Art in The Epoch of The Great Spiritual

Art in 'The Epoch of the Great Spiritual': Occult Elements in the Early Theory of Abstract
Painting
Author(s): Sixten Ringbom
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 29 (1966), pp. 386-418
Published by: The Warburg Institute
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ART IN 'THE EPOCH OF THE GREAT SPIRITUAL'
OCCULT ELEMENTS IN THE EARLY THEORY
OF ABSTRACT PAINTING
By
Sixten
Ringbom
In
a review of a recent book on
Kandinsky1
the
anonymous
reviewer of
The Times
Literary Supplement
criticized the author for not
going
into 'the
apparently contradictory
mixture of the
nebulously mystical
and the
aridly
rational in
Kandinsky's approach
to abstraction'. 'This is not
only
his most
puzzling
and
fascinating characteristic',
the reviewer
continued,
'it also
explains
both his isolated
position
as an artist and his double
appeal today
to
the two
wings
hard and
soft--of
nonfigurative painting.'2
This critical observation
applies
not
only
to the work then under
review,3
but to much of what
today
is written on the
early phases
of abstract art.
Kandinsky's biographers
have shown faint interest in the artist's documented
preoccupations
with the occult or his attitude to
theosophy
and the
teachings
of Rudolf Steiner.
Grohmann4
remarks that
Kandinsky
shared Steiner's
'feeling
that the world was headed for
disaster,
that science had
failed,
and
that there was need for a
spiritual rebirth',
but at the same time assures the
reader that
although Kandinsky may
have been influenced
by
Steiner's
spiritual vision,
the artist's 'interest in such matters subsided as he became
clearer in his own mind about the role of rational elements in art.'
According
to
Grohmann,
Steiner's influence on
Kandinsky's painting
is restricted to the
activity
before
I914.5 Johannes Eichner6
devotes no less than six
pages
to
Kandinsky's
connexions with
occultism,
but none the less concludes that these
somewhat
surprising preoccupations
did not affect
Kandinsky's
art.7 Haft-
manns
notes the
theosophical
interests of the Blue Rider
group,
but adds the
cryptic qualification
that 'this
religious
sentiment remained
free, unformulated,
open
to all wonders and
prepared
to see the wonder of revelation
every-
where'.
According
to
Cassou,9 Kandinsky's
idealism at first drew 'a little'
upon theosophical writings by Steiner,
H. P.
Blavatsky,
Annie Besant and
Edouard
Schurd,
but
only
when it was
independent
of such influences did this
idealism
express
itself with full force.
This
general tendency
to belittle the role of occultism in the
early theory
The author wishes to thank Professor E. H.
Gombrich,
Professor L. D.
Ettlinger
and Mr.
J.
B.
Trapp
for advice and
suggestions,
and
Dr. H. K.
Rothel,
Blauer Reiter-Archiv der
Stadtischen Galerie
Mtinchen,
for the in-
formation contained in
Appendix
I.
1
Jacques Lassaigne, Kandinsky, 1964.
2
The Times Literary Supplement, no. 3282,
21
January 1965.
a Lassaigne, op. cit., pp. 40, 53ff. Lassaigne
calls the first half of
Kandinsky's Uber
das
Geistige
in der Kunst 'a
long mystical
medita-
tion',
but does not discuss the sources of this
mysticism.
"Will
Grohmann, Kandinsky, Life
and
Work, 1959, pp. 41, 54, 84.
5 Ibid., p. 41.
6 Johannes Eichner, Kandinsky
und Gabriele
Mainter;
Von
Ursprdngen
moderner
Kunst,
[i1957],
pp. 17-21.
v Ibid., p. 19.
S
Werner
Haftmann, Painting
in the Twen-
tieth
Century, i, 1960, p. i I8.
9Jean
Cassou, 'Wassily Kandinsky-Der
Mensch und das
Werk',
in:
Wassily
Kan-
dinsky, Gegenkldnge; Aquarelle
und
Zeichnungen,
1960, p. 19.
386
OCCULT ELEMENTS IN ABSTRACT PAINTING
387
of
abstraction10
has
curiously
evaded the
questions posed by
T. H.
Robsjohn-
Gibbings's
choleric but
illuminating
attack on the revival of
magic
in modern
art,
Mona Lisa's
Mustache.'1 Only recently
the
importance
of
theosophy
in
the formation of
Kandinsky's
art and
theory
of art has been stressed
by
L. D.
Ettlinger.'2
The
present paper
is intended to
supplement Ettlinger's
observations with a discussion of what the T.L.S. reviewer described as 'the
nebulously mystical'
in
Kandinsky
and his circle.
I
In
1896 Wassily Kandinsky
abandoned his
juridical
career and moved
to Munich to
study painting.
From
1904
onwards he travelled
extensively,
and in
1908
he settled in Murnau in Bavaria
together
with Gabriele
Miinter,
whom he had met six
years
earlier.
10
Carola Giedion-Welcker ('Kandinsky,
le
th6oricien',
in Max Bill
[ed.], Wassily
Kandinsky, 1951, pp.
0
o2f.),
and Peter Selz
('The
Aesthetic Theories of
Wassily
Kan-
dinsky
and their
Relationship
to the
Origin
of
Non-Objective Painting',
Art
Bulletin,
xxxix, 1957, pp. I27ff.,
German
Expressionist
Painting, 1957,
ch.
xviii)
both deal with
Kandinsky's
debt to
theosophy
in
general
terms
only.
The
present
writer did not have
access to the dissertations
by
Klaus Brisch
(Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944, Untersuchungen
zur
Entstehung
der
gegenstandslosen
Malerei an
seinem Werk von
9goo-1921,
Bonn
1955),
and
K. C. E.
Lindsay (An
Examination
of
the
Fundamental Theories
of Wassily Kandinsky,
Madison, Wis., I95I).
It is of some interest
to note that
Kandinsky's contemporaries
treated the
theosophical
character of U7ber
das
Geistige
as a matter of
course;
cf. a review
in Die
Kunst, Monatshefte fidr freie
und an-
gewandte Kunst, 25, 1912, p. 362:
'Man sieht
die
Teppichphantasien
Wassili
Kandinskis,
deren tieferen Sinn man auch mit Hilfe der
theosophischen Programmschrift
des Malers
nicht zu
ergrtinden vermag.'
11 Mona
Lisa's
Mustache:
A Dissection
of
Modern
Art, 1947,
ch. ix. Ever since the
violent reaction to the book
subsided,
Robsjohn-Gibbings
seems to have been
passed
over
by
historians of
twentieth-century
art in embarrassed silence. Not even A. H.
Nethercot,
the
specialist
on
theosophy,
takes
this 'eccentric art critic'
quite seriously
(The
First Five Lives
of
Annie
Besant, 196 I,
The
Last Four Lives
of
Annie
Besant, 1963, pp. 89f.).
Yet it was
by way
of Nethercot's reference
that the
book,
thanks to the kind observation
of Mr.
J.
B.
Trapp,
came to the
present
author's
attention;
this
happened
after the
completion
of this
paper,
and the author was
at the same time both
gratified
and dis-
concerted to find that
part
of what he had to
say
had
already
been said
(e.g.
on the role of
Besant's and Leadbeater's
thought forms;
Robsjohn-Gibbings, op. cit., pp. 84ff., I48f.).
The book is not even mentioned in the latest
editions of Grohmann's
monographs
on
Kandinsky (Kandinsky;
Leben und
Werk,
2nd
ed.,
1961,
Bibliography by
Bernard
Karpel)
and Klee
(Paul Klee, 4th ed., 1965,
Biblio-
graphy by
Hannah Muller
Applebaum),
or
in the same author's
E.
L.
Kirchner,
1958.
Nor is it
bibliographed,
let alone
discussed,
by
Selz
(see
n.
TO
above),
Bernard S.
Myers
(Expressionism:
A Generation in
Revolt, 1957),
John Golding (Cubism;
A
History
and
Analysis,
1959),
or Robert Rosenblum
(Cubism
and
Twentieth-Century Art, 1960).
