvement can result only from an increase in self-awareness, that is, an increase in spirituality. Like Blavatsky, Kandinsky saw both universal and human history as governed by an evolutionary impulse that responds to purpose as well as to causes and that moves towards a preconceived end.
6. The Inner Necessity and Svadharma
Kandinsky believed that each person has an inner Notwendigkeit need, necessity, inevitability, essentialness which ultimately determines all outward forms and actions. This inner necessity or essentialness is what the Hindu tradition refers to as the svadharma of a being its self-nature or inner foundation. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky speaks of it in these words: ‘The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards.’ In evolution, we move towards a goal; but the goal is set from within and it expresses our inmost nature. We transform ourselves in order to become that which we truly are.
7. Art as Yoga
Art is a kind of Yoga, the purpose of which is to further evolution: ‘ … we are fast approaching a time of reasoned and conscious composition …We have before us an age of conscious creation, and this new spirit in painting is going hand in hand with thought towards an epoch of the great spiritual’ (Motherwell). Kandinsky believed that art and thought together are becoming more self-aware and will serve to increase self-awareness. A time of significantly increased self-awareness is what Kandinsky means by ‘an epoch of the great spiritual’. That epoch of the great spiritual is a time of increased consciousness when humans will go beyond ordinary mental activity to reliance on the sort of reason and perception that Theosophy associates with buddhi. In The Secret Doctrine, maha-buddhi (literally, ‘the great spiritual ‘) is another name for what is also called mahat, or divine mind, which is the cosmic equivalent of self-consciousness in human beings (vol.1:p334,p451 ). Kandinsky anticipated a time when maha-buddhi, the great enlightenment or awareness, would be the normal state of consciousness; and he thought that art would play a role in bringing that time into being: ‘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.’
Kandinsky can be called a Theosophical artist on several grounds. He was aware of Theosophical writings, particularly those of H.P. Blavatsky and of Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, whose book Thought Forms influenced his painting (Ringbom). Thus his practice was influenced by Theosophical models. In addition, his theory of art reflects Theosophical concepts, both explicitly and implicitly. But Kandinsky was a Theosophical artist especially because his motive for the practice of his art was to improve the condition of all human beings by helping them in the process of self-transformation.§
References
1. Algeo, John, ‘Kandinsky and Theosophy’, in H.P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine, ed. Virginia Hanson, 217-35, Theosophical Publishing House, Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, 1988.
2. Kandinsky, Wassily, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. MTH Sadler, Dover, New York, 1977. Reprint of the first English translation, 1914.
3. Motherwell, Robert, ed., Concerning the Spiritual in Art., Wittenborn, Schultz, New York, 1947. Revision of the first English translation with changes supplied by Nina Kandinsky.
4 Ringbom, Sixten, ‘Art in “The Epoch of the Great Spiritual”: Occult Elements in the Early Theory of Abstract Painting’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966),386-418.
The Theosophical Society 2006
reproduced from ‘The Theosophist’ September 2004 (Vol 125 No.12), The Journal of The Theosophical Society, International HQ: Adyar, India http://www.ts-adyar.org
http://www.theosophical-society.org.uk