by Pavlina Chakarova
Wassily Kandinsky, "Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor)", 1910
The transcendental searches of the abstract artists, often misunderstood or ignored, are indelible part of the art history. Abstract art emerges in Europe between 1910 and 1920. Nowadays, it is more or less described as a modern movement which distinguishes itself with the non-objective approach to reality. The emphasis is on harmony by combining colours and geometric shapes that can evoke different emotions and associations. But they hardly mention the preconditions for its formation, an ancient metaphysical knowledge, drawn from Eastern religions and the Theosophical writings of Blavatsky and Steiner. My intention with this article is to expand this common idea of abstract art. I would like to move the focus on its occult essence and to throw a different light on the movement, which I think reveals its true nature – to represent the spiritual. To trace its deep philosophical roots I consider necessary a closer examination of the notions like metaphysics and theosophy.
Metaphysics and theosophy
The best way to get into the core of the metaphysics would be to take a look at Aristotle’s writings, which first in history acquire the label “metaphysics” and are still indicated by this term. According to Aristotle the metaphysics is equal to the Philosophy at all, because it includes all the prerequisites for knowledge of life. He names it “the first philosophy”, “universal wisdom” or “theology”, because according to him, God is the foundation of all the things and should be examined closely by this science. It studies both the visible, sensual reality and transcendental matters such as the world’s nature and genesis, in order to gain an entire and complete view of life. The questions, which the metaphysics seeks to answer, are why does the world exist, who is God and how is the body connected to the soul? The greatest philosophers through the ages Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, despite the differences in their perceptions, are all metaphysicians. They all examine the world as a whole and seek to determine the position and the importance of the human in it. The influence of the German idealism on the German literature is historically significant. The works of art of Goethe, Lessing, Novalis, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse are interpretations of those philosophical ideas manifested in the mystical thirst for communion and engagement with God.
The Theosophical society exists since antiquity and it’s based on metaphysical ideas for the unity of the immortal soul with the divine source. In the late 19th century the Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky entitles her philosophical doctrine Theosophy and together with the Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, they become a main source of inspiration for the abstract artist. Their ideology examines art as a possibility for dealing with immaterial world, as a form of spiritual existence. They see the human being as an entirety of a mortal Body, an evolving Soul and an immortal Spirit. Art creativity derives exactly from this connection with the spiritual world. The soul comes down to earth and enters the body. Then the intuitive sensual aspiration of portraying her astral essence, which she possesses before the psychical birth, arises. Thanks to the arts, while being on earth, the human is constantly involved in the eternal matters. In a spiritual sense we are present in the colours and shapes and seek a contact with the immaterial dimensions, which we feel subconsciously connected with. This perception of the world in colours gives us an opportunity to realize our own divine nature, which embodies an old cosmic memory. For that reason it is wrong to think of the inspiration as a theoretically staging issue. Self-expression should be associated with the self-discovery of our cosmic identity, which is unique and can be reached only through our own intuition. Each work of art is unique by itself and emerges from the peculiarity of an artist with its own mark and aesthetics.
True creativity depicts the big human struggle for achieving harmony between the divine and the physical world. Then it applies the feeling of eternity to the moment trough handling of the colour perspective and the space dimensions. That is how works of art, with their sublime elements, take the viewer into the cosmic realms. They become a physical footprint of the otherworldly reality.
I think this is the right place for expanding the notion of religious art as well. If we assume that the religion is a self-knowledge and the fact that we express this self-knowledge in art, then each form of it should be considered as spiritual. Each creation should be an expression of our divine essence. Religion is inside us, it’s not an abstract notion. That’s why I would like to consider art as inner self religion experience. We can trace its roots since the dawn of mankind, art has always been spiritual. With the beginning of the abstract movement it only became more exposed and people began to realize it as such.
Abstract artists and the colour. Bauhaus
Goethe, whose works Steiner truly admires, first examines the colour. Just like Aristotle he is a philosopher, enlightened in the metaphysics and his “Theory of Colours” contains some of the earliest published descriptions of colour impact. Goethe considers art as revelations of the innermost secrets of the world and according to him the dominating role for its creation plays the intuition. His writings combine the purity of style with deep philosophical ideas; his book about the colours has a huge impact on the realm of the art. Wassily Kandinsky, the founder of abstract art, describes it as “one of the most fundamental scientific researches”.