Not even the
Marxist Rudolf Korn for whom this defence
of
bourgeois
common sense
would, paradoxi-
cally,
have been a
godsend,
knew of it in his
violent attack on 'the decadent art of the
imperialist
countries'
(Kandinsky
und die
Theorie der abstrakten
Malerei, 1960).
Mona
Lisa's Mustache
may
have struck some
writers as 'an
aggravating
and
irritating
book'
(H.
R.
Hope;
review in
College
Art
Journal, viii, 1947/48, pp.
I16ff.);
little service
is, however,
rendered art
history by
biblio-
graphers consigning
to oblivion unorthodox
polemical works,
be these ever so biassed or
distorted.
12
L. D.
Ettlinger, Kandinsky's
'At
Rest',
1961, pp. 6, 8f., 20f.; idem, 'Kandinsky',
L'
Eil, I
4, June
I964, p. 50.
The relation
between the Munich
artists, especially
Jawlensky,
and Steiner is discussed
by
Clemens
Weiler, Alexej Jawlensky, 1959, esp.
pp. 7off.
and Index s.v. Steiner.
13
Eichner, op. cit., p. 19.
388
SIXTEN RINGBOM
During
the
early years
of the
century Kandinsky
is
reported
to have
devoted himself to
contemplative
exercises in the Indian
manner.13
And
several testimonies of
persons
who met the artist in the crucial
years
around
1910 agree
in
stressing
the
odd, prophetic
side of his
personality.
Michael
Sadler,14
who visited him in
1912,
wrote that
Kandinsky
'was inclined
(though
not at all
obtrusively)
to talk about
religious things,
& is much interested in
mystical
books and the lives of the saints.' In
191I
August Macke15
described
him as a
'romanticist, dreamer,
fantast and
story-teller'.
Macke's wife
Elisabeth remembers
Kandinsky
as a
'very peculiar
and
strange type,
extra-
ordinarily inspiring
for all the artists who come under his
spell;
he has some-
thing peculiarly mystical, fantastic, coupled
with a
singular pathos
and
dogmatism.'
And she added that 'his art was like a
doctrine,
a Weltan-
schauung'.16
In fact
Kandinsky
himself mentioned his 'inclination for the
"Hidden",
for the
concealed'.17
During
the first decade of the
century Kandinsky began
to commit to
paper
his
thoughts
on art and life. In
1910,
the same
year
as he
painted
the
famous abstract
water-colour,
he
completed
the
manuscript
of Uber das
Geistige
in der
Kunst,
the first edition of which bears the date
1912 although
it
was
printed
in December
191I.ls
In
191I
he founded Der Blaue Reiter
together
with Franz
Marc,
and in the
following year
the calendar with the
same
title19
was issued
by
R.
Piper
& Co. in
Munich,
the house that had
published
Uber
das
Geistige.
In
1913 Kandinsky completed
his Riickblicke
which were
published
in the same
year.20
The title as well as some of the contents of Uber das
Geistige
in der Kunst is
really
more conventional than the
far-reaching importance
of the work would
lead us to
expect.
The title evokes associations with the idealistic trans-
cendentalism which
up
to the First World War still formed a sizeable
part
of
German
philosophical publishing.
The
polarity
or conflict Geist und Materie
was deemed a fit
subject
for academic research in the tradition and
terminology
of
nineteenth-century
romantic
philosophy.
Academic
philosophy
was still
widely expected
to be
comprehensive
in the sense of
providing
a coherent
Weltanschauung covering
all sectors of human
activity.
Four
years
before the
publication
of
Kandinsky's
treatise a now
forgotten
educational
thinker,
Dr.
Ernst Linde of
Gotha, published
a book called Natur und Geist als Grundschema
der
Welterklarung21
which is based on the
proposition
that 'Natur ist durch den
Geist
gestaltete
Materie'. This
work,
written in the tradition of the
'spiritual
metaphysics'
of Rudolf
Eucken,
contains some
surprising analogies
with the
14
Michael [Th.] Sadleir,
Michael Ernest
Sadler
1861-1943;
A Memoir
by
his
Son, 1949,
p. 238. According
to
Sadler, Kandinsky
had
also had
'strange experiences
of
healing by
faith'. Cf.
Appendix I,
below.
15
Letter of
I September 191 ;I quoted
in
G.
Vriesen, August Macke,
2nd
ed., 1957, p.
84.
16
Quoted after Vriesen, op. cit., p. 91.
17
Wassily Kandinsky, Rickblick, 1955,
p.
19:
'Die
Neigung
zum
"Versteckten",
zum
Verborgenen,
rettete mich vor den
schid-
lichen Seite der Volkskunst
...'
18
Here quoted after the 5th ed., Berne
1956 (hereafter 'U.d.G.'),
which follows the
slightly
revised text of the 2nd ed. of
1912.
19
Der Blaue
Reiter;
here
quoted
after the
2nd
ed., 1914.
20
Here quoted after the 1955 ed.
21
Ernst Linde, Natur und Geist als Grund-
schema der
Welterkldrung,
Versuch einer Kultur-
philosophie auf entwicklungsgeschichtlicher
Grund-
lage
als Unterbau einer
kinftigen Pddagogik, 1907.
389
terminology
and
arguments
of
Kandinsky.22
There
is, however,
no reason to
believe that
Kandinsky
knew Linde's
book;
it has
only
been mentioned as an
illustration of an intellectual environment where the discussion of 'the
spiritual
in art' was considered a most
profitable
and
urgent
task.
But even
allowing
for the idealistic
vocabulary
of
Kandinsky's milieu,
there are in Uber das
Geistige
in der Kunst elements that cannot be accounted
for
by
mere reference to the rather arid
jargon
of
philosophical
idealism. It
has been
pointed
out that
Kandinsky
must have studied Goethe's colour
theory23
and
aesthetics.24
And it
may
have been in this context that he first
came across the name of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner had edited the scientific
writings
of Goethe in
Joseph
Kiirschner's Deutsche
Nationallitteratur.25
He had
conceived his mission as an editor rather
widely;
the introductions and com-
mentaries not
only provide
the reader with the information
customary
for
text
editions,
but also advocate the basic soundness of Goethe's
approach
to
nature in contrast to the
unprofitable
narrowmindedness of
positivistic
science.
As
by-products
of his work in the Goethe Archive in Weimar Steiner wrote
a number of
studies,
of which two are
particularly
relevant in the
present
context. In 1888 he
published
a lecture on Goethe's
aesthetics,26
which he re-
wrote some
twenty years
later to meet the
requirements
of his recent
theosophical
orientation and which
appeared
in
1909
with the title Goethe als
Vater einer neuen
Aesthetik.27
In
1897
Steiner
published
Goethes
Weltanschauung,
22
E.g. the Goethean concepts of Freiheit
and
Notwendigkeit (op. cit., pp. 473f.). Linde,
who wrote before the
appearance
of Wilhelm
Worringer's
Abstraktion und
Einfiihlung
(1907),
also formulated the
principle
that
'jedes
Kunstwerk eine Abstraktion ist'. 'Schon das
Aisthetische
Schauen abstrahiert
ja
vom
wirklichen
Gegenstand
und
erzeugt
etwas
Geistiges:
das Bild'
(ibid., p. 462).
23
Grohmann, Kandinsky, p. 90; Ettlinger,
'Kandinsky', p. 50.
In U7.d.G.
(pp. 66, 85)
Kandinsky explicitly
refers to Goethe's idea
of a
'thorough
bass of
painting'.
In Diderot's
Versuch fiber
die
Mahlerei
(1798),
Goethe had
emphasized
that the
spectrum
'ist so
wenig
der Generalbass der
Farben,
als
ein
Dur-
accord der Generalbass der Musik ist... So
lange
nun in der Farbenlehre nicht auch
klar
wird,
dass die Totalitat der Phanomene
nicht unter
ein beschrinktes
Phanomen . .
.
gezw~ingt
werden
kann,
sondern dass
jedes
einzelne sich in den Kreis mit allen
tabrigen
stellen,
sich
ordnen,
sich unterordnen
muss;
so wird auch diese
Unbestimmtheit,
diese
Verwirrung
in der Kunst dauern . '
(Werke,
Weimar
ed.,
Abt.
