Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Kandinsky compares spiritual progress to an acute-angled triangle that widens out toward its base and is divided horizontally into segments. This triangle is continually and almost imperceptibly moving “forwards and upwards” (6) so that the lower portions of the triangle experience the various stages of progress later than the upper parts. Thus, all levels of the triangle are progressing, but at different rates. At the summit of the triangle stands a single, solitary artist whom the lower levels of the triangle do not understand but who is nevertheless showing the way to the future. And at all the lower levels of the triangle are “solitary visionaries” who, being able to see beyond their own segment, act as “prophets” to those around them, helping humanity gradually to advance in the “spiritual life.”

Before such advancement is reached, however, there is a period of “blackness” in which art can be said to have “lost her soul.” This happens because art becomes excessively specialized and technical and concerned only with reproducing the external world in a realistic style. Artists concentrate on technical innovation for its own sake and form competitive cliques, and the

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