Kandinsky is a Russian painter who creates his first abstract works in 1910 in Munich. Highly inspired by the Theosophy of Blavatsky and Steiner’s Anthroposophy, he began to preach the interconnection between colours and feelings. He talks about the impact of art and the dialogue revealed between the viewer and the artist’s work. Kandinsky stood up for the thesis that certain colours respond certain emotions. He took the shape and the colour as means of expression of our spiritual life. Totally in the spirit of the theosophy, the colours and the shape for him are material states of the soul that can be intuitively comprehended by the spectator. According to him, every phenomenon can be experienced in two ways: externally or inwardly. The pure physical effect of a colour is momentary and forgettable in the moment when we face in another direction. But the superficial impression can expand and arise a whole chain of physic experiences. During a process of a further development, they acquire inner value and sounding, creating a strong spiritual excitement. That is when the colour reaches the soul. The colour possesses inner life. “Colour is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many chords. The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.” Therefore, the colours harmony should be based solely on the principle of the proper human soul approaching. This basis he calls principle of inner necessity. The inner necessity according to Kandinsky is inevitable desire for self-expression and is intuitive by nature. The intuitive wisdom is the only direct knowledge, which can enlighten the human to see the truth. By listening to his inner necessity the artist makes a connection with his divine nature. And the circle closes. The internal picturesque thing, that we call work of art becomes an expression and finds a reason to exist. It announces the truth and unveils the otherworld. Kandinsky publishes his ideas in the book “Concerning the Spiritual in art”.
In 1913 another emblematic art figure in the field of pure abstract painting – Kazimir Malevich creates his first painting in abstract-geometric style, which he calls “suprematism” (from the Latin supremus, which stands above everything, which cannot be surpassed). It’s a new system of non-objective elements that expresses pure emotions – the only source of all creation. According to him, materialness and corporealness should be minimized. The main motives of Malevich’s suprematic compositions are geometric combinations of squares, crosses, circles and triangles.
Meanwhile the abstractionists establish a group, named “The Blue Rider”. The name is derived from Franz Marc’s and Kandinsky’s love for horses and the blue colour. For them the blue colour is the symbol of spirituality, the darker the hue, the more expressed aspiration for the infinity. The members shared the mutual interest for the revelation of the spiritual truths by means of art. Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of the WW I, the group doesn’t last long.
Despite all the abstract movement continues its development and in 1919 Walter Gropius founds the innovatory art school Bauhaus in Germany. With artists such as Wassily Kandinsky at the forefront, it quickly becomes a focus for artist interested in spirituality. His lectures about the interaction of form and colour are of great importance, a topic that excites everybody in the school. I would like to mention just some of the lecturers, about which I believe, will expand, add and strengthen the up to now different approach towards the theory of colours and their transcendental mission.
Johannes Itten, the teacher with the most eccentric clothing, includes his spiritual practices in his teaching methods in order to improve them. At Bauhaus he introduces his students to the Mazdaznan – a study for the breathing, health, nutrition and proper thinking. Itten’s classes started with meditative exercises, similar to the yoga asanas for concentration. He is vegetarian and meditates regularly to develop his intuition, which for him is the main source of inspiration and awakens our senses. For that purpose he used colour diagrams, trying to get into their spiritual message. He is learning from the works Goethe about the impact of the colours on people and is convinced that people react on colours individually.
The class that Oscar Schlemmer leads in Bauhaus is called “Human being”. The focus is put on the geometric forms of the human body such as chin’s square, the circle of the belly, the cylinder of the neck and arms, the sphere of the head, the triangle of the nose and the line connecting the hearth with the brain. These abstractions of the human body, which direct us to our cosmic identity, Schlemmer calls “figurines”. Using costumes of different shapes and various colours, he stages abstract dance performances at Bauhaus. The dancers create different geometric shapes like spheres, spirals and squares that make the impact of the performance greater.
