Analysis Of Concerning The Spiritual In Art By Kandinsky

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The basic tenets of materialism and abstraction often clash against one another. Materialism, after all, results in “shapeless, [describable] emotions such as fear and joy,” while abstraction encompasses those “inner, subtler feelings…beyond the reach of words” (Section I, Paragraph 4). These contrasting depths of emotion give rise to the potent tension between materialism and abstraction in Section VI, Paragraph 18 of Kandinsky’s essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” Here, Kandinsky comments on those “rhomboidal composition[s] made up of a number of human figures [which are] an absolute necessity to the composition,” criticizing the figures’ material appeal for “directly weakening [the composition’s] abstract appeal.” While Kandinsky correctly …show more content…
Immediately after he begins his essay, for example, he accuses “the nightmare of materialism… for turning the life of the universe into an evil, useless game” (Section 1, Paragraph 3). However strong his language may be, Kandinsky validates this disdain by asking the reader to imagine “a building divided into many rooms” three paragraphs later. In this mental exercise, Kandinsky recounts the experience of a typical museumgoer who “goes from wall to wall [looking at paintings], reading the names… [and] then goes away neither richer nor poorer than when they came, [simply there to] admire the quality of painting as one enjoys a pasty.” For those museumgoers who attend exhibitions simply to seem sophisticated to their social cohorts, this unfortunate occurrence is certainly the norm, and even those who go to a museum for spiritual enjoyment can end up focusing more on the nameplate besides a painting than on the actual painting itself. Armed with this particular example, one can easily see why Kandinsky might disregard his own advice about artistic freedom in his attempt to stave off the more menacing dangers of materialism. Indeed, in Section VI, Paragraph 23, Kandinsky asserts that “there is no ‘must’ in art, because art is free,” even though he states previously in paragraph 18 “[that] the human form [in a rhomboidal composition] must either be replaced…or remain a purely non-material symbol.” If materialism (defined here as the inclusion of a human merely to conform to artistic expectations) can detract from a masterpiece’s meaning like a nameplate besides a painting can, Kandinsky has good reason to ask artists to remove unnecessary materialistic references from their

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