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40 pages 1 hour read

Wassily Kandinsky

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1911

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Background

Historical Context: The Blue Rider Group

When he wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky was living in Munich, Germany, then the scene of one of Europe’s major modern art movements. This movement started in 1892, when a group of artists left Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts—the city’s major arts institution—over what they considered its restrictive and overly conservative rules. Known as the Munich Secession, this event led to the development of an active modern-art scene centered around the Munich neighborhood of Schwabing.

Kandinsky moved to Munich in 1896 to begin his art career. There, he eventually formed the Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter) group of artists, which championed such modern styles as expressionism, post-Impressionism, and eventually abstraction. Named after Kandinsky’s painting The Blue Rider, the group (which included Franz Marc, August Macke, and Kandinsky’s girlfriend, Gabriele Münter, in addition to Kandinsky himself) published a magazine of the same name in which they espoused their artistic philosophy. Between 1911 and 1914, the group presented a series of exhibitions that they shared their work with the public for the first time, to a mixed critical response. Concerning the Spiritual in Art grew directly out of Kandinsky’s involvement with the Blue Riders and can be seen as a manifesto of their aesthetic beliefs about the relationship between abstraction and spiritual expression.

The Blue Riders dispersed with the outbreak of World War I, but their works and ideas are considered to have laid the groundwork for modern abstract art.

Philosophical Context: Theosophy

Derived from Greek roots meaning “God” and “wisdom,” modern Theosophy is an occult religious and philosophical movement that arose in the late 19th century with roots in such ancient schools of thought as Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Buddhism. Derived from the writings of the Russian aristocrat Helena Blavatsky and her New York City-based Theosophical Society, Theosophy emphasized the importance of mystical experience and direct intuition of the divine, the possibility of achieving higher spiritual consciousness, and a common core shared by all religions and belief systems. Theosophists also believed that humanity as a whole was gradually evolving into a higher spiritual state.

Although he remained officially a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Kandinsky was highly influenced by Theosophical ideas. His idea of the spiritual triangle seems directly rooted in Theosophical doctrines, as do his theories about the mystical properties of color and his prioritizing of intuitive expression and inner meaning in art. With its emphasis on spirituality and the intangible, Theosophy was part of a larger reaction against the trends of scientific materialism and rationalism which Kandinsky criticizes in Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

The spiritualistic and occult movements that flourished at the turn of the 20th century—Theosophy among them—were an important formative influence on modernism in the arts as a whole, influencing many artists, poets, and writers who attended seances or occult rituals to inspire their work.

Scientific Context: Synesthesia

From the Greek for “perceiving together,” synesthesia is a “neurophysiological trait in which the stimulation of one sense causes the automatic experience of another sense” (Encyclopedia Britannica). People with synesthesia often claim to “hear” colors or “see” sounds, as if the experience of one sense is triggering another in the mind or imagination. The causes and mechanism of synesthesia are not fully understood; one theory links it to communication between regions of the cerebral cortex in the brain that are usually pruned away during neural development. Although unusual, synesthesia is not considered a disease, and many people who have it see it as a gift leading to creativity and unique perceptions.

Kandinsky is believed to have had the trait, and throughout the book, he discusses (without actually using the term “synesthesia”) the phenomenon of the various senses working “in harmony” in the various arts. He gives several examples of the cross-wiring of different senses in Pages 24-25, including a medical patient who experienced “a feeling of seeing a blue color” (24) when eating a certain sauce, and the claim of some people to perceive colors as “scented.” He also connects the commonly accepted concept of “warm” and “cool” colors with synesthesia. In his discussion of colors in Chapter 6, he frequently pairs the colors with the sounds of various instruments.

A number of artists at the turn of the 20th century experienced synesthesia or were influenced by the concept. One was the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, cited several times by Kandinsky in the book, who invented a “color keyboard” and proposed combining orchestral music with scents and colored light in his concerts. For Kandinsky, as for Scriabin, the phenomenon of synesthesia is tied in with his strong interest in multiple arts and his hope for a union of the arts so as to create a total, all-encompassing artistic experience. Throughout the book, Kandinsky describes painting in musical terms and also includes poetry, theater, and dance in his discussion of aesthetics. 

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