Paul Klee is the teacher who stayed in Bauhaus for the longest time. He was initiated into the mystics of art due to the German metaphysical idealism. Klee thinks of the material world as one of the many existing realities. “I don’t reflect the superficial; I’m gazing deep into the human soul. The faces of the people I paint are more reliable that the real ones. The man in my works is a macro element of the microcosm.” he says. Paul Klee plays the violin and meditates with classical music. It helps him to focus before starting to paint. In his lessons he visualizes the musical compositions of famous composers, joining the sounds with different colours. That is why the fact that he finds inspiration for most of his abstract forms in the music is not a surprise for anybody. This simultaneous perception of different senses is called synesthesia (from the ancient Greek σύν (syn), “together,” and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), “sensation”) and has been known to mankind for millennia. The synesthesia is directly linked to creativity. Synesthets are many famous artists, writers and musicians. The list with the artists, who believed in it, includes Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Nabokov and Franz Liszt. Though less consciously sought, we find the same approach in Robert Delaunay paintings.
The interaction between colour, shape and movement is a research subject for the music teacher Gertrud Grunau. She composes her own melodies and like her other colleagues believes that all the senses should be harmonized before the process of self-expression and that one’s ability of self-expression depends entirely on laws rooted in its own sense of colour, shape and sound.
The Universal unity and the androgyny
The term androgyny, like the one of abstract art, is quite underexposed nowadays. The universal unity of male and female, placed above all philosophies, is present as a symbol in all kind of religions through the double structures of Yin and Yang (in Taoism), Shiva and Shakti (in Hinduism), Yb-Hume (in Buddhism), the star of David (in Judaism), the crescent and star (as in Islam) and the Christian cross. One of the most common symbols is the mandala – a square containing a circle in it. The least known is the one of the human body unifying the origin of masculine and feminine spirituality, which embodies the knowledge of cosmic unity. Since ancient times many deities are depicted precisely as half a man, half a woman.
Dualism is the main topic in the art of many authors. The struggle between the male and female power is the sign of the Creation, and they believe that it stands in the basis for the creative impulse. One of them is Piet Mondrian, the Dane famous with his perpendicular abstract structures. He is also a follower of the Theosophy of Blavatsky and his works depict the constant struggle for harmonization of the male and female eternal inception, represented through the visual balance between colour and shape. In his paintings we meet again the idea of the artist’s vocation as a channel. He creates his grid works without any calculations, led entirely by his intuition and the desire to fuse with the utopian ideal of universal harmony.
The theme of the Androgyny interested Marcel Duchamp for a long time. His works are often associated with Dadaism and surrealism. The main basis for these movements is the idea of the unconscious, developed by Sigmund Freud, who believes that significant psychic events take place “under the surface” in the unconscious. Duchamp avoids describing his work of art; in one interview he defines it as metaphysical. Art for him is a gateway leading to a dimension that is beyond space and time and that can be reached, solely relying on your own intuition. He looks on the Dada movement as a protest against the physical side of painting, that doesn’t suppose the involvement of any feelings at all. Duchamp pointed out that self-centeredness can be removed from the artistic process, or at least moved aside. He achieves that by his “ready-mades” objects by anonymous author. With them he puts away the concept of the “self” from the object and implements the idea for the selection as an act of art. The unification of self and not-self is the aim of the metaphysical philosophy. According to it our conscious, burdened by precursory attitudes and expectations, hinder us to reach the wisdom of our innerself. The liberation from all our engagements and attitudes leads to an overcoming of the restrictions of the ego-mind and to a gaining of the intuitive wisdom. It draws us to the concept of the androgyny, to the universal harmony, which exists due to the balance between the two opposing elements.
The subject of the energy balance and the supernatural excites many more authors, working during the Dada-Surrealist era. The “Barbarian’s Venus” by Paul Klee is a Venus with a penis. The lower part of Miro’s “Dawn Perfumed by a Shower of Gold” is quite female, while the upper part is quite male. “Princess X” of Brancusi, the “Demeter” and the “Idol” of Arp are remarkable androgynies taking the viewer into the transcendental dimensions. Salvador Dali is a great alchemist interested in occult and abstract geometry. Giorgio de Chirico with his vivid contrasts and fantastic works introduces the term “metaphysical painting” in art. Just like Kandinsky, Ives Klein uses the blue colour in his works of art to take the viewer into the void – the “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” where the spirit, free form delusions, reflects the infinite universe.”