I, 45, 1900,
p.
306).
In the Introduction to the Didactic Part of his
Farbenlehre, i, 180o,
Goethe believed that he
had created a theoretical basis for a
'gesetz-
liches
Hervorbringen' (ibid.,
Abt.
II, I, 1890,
p. xl),
and in the Materialien he
hoped
that
'die
Ktinstler
. . .
auch
bald das
Bedtirfnis
harmonischer
Nebeneinanderstellung
der
Farben
fthlen
und sich des Studiums dieses
Teiles der Kunst
gehorigermassen
befleiss-
igen
werden'
(ibid.,
Abt.
II, 3, 1893, P.
38of.).
In his
commentary
to the last
passage,
Steiner
distinguished
between 'outer'
and 'inner'
truth;
the latter
being
that 'alle
Einzelheiten in einer
wahrhaften,
harmoni-
schen
Ubereinstimmung sind', according
to
'eine
gewisse Notwendigkeit' (Goethes Werke,
in Deutsche
National-Litteratur,
I
17",
1897, p.
272).
Der Blaue Reiter
(p. 42) quotes
a
saying
by
Goethe of
1807:
'in der Malerei fehle
schon
lingst
die Kenntnis des
Generalbasses,
es fehle an einer
aufgestellten, approbierten
Theorie,
wie es in der Musik der Fall
ist';
the
quotation
comes from Goethe
im Gesprdch,
ed. F. Deibel & F.
Gundelfinger, 3rd ed.,
1907, p. 94 (see
Klaus Lankheit's
commentary
to the recent reissue of Der Blaue
Reiter, 1965,
pp. 288,
331).
24
Ettlinger, Kandinsky's
'At
Rest', pp. Iof.
25J. W.
Goethe, Werke, 33-36, 1884-97
(Deutsche National-Litteratur, 14-17).
26 'Goethe als
Asthetiker', Chronik
des
Wiener
Goethe-
Vereins, ii, I888, nos. I I-I2;
reprinted
in: Rudolf
Steiner,
Veraffentlichungen
aus dem
literarischen Friihwerk, xiv, 1941, pp.
27ff.
27
Hereafter: Goethe.
390
SIXTEN
RINGBOM
in which he
repeated
his
plea
for Goethean
thought.
It should be noted that
during
his Weimar
period
Steiner had not as
yet
become interested in
theosophy.
His outlook at this time
may roughly
be described as a mixture
of Goethean
thought
with the romanticism of
Schelling
and the idealism of
Lotze,
and it is
only
in the revised version of the article on Goethe's aesthetics
that the
theosophical
ideas
begin
to
permeate
his
philosophical
idealism.
Steiner's
exposition
of Goethe's aesthetics is based on a narrow selection of
aphoristic
sentences
excerpted mainly
from the
poet's
Maxims and
Reflections
and the
essay
Winckelmann.
According
to
Steiner,
Goethe had eliminated the
Platonic
dichotomy
between Nature and
Art,
and thus also
bridged
the
gap
between natural sciences and artistic creation. Goethe's dictum that works of
art,
like works of
nature,
are
produced according
to the divine
necessity
of
true and natural
laws,28
is
by
Steiner
regarded
as an
epoch-making discovery.
Artistic creation is a
higher
form of
Naturwirken;
the work of art is the more
perfect
the more this adherence to the natural laws is allowed to find
expres-
sion.29
The artist realizes the ideas of
nature,30
he demonstrates what Nature
would look like if its inherent forces were
accessible,
not
only
for
speculative
thought,
but to direct
perception.31
But the artist reaches farther than the
scientist or
philosopher
since he
possesses
the
unique ability
to visualize laws
that remain inaccessible for science. Steiner
lays great emphasis
on Goethe's
assertion that 'the Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature which
otherwise would have remained hidden
forever,'32
and hence
argues
that art
is truer than nature since it
represents
that which nature is
striving
to
become,
but never will.33
By
conforming
to the
'necessity'
and 'secret laws'
governing
nature,
art is
capable
of
surpassing
nature in essential truth. In
fact,
Steiner
maintains,
the work of art
accomplishes
the feat of
bringing
down the eternal
Ideas to the
physical
world. He credits Goethe with a
discovery
of a
Copernican
scale: the Beautiful is
not,
as 'Platonic' art
theory asserts,
an Idea
28
'Diese hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich
als die
h6chsten
Naturwerke von Menschen
nach wahren und
nattirlichen
Gesetzen
hervorgebracht
worden. Alles
Willktirliche,
Eingebildete fallt
zusammen;
da ist Notwen-
digkeit,
da ist Gott.' Italienische
Reise,
in the
Weimar ed. of
Werke,
Abt.
I, 32, 1906, pp.
77f.
Cf.
Steiner, Goethe, pp. 4Iff.;
Goethe's
Weltanschauung, p. 29.
29 'Das Kunstwerk ist demnach
um
so
vollkommener, je
mehr in ihm dieselbe
Gesetzmissigkeit
zum Ausdruck
kommt,
die
in dem Naturwerke enthalten
ist,
dem es
entspricht.
Es
gibt
nur
ein einheitliches
Reich der
Wahrheit,
und dieses umfasst
Kunst und Natur. Daher kann auch die
Fahigkeit
des
kunstlerischen
Schaffens von
der des Naturerkennens nicht wesentlich
verschieden
sein'.
Steiner, op. cit., pp. 3of.
30
'Was in dem
Naturwerke
bloss ideel list
und sich dem
geistigen Auge
des Beobachters
enthuillt,
das wird in dem Kunstwerke
real,
wird wahrnehmbare Wirklichkeit. Der
Kuinstler
verwirklicht die Ideen der Natur.'
Steiner, op. cit., pp. 3If.
31
'Der
Ktinstler
liefert Bilder der Natur-
werke, welche
deren
Ideengehalt
in einen
Wahrnehmungsgehalt
umsetzen.' '. . . der
Ktinstler zeigt,
wie die Natur aussehen
wtirde,
wenn sie ihre wirkenden
Krifte
nicht bloss dem
Denken,
sondern auch der
Wahrnehmung
offen
entgegenbraichte.'
Steiner, op. cit., p. 32.
32 'Das Schone ist eine Manifestation
geheimer Naturgesetze,
die uns ohne dessen
Erscheinung ewig wiren verborgen geblie-
ben.'
Werke, Weimar ed.,
Abt.
I, 48, 1897,
p. 179.
Cf. also: 'Wem die Natur ihr offen-
bares Geheimniss zu
enthiillen anfangt,
der
empfindet
eine unwiderstehliche Sehnsucht
nach ihrer
wuirdigsten Auslegerin,
der Kunst.'
Loc. cit.
**
Steiner, Goethe, pp. 35f.
This conclusion
occurs in the
theosophically
re-edited version
only;
cf.
Veriffentlichungen, xiv, p.
34-
391
in the form of a
sensory phenomenon,
but a
sensory phenomenon
in the
form of
an
Idea.
Art, religion
and science are
inseparable,34
and the artist
brings
down
the Divine to
earth,
not
by letting
the Divine flow into the
world,
but
by
raising
the world into the
sphere
of
Divinity.
This is 'the cosmic mission of
the
artist'.35
Steiner concludes his
essay
on Goethe's aesthetics with an
appeal
for a new
theory
based on this
principle,
a
theory
which he calls the 'Aesthetik
der Goetheschen
Weltanschauung'.
'Und das ist die Aesthetik der
Zukunft.'36
Steiner's
appeal
can be said to have been answered
by
the
theory proposed
in
uber
das
Geistige
in der Kunst.
Kandinsky's
treatise reflects
many
of the
Goethean
notions, and,
what is
more,
Goethean notions in Steiner's inter-
pretation. Kandinsky
dreamed of a
'spiritual pyramid
which will reach to
heaven';
the artist is a co-worker in this
structure.37
Later when
Kandinsky's
debt to
Goethe, partly perhaps
under the influence of Klee and the Weimarer
Bauhaus,
grew
still
greater,
he
envisaged
a future
Kunstwissenschaft.38
He did
not use the term in the conventional sense of an academic
discipline
concerned
with the
scholarly study
of
art,
but endowed the word with a half
esoteric,
half
epistemological meaning
of a
path
of
knowledge,
a science
revealing
the laws
of nature and
communicating
its results
by
the medium of art. In this sense
the term had been used
by
Steiner,39
the same Steiner who is
responsible
for a
similar
pun
on the word
'Geisteswissenschaft'.4?