Guggenheim Museum and the Abstract Expressionism in America
The political instability in Europeat the end of the 30’s of the 20th century and the wartime force many of the abstract artists to emigrate to the States. They laid there the foundations of the Abstract Expressionism, which can be considered as a natural extension of the metaphysical figurative painting.
In 1939 the first Museumof Non-Objective Paintingis founded on 54th Streetin New York (renamed to “The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum” in 1952). Its director and curator is Hilla Rebay. Hilla arrives to U.S. in 1927, where she met the American magnate Solomon Guggenheim; an event that changed the history of modern art. As prominent theosophist Rebay believes that art is a vehicle, which transports both the artist and the viewer in the spiritual realms. She was initiated into the non-objective art in Europeand actively took part in many vanguard exhibitions. Hilla mixed in the circle of the abstract artists and collected paintings of Bauer and Kandinsky. She quickly convinced Guggenheim to start a collection of his own. This is the beginning of the abstract art collection of Guggenheim. In 1959 the Museum moves to his current building on 5th Avenue, built by Frank Lloyd Wright. The dream of Hilla Rebay is to establish a museum of contemporary art, which will serve both as a temple of the abstract art and a temple of the soul. This led her to Wright, an American architect, who designs buildings in harmony with the surrounding environment, which he calls organic architecture. The concept of the museum as a temple comes from Ancient Greece. „Mouseion” was a sacred temple dedicated to the Muses, the goddesses of the arts in the Greek mythology. The erection of the spiral rotonda took 16 years. Neither Guggenheim, nor Wright lived to see its opening. Unfortunately, when the museum was completed, a number of important details of Wright’s design like the interior to be painted off-white and the viewing of artworks to start downwards from the top level were ignored.
Active artist during this period of time are Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Williem de Kooning, who also consider contemplation of a painting as a spiritual experience. Rothko uses the colour as an expression of human emotions and believes that art is a key to the subconscious. There is a strong influence of Native American culture that can be seen in the works of Pollock. He studied the Indian sand painting, which symbolizes the relationships and the dynamic network of spiritual powers. He borrows their “drip art technique” with which, like being in a shamanistic ritual sinks into the depths of his sub-consciousness and gives expression of his feelings, connecting with the primal source.
The differentiation of the Abstract Expressionism at the beginning of the 60’s leads to new styles of art and moves away from its original ideas. They are still sensible in the kinetic mobiles of Alexander Calder and in the circles of Kenneth Noland, but the geometric abstraction has started more and more frequently to be seen as an academic form of art with old fashioned understanding of composition. With the arising of the movements like Pop art, Hard edge, Minimalism and Conceptual art starts an obvious tendency for an alienation from the expressive qualities of the figurative art. The minimalist deny the need of self-expression, the symbolism of colours and shapes and the art’s connection to the transcendental. The topic of their interests is lays entirely on physical appearance of the object and its aesthetic values. The return to the ideas of abstract art comes with the Post-Minimalist period. Many of the artists turn against the present depersonalization and put the focus on the inner life of the work again. The vivid expressive colour combinations of the Neo-Expressionism are a protest against the Conceptual and Minimal art. In the current era, when the evolution has reached the independently thinking person, the transcendental continues to excite famous contemporary artists like Anish Kapoor and Alex Grey. Art is eternal, it changes its forms at times, but the connection with the spiritual world is constant. I would unify them as one universal style of self-expression, style of truth.
Bibliography:
Kandinsky, Wassily, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, Sofia: LIK, 1998
Steiner, Rudolf, “The Arts and Their Mission”, Stara Zagora: DASKALOV, 2004
Graham, Lanier, “Duchamp and Androgyny: Art, Gender, and Metaphysics”, NO-THING PRESS, 2003
http://bauhaus-online.de/
http://www.guggenheim.org