The central
concept
of
Kandinsky's
treatise is 'inner
necessity'.
Goethe
had connected his notion of
'necessity'
with
'divinity';
he believed that he
was on the track of the laws common to nature and
art,
the laws that he
sensed to be at work in the art of the
Greeks.4' Kandinsky
derived his
concept
"
Steiner
lays great emphasis
on this
unity;
see
Goethe, pp.
2
If.
3 Steiner, Goethe, p.
4!..
36 Ibid., p. 40.
7
U.d.G., p. 56.
The
correspondence
is
discussed
by Ettlinger, Kandinsky's
'At
Rest',
pp. Iof. Kandinsky
also
quotes
Goethe to
the effect that the artist is 'a master over
Nature insofar as he
subjects
these
earthly
media to his
higher intentions',
and that the
artist
spiritualizes
the
earthly
media with his
own
spirit
or the 'Anwehen eines befruchteten
gottlichen
Odems'.
U.d.G., p. 128,
n.
I.
38
'Die Grundelemente der Form'
(origin-
ally
in Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar
I919-23,
1923), quoted
after
Essays
iiber
Kunst und
Kiinstler,
ed. Max
Bill,..
I955
(hereafter
'Essays'), p.
62. Cf. also
'Uber
die abstrakte
Baihnensynthese' (originally
in Staatliches
Bauhaus), Essays, p. 77:
'. . . wir stehen unter
dem Zeichen einer
aufgehenden
Kunst-
wissenschaft';
and
Kandinsky's
remarks on
'knowledge', U.d.G., pp.
26f.
9
'In der
Zeit,
in der Geist und Natur so
innig
verbunden
waren,
konnte die Kunst-
wissenschaft nicht
entstehen, sie
konnte es
aber auch nicht in
jener,
in der sie sich als
unversohnte
Gegensatze gegenilberstanden.
Zur
Entstehung
der Aesthetik war
jene
Zeit
notwendig,
in der der Mensch frei und
unabhingig
von den Fesseln der Natur den
Geist in seiner
ungetriibten
Klarheit er-
blickte . . .'
Steiner, Goethe, pp.
i4f.
40
I.e. 'science of the
Spiritual'
instead of
the
accepted
academic
meaning
of 'humani-
ties' as
opposed
to 'science'.
41
In Italienische Reise
(Werke, Weimar ed.,
I.
Abt., 30, 1903, p. 265); quoted by Steiner,
Goethes
Weltanschauung, p. 29.
Goethe's
quest
for invariances in nature was also con-
siderably
influenced
by neoplatonic
and
gnostic ideas;
see R. D.
Gray,
Goethe the
Alchemist, 1952,
and Franz
Koch,
Goethe und
Plotin, 1925, esp. pp.
Io7ff.,
147-83.
Schiller's
speculations
on 'die
Regel
in der
Maschine'
and
'das
Gesetz
in dem Phdnomen'
(which
were to
influence Franz
Marc,
see
below)
are con-
nected with similar
traditions;
see Franz
Koch,
Schillers
philosophische Schriften
und
Plotin, 1926. Kandinsky's
and Klee's
depen-
dence on the Goethean
concepts
of
Lebendiges
and
Gesetzmassiges
has been
pointed
out
by
Werner
Hofmann,
'Ein Beitrag
zur
"Morpho-
logischen
Kunsttheorie" der
Gegenwart',
Alte und neue
Kunst, ii, 1953,
pp.
63ff., esp. pp.
69ff.
392
SIXTEN RINGBOM
of
'necessity'
from three
'mystische Notwendigkeiten':
(i)
the element of
personality, (2)
the element of
style
determined
by period
and national
factors,
and,
(3)
the element of 'the
purely
and
eternally
artistic'. The first two
elements are
regarded
as obstacles to the full realization of the
third,
the
principal
element,
which is
independent
of time or
space,
and
by
which the
greatness
of an artist is measured.42 'In
short,
the effect of the inner
necessity,
and thus the
development
of
art,
is a continuous manifestation of the
Eternally
Objective
in the
Temporally Subjective.'43 Kandinsky,
like
Goethe,
believed
that he was on the track of the invariable laws of art. In the course of time he
explicitly equated
the inner
necessity
with the 'laws of
nature',44
an
identity
which is
only tacitly
assumed in Uber das
Geistige.
Kandinsky's
indecision as to the
appropriate
term for the new art runs
parallel
with the
gradual
identification of the 'laws of art' with the 'laws of
nature'. Instead of the term 'abstract' he
suggested
'reale Kunst' in
1935,45
and
finally
he
accepted
Theo van
Doesburg's
term
'concrete',
since,
he
argued,
the new art form
presents
a real 'world of art' which does not
depict
the 'world of nature'
but,
like the
latter,
is
subject
to 'the
general
laws of the
"cosmic world"
'.46
Steiner had formulated a similar
principle by demanding
that in art the
material,
'the real should not sink down to a means of
expres-
sion; no,
it shall continue to exist in its full
independence'.47
There are other
correspondences
between Uber das
Geistige
and Steiner's
account of Goethean
aesthetics,48
and one cannot
help believing
that Kan-
dinsky
must have been
acquainted
with Steiner's
writings
on the
subject.
The booklet Goethe als Vater einer neuen Aesthetik
was,
we
recall, published
in
1909.
In
1908 Kandinsky
still attended lectures
by Steiner,
and since his
sym-
pathies
for the latter's
teachings
lasted at least until the
publication
of
tlber das
Geistige,
he could
hardly
avoid
coming
into contact with Steiner's
Goetheanismus,
this
'philosophy'
which was to form the
ideological
foundation
of the German off-shoot of the
Theosophical Society.
42
U.b.G., p. 8of.
43
Ibid., p.
82.
"
'Die Flucht vom
Objekt
bedeutet nicht
die Flucht von Nature im
Allgemeinen.
Jede
wahre Kunst ist ihren Gesetzen unter-
worfen.'
Essays, pp. I45f.
'Die abstrakte
Malerei verlisst
die "Haut" der
Natur,
aber
nicht ihre Gesetze.'
Ibid., p.
202.
45
Ibid., pp. 172ff.
46
'So
stellt
die abstrakte Kunst neben
die "reale" Welt eine
neue,
die
Riusserlich
nichts mit der
"Realitit"
zu tun hat. Inner-
lich
unterliegt
sie den
allgemeinen
Gesetzen
der
"kosmischen
Welt".-So wird neben die
Naturwelt eine neue "Kunstwelt"
gestellt-
eine ebenso reale
Welt,
eine konkrete.
Deshalb
ziehe ich
personlich vor,
die
sogenannte
"abstrakte" Kunst Konkrete Kunst
zu nennen'
(Catalogue, Stedelijke Museum,
Amsterdam, 1938;
see
Essays, p. 215).
Cf.
Goethe's: 'Der echte
gesetzgebende Ktinstler
strebt nach
Kunstwahrheit,
der
gesetzlose,
der einem blinden Trieb
folgt,
nach Natur-
wirklichkeit;
durch
jenen
wird die Kunst
zum hochsten
Gipfel,
durch diesen auf ihre
niedrigste
Stufe
gebracht' (Einleitung
in die
Propylden; Werke,
Weimar
ed.,
Abt.
I., 47,
1896, p. 23).
47 'Das Wirkliche soll nicht zum Aus-
drucksmittel herabsinken: nein es soll in
seiner vollen
Selbstandigkeit
bestehen blei-
ben;
nur soll es eine neue Gestalt
bekommen,
eine
Gestalt,
in der es uns
befriedigt.' Steiner,
Goethe, p. 33.
In the
original, pre-theosophical
version,
the end of the
passage
reads:
'..
. eine
Gestalt,
in der es unser
Beduirfnis
nach dem
Notwendigen, Urbildlichen
be-
friedigt' (Veroffentlichungen, xiv, p. 34).
48
Cf.
e.g.
the discussions of the 'Wie' and
the 'Was'
(U.d.G., pp. 32-34; Steiner, Goethe,
pp.
32-35); here, however, Kandinsky has,
for the sake of
consistency,
reversed the
argument.
OCCULT ELEMENTS IN ABSTRACT PAINTING 393
II
It could indeed be
argued
that
Kandinsky's
'Goetheanism' constitutes a
necessary ingredient
of the first theoretical treatise on abstract
art,
but it is of
course far from
being
a sufficient
explanation.
Needless to
say,
the notion of
abstract art was
foreign
to
Goethe,
and to some extent this
applies
to his
interpreter
too. As we
know,
Steiner also worked as a creative
artist,
but his
early graphic
work rather
belongs
to Art nouveau
symbolism
than to abstraction.
Taken in isolation and
brought
to their extreme
consequences many
of
Goethe's maxims can of course be made to
support
a
theory
of abstract
art,
but seen in their context
they
make sense
only
for
figurative
representations.49
What, then,
was the
impulse
which led
Kandinsky
to take the decisive
step
to abstraction? One answer to this
question
is
provided by
the course which
painting
had taken
among
the Fauvists and
Cubists,
a
development
with which
Kandinsky
was
thoroughly
familiar. But even here it could be
argued that,
for
instance,
Picasso's and
Braque's paintings
of
1908-Io
always preserve
some reference to visible
reality
and do not as such
point
forward to a com-
plete
elimination of
pictorial
contents.
Moreover, Kandinsky's
first abstract
paintings
show no connexion with Cubism.
It is at this
point
that it
might
be worth
reconsidering
the
prevailing
opinion
that
Kandinsky's theosophical
interests
only
formed some kind of
personal hobby,
a
strictly private
amusement which
played
a
negligible
role
in the formation of his artistic outlook. Here
again
Rudolf Steiner seems to
have acted as a transmitter of ideas. After his Weimar
years
Steiner had
accepted
an invitation to become editor of the Berlin
periodical Magazin fur
Litteratur,
a
post
which he held from
1897
to
I900.
By
the turn of the
century
"
A case in
point
is Wilhelm von
Kugel-
gen's
Drei
Vorlesungen
fiber
Kunst, published
originally
in
i842,
and reissued in
i904.
Von
Kugelgen adopted many
of Goethe's
ideas;
the connexion between science and
art
(1904 ed., p. 5),
'Innere
Notwendigkeit'
(ibid., p. 2o
and
passim),
the
polarity
between
divine
light
and
'corporeal
darkness' with the
resulting
world of colour
(ibid., p. 92).
It is
of some interest to note that one of Goethe's
contemporaries
and
admirers, J.
B.
Purkinje,
thought
that it would be worth while to con-
struct a 'music of the
eye':
'Beim Anschauen
regelmissiger geometrischer Linieen,
Schne-
cken- Kreis- und
Wellenlinieen, symmetri-
scher
Gestalten, Zierrathen, Schn6rkeln,
wo
tiberhaupt
Gesetz und
Nothwendigkeit
herrscht,
ftihlt
sich das
Auge unwillktirlich
von den Umrissen der
Gegenstainde
fort-
gezogen,
die
Bewegungen
sind
erleichtert,
ja
halb
automatisch,
so dass sie auf die
ange-
schauten
Gegenst~inde tibertragen
werden in
denen nun
ein eigenes
Leben und
Bewegen
erscheint,
was einen
eigenthtimlichen Ein-
druck
gewahrt,
und ebenfalls von leisen
Spannungsgeftihlen
am
Augapfel begleitet
ist. Es
w/ire
der Muhe werth diese Art
Augenmusik
die uns allenthalben aus der
Natur und Kunstwelt
entgegenwinkt
als
einen
eigenen Kunstgegenstand
zu bearbeiten.
Gewiss
woirde
hier fur das schaffende Genie
eine neue Bahn
gebrochen
wenn die Aus-
ftihrungen hinlinglich
ins Grosse
getrieben
wurden. Bis itzt scheint noch nicht
for
diese
Kunst die Zeit
gekommen
zu
seyn,
sie muss
als Sklavin zu
Verzierungen
von
Kleidern,
Gebauden,
Garten etc. dienen. Nur im
Feuerwerke,
im Tanze so wie in
gymnasti-
schen
Vorstellungen, Altaren, Ziergarten,
transparenten
Kreisen mit Centralbewe-
gungen
und neuerlichst im
Kaleidoscope
hat sie bisher
ein selbstandiges
Leben
begonnen,
wird aber noch
immer,
weil sie
zum Theil mit Gauklern durch die Welt
zieht vom vornehmen Geschmake verkannt
und
tibersehen.' Beobachtungen
und
Versuche
zur
Physiologie
der
Sinne,
2nd
ed.,
i, I825, pp.
I6
if. This
passage
seems to have become
topical through Edgar
Rubin's
Synsoplevede
Figurer, i,
19i5,
where it is
quoted
at
length
(p. 148f.).
26
394
SIXTEN RINGBOM
we find him
dividing
his time between the leftist
Arbeiterbildungsschule
and the
Theosophical Library
in
Berlin,
and in October
1902
he was
appointed
general secretary
of the German section of the
Theosophical Society.
In
1913
a conflict between Annie Besant and Steiner resulted in the secession of
virtually
the entire German section of the
Society,
and in the same
year
Steiner founded his
Anthroposophical Society.
During
the
period
I902-13
Steiner wrote half a dozen
books,
numerous
articles,
and delivered over
2,000
lectures.
Kandinsky
had listened to Steiner's
lectures
during
his Murnau
period,
and also in Berlin in
i908.50
One of
Kandinsky's
first
pupils
was Maria
Strakosch-Giesler,
a
theosophical painter
who
eventually
was to become Steiner's chief artistic heir.
Occasionally
teacher and
pupil
went
together
to Steiner's lectures.
During
the
early
'twenties
Kandinsky
still referred to the
theosophical impressions
which he
had received
during
century.51
In
Uber
das
Geistige
there is a
long quotation
from H. P.
Blavatsky's
book
Key
to
Theosophy52
dealing
with the mission of
theosophy
and the
heavenly
conditions
which, according
to Madame
Blavatsky,
are to
prevail
on earth in
the
twenty-first century. Kandinsky
credits her with
being
the first to establish
a firm tie between India and our culture. From now on we have 'one of the
greatest spiritual
movements which unites a
great
number of
people
and
which also has established a material form of this
spiritual phenomenon
in the
"Theosophical Society"
'. The methods of the
theosophists
are based on
ancient
wisdom,
and have
again
been rendered in a
'relatively precise
form'
by
Steiner in his book
Theosophie
(I9o4)
s
and in his articles on the
paths
of
knowledge
in the
periodical
Lucifer-Gnosis.54
Kandinsky
does not
accept every-
thing
in
Theosophy,
and remarks that an observer
may
be turned somewhat
sceptical by
'the
theosophists' tendency
to
theorize,
and their somewhat
premature
delight
in
providing
a
quick
answer in the
place
of the
eternal,
immense
question
mark'. But in
principle Kandinsky approved
of this
spiritual
movement in which he sees a hand extended to
help desperate
hearts.55
Kandinsky regarded theosophy
as the
spiritual
alternative to
materialism;
and art is a matter of the
spirit.
The common denominator of all
great
art
lies,
not in the
'external',
but in the 'root of roots-in the
mystic
contents'.
Art
aspires
to
express
the
'mystical-necessary',
and the work of art comes 'in
a
50 Grohmann, Kandinsky, p. 41. According
to
J.
Hemleben
(Rudolf
Steiner in
Selbstzeug-
nissen
und Bilddokumenten,
I963,
pp.
I o4ff.)
Kandinsky
and
Jawlensky
even consulted
Steiner on
personal
matters in Munich before
1913.
For
Jawlensky,
see also
Weiler,
Jawlensky (cf.
n.
12, above).
51 Grohmann, loc. cit.
52 U.d.G., pp. 42f.
5
R.
Steiner, Theosophie,
Einfiihrung
in
iibersinnliche
Welterkenntnis und Menschenbe-
stimmung,
first
published
in Berlin in
I904;
here
quoted
after the
Gesamtausgabe
ed. of
1961.
><
Published in book form as Wie
erlangt
man Erkenntnisse der
hIheren Welten?, 1909
(here quoted
after the
Gesamtausgabe, I961);
and Die
Stufen
der
hluheren Erkenntnis, I93I
(here quoted
after the
Gesamtausgabe, I959).
Shorter articles not included in these books
have been collected in R. Steiner, Luzifer-
Gnosis
I9o3-1908, 1960.
Cf.
Appendix I,
below.
ss
J.d.G., p. 43. Kandinsky's reservations
must be seen in their historical context;
even
within the
Theosophical Society
there was
widespread
criticism
against
the most fantas-
tic claims of the
Adyar group,
but this did
not
necessarily imply
doubts as to the
fundamentals of
theosophical teachings.
395
mysterious, enigmatic
and
mystic
manner "out of the artist"
'.56
For Kan-
dinsky
it is obvious that materialism can have no
say
in this
process.
In the
beginning
of his treatise he had introduced the
parable
of the
moving 'spiritual
triangle'
as an illustration of the
spiritual
life and the
spiritual development
of
mankind. Into the lower
compartments
of the
triangle
he
groups together
materialists, atheists, socialists, positivists
etc. These
people,
who do not know
and do not wish to know another
reality
than the
physical world,
are naturalists
where art is concerned.
Kandinsky
feels a
deep contempt
for what he
regards
as the materialistic
conception
of
art;
this outlook
generates
'connoisseurs' who
look in
paintings
for
fidelity
to
nature,
nature seen
through
a
temperament,
anatomy, perspective
etc.
During periods
of materialistic
predominance
and
spiritual backwardness,
art is
regarded
as a
purposeless activity (l'art
pour
l'art),
whereas art
essentially
is a
power
with a definite
purpose.
It is a force which
by developing
and
refining
the human soul in its own
way
contributes to the
motion of the
'spiritual
triangle'.57
It is evident that
Kandinsky
had studied the classic works of
theosophy,
probably Blavatsky's
The Secret Doctrine
and/or
Isis
Unveiled,
which had been
published
in German translations in
I897ff.
and
1907-09 respectively.
Accord-
ing
to
theosophical
belief
art, religion
and true science are
inseparable,
all
moving
towards the same
goal. Kandinsky
calls this same motion 'an
upward
and forward
movement',
and he describes how man is
helped
and directed in
this endeavour
by
the
seer,
a human
being
like ourselves but
equipped
with
the
mysterious power
of
'seeing'.
This
suggests
that
by
19Io Kandinsky
was
already
familiar with the French
theosophist
Edouard
Schurd's
Les
grands
initids, originally published
in
i889,
and issued in a German translation with
a
preface by
Steiner in
1907.58
If
Kandinsky
used the German edition he
may
have found the
preface
almost as
exciting
as the book itself. Here Steiner had
tried to combine Goethe with
theosophy:
the 'secret laws' are revealed
by
artists and seers
alike,
and 'artistic
fantasy
and
sagacious insight point
to a
hidden
power
behind them in the human soul in which
they
both are one'.59
And Schurd's introduction into the secret doctrine is in fact echoed
throughout
the 'General Part' of
Kandinsky's
treatise. The
polemic against materialism,
positivism
and
scepticism,
the references to
spiritism
and
psychical
research as
proofs
of the
approaching spiritual synthesis
of
science, religion
and
art,
the
light symbolism,
and even isolated
expressions
of
Schurd's
fantastic
exposition
have their
analogies
in
Kandinsky.
The
theosophical ingredients
are
equally
strong
in the artist's
essay Uber
die
Formfrage
in Der Blaue Reiter. Here Kan-
dinsky
writes about 'der weisse
befruchtende
Strahl'
leading
to evolution and
56 U.d.G., pp. 83, 84, 132.
"
Ibid., pp. 22, 36f.,
73,
120, 134f.
58 Cf. also the remarks on Moses in U.d.G.,
p.
33,
and the discussion of ancient wisdom
and truth in
Riickblick, p. 30.
Grohmann
(Kandinsky, p. 54)
found Schure's name in
Kandinsky's sketch-books,
but does not state
the date of the note. Schur6 seems to have
been a favourite
reading
of various artists
around
1900.
Paul
Sfrusier's mysticism
was
influenced
by
it
(H.
R.
Rookmaaker,
Synthetist
Art
Theories,
i959,
p. i65);
Haft-
mann
(Painting in
the Twentieth
Century, i, p.
37)
writes that 'Initiation' was a favourite
word in the
nineties;
and Mondrian was
deeply impressed by
it
(see below). Among
composers,
Scriabin was a fervent admirer of
Schur6.
9
Edouard
Schurd,
Die
grossen Einge-
weihten,
2nd
ed., 1911, p.
iv.
396
SIXTEN RINGBOM
elevation,60
an
image
which seems to come from Madame
Blavatsky's Key
to
Theosophy
in which she
compared Theosophy
with the white
ray
of
light
which
in itself
incorporates
the seven
prismatic
colours
standing
for the various
religions
of
mankind.61
The
theosophists taught
that the
Light, or,
in other
words, Theosophy,
was the same as eternal
truth;
a truth which at times had been obscured
by
the
frailty
of human
endeavour,
but which is
present
in all
religions, philo-
sophies,
and above all in the doctrines of the initiates.
Kandinsky applied
this
very
scheme to art. The
mystic
'Rein- und
Ewig-Kiinstlerische'
has at times
been obscured
by
the effects of
personality
and
style,
but it 'is to be seen in
works of art
by every artist,
in
every
nation and
every period'.62
Like the
theosophists Kandinsky
believed that it was
possible
to extract this eternal
truth from its
imperfect
manifestations in the
history
of mankind. And what
is
more, Kandinsky, too,
believed that the
development
now has reached a
turning-point,
the
'letzte
Stunde der
geistigen Wendung',63
when the eternal
truth,
free from the old
excrescences,
can
appear
in full
clarity.
This
explains
the
triumphant ring
of the
Epilogue
of
Uber
das
Geistige.
After a discussion of six
examples
from the
history
of
painting Kandinsky pronounces
his credo: the
new
spirit
of
painting
is connected with 'the
reconstruction, already begun,
of the new
spiritual realm,
since this
spirit
is the soul of the
Epoch of
the Great
Spiritual'.64
We
may
well ask whether
Kandinsky might
even have believed
in the
twenty-first century heavenly
existence
envisaged by
Madame
Blavatsky
whom he earlier had
quoted
to this effect.
Kandinsky
did
not, however,
become an orthodox
theosophist.
On the
whole it
appears
as if he had at first
accepted
the
theosophical teachings only
so far as
they
coincided with his own
beliefs, finding
in
theosophy
a
peg
on
which to
hang
his convictions. He does
not,
for
instance,
make
any
reference
to such a central tenet of
theosophy
as the colossal
planetary
evolution of man-
kind. For
Kandinsky
such matters
apparently
have no
bearing
on
art,
and he
only speaks
about the 'cosmic' in a
vaguely mystical sense.65
But even such
60
'Der weisse befruchtende Strahl . . .
Dieser weisse
Strahl fiihrt
zur
Evolution,
zur
Erh6hung.
So ist hinter der
Materie,
in der
Materie der
schaffende
Geist
verborgen
. . .'
A black hand is
placed
on the
eyes
of
men,
the black hand is the
Negative,
the
Destroy-
ing,
it is Evil. Materialism is the tool of the
black hand. Der Blaue
Reiter, pp. 74f.
ex Key
to
Theosophy,
ch. iv: 'The Abstract
and the Concrete'.
62
U.d.G., p.
8o.
Cf. ibid.
p.
8I: 'Der
Vorgang
der
Kunstentwicklung
besteht
ge-
wissermassen aus dem Sichabheben des
Rein- und
Ewig-Kiinstlerischen
von dem
Element der
Personlichkeit,
dem Element
des
Zeitstiles';
cf.
also the reflections on the
similarity
between
religion
and art in
Riickblick, p. 30.
63 U.d.G., p. 54.
64
Ibid., p. 143. It should be noted that
this
turning-point
marked
only
a
beginning,
being
'the Threshold of the "Third Revela-
tion"'
(Riickblick, pp. 3of.;
cf. below
p. 415).
The notion recurs in
Kandinsky's
'Selbst-
charakteristik': 'Den
Schluss
des
19. Jahr-
hunderts und den
Anfang
des 20. halt
Kandinsky
fur den
Anfang
einer der
gr6ssten
Epochen
des
geistigen
Lebens der Mensch-
heit. Er nennt sie den
"Epoche
des
grossen
Geistigen"
'
(originally
in Das
Kunstblatt, 3,
1919, pp. 172ff., reprinted by
H. M.
Wingler,
Wie
sie
einander
sahen,
Moderne Maler
im
Urteil
ihrer
Gef'hrten,
Munich
1961, p. 85).
65
This term recurs
again
and
again
in
Kandinsky's writings.
In
1935
he declared
that he
preferred
not to
speak
about 'Cosmos
and cosmic laws'
(Essays, p. 149);
two
years
later he is
again reported
as
stating
that 'art
can become
great only
if it stands in a direct
connexion with the cosmic
laws,
and sub-
ordinates itself to them'
(ibid., p. 203).
397
an attitude of
picking
and
choosing
is
capable
of
developing
into a real
commitment. To find
repeated
corroborations of one's own convictions in the
writings
of other
people may
be a twofold
affair;
sometimes it not
only
increases
one's faith in the convictions
themselves,
but also lends additional
weight
to
the ideas that
originally
served as corroborations
only.
There
are,
as we shall
see,
reasons for
believing
that this is
roughly
what must have
happened
to
Kandinsky
in his relations to
theosophy.
III
In
Ober
das
Geistige Kandinsky
refers with
approval
to Steiner's
Theosophie
and articles in
Lucifer-Gnosis.
Through
these
publications
he came into contact
with
theosophical
colour
mysticism,
a
subject
in which
he,
as a
painter,
can
be
expected
to have been
particularly
interested.
In
Theosophie
Steiner describes how
clairvoyants
are
capable
of
seeing
so-called
'thought
forms' and 'human auras'. The
impressions
received
by
clairvoyants
from the
higher
worlds are
analogous
with the colour
phenomena
observed in the
physical
world. Seen with the
'spiritual eye'
all human
beings
are surrounded
by
a nebulous oval of
light.
This aura is
organized
into certain
colour fields. The
patterns
of the
colours,
the
'thought
forms'
reproduce
the
inner life of the
person
observed. Each colour has its own
meaning;
red
indicates
thoughts stemming
from the sensual
life, yellow
is connected with
intellectual
activity,
and blue reveals
spirituality
and devotion to a
cause.66
In one of his articles in
Lucifer-Gnosis
Steiner connected the
theosophical
colour
theory
with Goethe's Taten und Leiden of
light,67
and in another series of
articles he described the three
stages
of initiation
(Preparation,
Illumination,
Initiation) together
with their
supersensible
worlds of colours and tones. For
the
clairvoyant every object,
not
only
human
beings,
has its own aura. 'In
fact',
Steiner tells his
reader,
'the wealth of colour is
immeasurably greater
in
these
higher
worlds than in the
physical world.'68
What Steiner does not
acknowledge
is that his occult colour
theory
comes
straight
from two
theosophical
works of an earlier
date,
Annie Besant's and
C. W. Leadbeater's
Thought-Forms (1901)
and C. W. Leadbeater's Man Visible
and Invisible
(1902); perhaps
also from an article of
1895 by Leadbeater,
published
as a
separate
booklet in
1897.69
In these books the
authors,
who in
their turn base their
findings
on Madame
Blavatsky,7o
describe the seven
bodies of
man,
the
physical body
which man shares with the mineral and
vegetable worlds,
the astral
body
which is common to men and
animals,
the
mental
body
which is
peculiar
for
man, and, finally,
the four
highest
bodies of
a
spiritual
character. These seven bodies
belong
to the seven
planes
of nature
66
Steiner, Theosophie,
ch. vi.
67
Steiner, 'Von der Aura des Menschen',
Lucifer-Gnosis, Jan.-April, 1904; reprinted
in:
Steiner,
Luzifer-Gnosis,
p.
I io.
68
Steiner,
Wie erlangt
man..., p. 55.
69
C. W. Leadbeater, The Aura; An Enquiry
into the Nature and Functions
of
the Luminous
Mist Seen about Human and other
Bodies, I897,
originally
in The
Theosophist, 1895.
For
Besant and
Leadbeater,
see the recent works
by
Nethercot
(cf.
n.
I I, above),
and Peter
F.
Anson, Bishops
at
Large, 1964, Index,
s.v.
Leadbeater,
and
Bibliography, esp. p. 562.
70
Cf. C. W.
Leadbeater,
Man Visible and
Invisible,
Adyar, 1959, P. 19.
71
The colour chart is
explained ibid.,
ch.
xiii.
398
SIXTEN RINGBOM
which have their characteristic
colours, beginning
with brownish hues at the
bottom and
reaching
violet on the fifth
plane
of
Nirvana;
the two
highest
do
not have colours but are
pure light (P1. 67a).
In addition to the hue charac-
teristic for each
plane,
the other colours occur at each of the five first
planes
in
different 'octaves of colour'. It is the astral and mental
planes,
in
particular,
which are
interesting
from the
clairvoyant's point
of view. On these
planes
feelings
and
thoughts
manifest themselves as certain
forms
and colours of the auras.
Each colour has a more or less fixed
meaning,
and in Man Visible and Invisible
and in the second
(1905)
and later editions of
Thought-Forms
there is a frontis-
piece presenting
a colour chart of
twenty-five squares
as a
key
to the
meaning
of each colour.
Although
more
elaborate,
the colour
interpretations by
Besant
and Leadbeater
agree
with Steiner's
adaptation
of
them;
blue is connected
with
religious feeling,
red with emotional life
etc.71 According
to Besant and
Leadbeater
feelings
and
thoughts similarly generate
characteristic
forms.
Rings,
coils and vortices indicate sudden
emotions, lightning-like shapes
appear
in connexion with
anger
and
malice, zig-zag
lines reveal fear etc.
Man Visible and Invisible is devoted to the
study
of the
changes
in the
human
aura,
and the text is illustrated with
twenty-five
colour
plates depicting
these
supersensible phenomena.
The mental
body
of the
ordinary
man
(P1. 67b)
shows the fields of colour
arranged
around a faint outline
drawing
indicating
the
physical body.
A
yellow
section above the head indicates mental
faculties. On the left is a rose-coloured
part ('love
of
humanity'),
in the
middle a
green
area
('adaptability')
and below a streak of red and a
large
field of brownish hues. The
pattern
of the
average
aura is a little
irregular
and the colours are
tinged
with brown
indicating
base
feelings,
whereas the
mental and astral bodies of the
developed
man
display regularity
of form and
purity
of colour.72 A state of violent
emotion, again, changes
the
appearance
altogether (P1. 67c).
It is these resultant
configurations
that
provide
the main
subject
of Besant's and Leadbeater's
Thought-Forms
with its
fifty-seven
colour
illustrations
(see Pls. 67d-h; 68b, c, e, f).
Both Man Visible and Invisible and
Thought-Forms appeared
in German
translations in
1908.
In the
early
'twenties
Kandinsky
still mentioned the
latter,73
and he
probably
knew the
companion
volume
too,
since the revised
editions from which the German translations were made contain numerous
cross-references between the two books.
Thought-Forms
is
important
for the
understanding
of
Kandinsky's approach
to the relation between colour and
tone, or, painting
and music. This is a
question
to which he devotes considerable
space
in Uber das
Geistige.
We know
from a famous
passage
in the
Riickblicke
that he had that
peculiar psychological
make-up
which
psychologists
name
'synaesthesia'
or 'audition colorde'. On
listening
to
Lohengrin, Kandinsky
had once
experienced
fantastic sensations
of colour and
form.74
He considered this
experience
as one of the two decisive
72
Ibid., pls. xxii, xxiii.
73 Grohmann, Kandinsky, p. 41. Robsjohn-
Gibbings (Mona
Lisa's
Mustache, pp. 148, I5')
took it for
granted
that
Kandinsky
knew
both
publications, which, according,
to the
same
author,
also
inspired
the Nabis and the
Cubists. Man Visible and Invisible
appeared
in French in
1903,
and
Thought-Forms
in
1905.
"
'Ich sah alle meine Farben im
Geiste,
sie standen vor meinen
Augen. Wilde,
fast
tolle Linien zeichneten sich vor mir.' Rack-
blick, p. '5.
399
events that had left a
permanent
mark on his
life;
the other
being
the occasion
when he looked at one of Monet's
Haystacks
without
realizing
the
subject
matter of the
picture.
For a
person
with
Kandinsky's
convictions,
a
purely psychological
explanation
of the
synaesthetic
phenomena75
would have meant a concession
to
positivistic
science,
whereas Besant's and Leadbeater's
Thought-Forms
offered an account more to his taste. This book is closed with a section
dealing
with 'Forms Built
by
Music' where the authors
present
'another
type
of forms
unknown to those who are confined to the
physical
senses'.
...
when,
for
example,
a musical note is
sounded,
a flash of colour corre-
sponding
to it
may
be seen
by
those whose finer senses are
already
to some
extent
developed.
It seems not to be so
generally
known that sound
produces
form as well as
colour,
and that
every piece
of music leaves
behind it an
impression
of this
nature,
which
persists
for some considerable
time,
and is
clearly
visible and
intelligible
for those who have
eyes
to see.
Such a
shape
is
perhaps
not
technically
a
thought-form-unless
indeed
we take
it,
as we well
may,
as the result of the
thought
of the
composer
expressed by
means of the skill of the musician
through
his
instrument.76
Such forms remain as coherent erections for some considerable time-
an hour or two at
least;
and
during
all that time
they
are
radiating
forth
their characteristic vibrations in
every direction, just
as our
thought-
forms
do;
and if the music be
good,
the effect of those vibrations cannot
but be
uplifting
to
every
man
upon
whose vehicles
[i.e.
the various
bodies]
they play.
Thus the
community
owes a
very
real debt of
gratitude
to the
musician who
pours
forth such
helpful influences,
for he
may
affect for
good
hundreds whom he never saw and will never know
upon
the
physical
plane.77
(Cf.
P1.
68b, c, e.)
The
key concept
of the
theosophical mysticism
of colour and form is the
notion of vibration. The
pattern
of the human
aura,
as well as that of the
musical
configurations
observed
by
the
clairvoyants,
is
shaped
and coloured
by supersensible
vibrations
generated by thoughts
and emotions. The
psychic
vibrations
pattern
the mental and astral matter of the aura in the same
way
as
physical
vibrations
organize physical
matter in certain circumstances. Besant
and Leadbeater adduce Chladni's
sound-plate
as an illustration of the latter
phenomena; by touching
the
plate
at different
points
at the
edge
a
variety
of
patterns
is obtained. Further
physical analogies
are to be found in the 'voice
figures' produced by
the human voice in an
'Eidophone',
and in the
tracings
produced by
the
interfering
oscillations of a
'twin-elliptic pendulum' (cf.
P1.
68f).
'Substitute for the
swing
of the
pendulum
the vibrations set
up
in the
'5
The
study
of
synaesthesia
had been a
fashionable branch of the
psychology
of
perception during
the last two decades of the
nineteenth
century.
In
i88I
Bleuler &
Lehmann
published
their
Zwangsmassige
Lichtempfindungen
durch
Schall
und verwandte
Erscheinungen;
this was in
1890
followed
by
F. Suarez de Mendoza's L'Audition
colorde,
published
in a 2nd ed. in
1899,
the same
year
that saw L. Destouches's La
musique
et
quelques-uns
de ses
effets
sensoriels.
76
Besant &
Leadbeater, Thought-Forms,
I96I, p. 58.
77
Ibid., pp. 59f.
400
SIXTEN RINGBOM
mental or astral
body,
and we have
clearly
before us the modus
operandi
of the
building
of forms
by
vibrations.'78
The
thought-forms
are not
only shaped by vibrations,
in their turn
they
also
produce radiating
vibrations which on
striking
the mental
body
of another
person
tend to
produce thoughts
of the same
type
in the
recipient.79
This
principle
of occult
physics
was believed
by
the inventors to account for
telepathy
and related
phenomena,
and it was also used as an
explanation
for
the moral effect of music and the
arts.s0
The
theosophical theory
of
supersensible
vibrations
profoundly
influenced
Kandinsky.
In the
introductory passage
of (iber das
Geistige Kandinsky
prophesies
about the finer emotions of the
future, feelings
that are as
yet
impossible
to
put
into words.
'But',
he
adds, 'today
the beholder is seldom
capable
of such
vibrations.'s8
That this is not a mere
figure
of
speech
is
shown
by
the other occurrences of the term.
Writing
on the
pure
Klang
of
words,
he contends that this
ring
or sound
directly
influences our souls which
are set into a state of abstract
(gegendstandslos)
vibration of a
supersensible
kind.82 The same rule
applies
to colours and
forms,
which have both a
physical
and a
psychic
effect on the beholder. The
psychic power
of colours and forms
calls forth
psychic vibrations,
and
'every
vibration enriches the
soul) (cf.
below, p. 407). Kandinsky
resorts to the
following image:
colours and forms
are like the
tangents
of a
piano,
the
eye
is the
hammer,
the soul is the
piano
with its
strings,
and the artist is the hand which
by
means of the
tangents
calls forth the vibration of the human soul.83 The
'fine, uncorporeal
mind
vibrations' are the main concern of the true artist. In
Kandinsky's conception
of the work of art as an
'independent, spiritually breathing subject'
with
repercussions
in the
'spiritual atmosphere',
we
recognize theosophical
ideas
in an
artistically
more articulated form:
Auf eine
geheimnisvolle, raitselhafte,
mystische
Weise entsteht das wahre
Kunstwerk 'aus dem
Kiinstler'.
Von ihm
losgel6st
bekommt es
ein
selb-
staindiges
Leben,
wird zur
Pers6nlichkeit,
zu einem
selbstandigen, geistig
atmenden
Subjekt,
welches auch
ein
materiell reales Leben
fuihrt,
welches
78 Ibid., p. 17.
"
Ibid., p.
12. 'The distance to which such
thought-waves penetrate,
and the force and
persistency
with which
they impinge upon
the mental bodies of
others, depend upon
the
strength
and clearness of the
original thought.'
8o
See
ibid., pp. 48f.,
with
fig. 36;
and C.
W.
Leadbeater,
The Hidden Side
of Things, i,
1913, PP. 58ff.
The last mentioned work
forms a
summing-up
of Leadbeater's theories
as set forth in various
theosophical journals
during
the
early years
of the
century.
Cf. the
corresponding Kandinsky passage
from
'Malerei als reine
Kunst', below,
n. 82.
81
U.d.G., p. 23.
Cf. also
ibid., pp. I15,
19,
n. 2.
82
'Die Seele kommt zu einer
gegenstands-
losen
Vibration,
die noch
komplizierter,
ich
mochte sagen "tibersinnlicher"
ist als eine
Seelenerschtitterung
von einer
Glocke,
einer
klingenden Saite,
einem
gefallenen
Brette
usw.'
Ibid., p. 46,
cf.
p. 76.
The vibration
model is elaborated
by Kandinsky
in 'Malerei
als reine Kunst'
(originally
in Der
Sturm,
Sept. 1913;
here
quoted
after H.
Walden,
Expressionismus, 1918, p. I2): 'Solange
die
Seele mit dem
Korper
verbunden
ist,
kann
sie in der
Regel
Vibrationen nur durch die
Vermittlung
des
Geftihls empfangen.
Das
Gefuhl ist also eine Brhcke vom Unmateriel-
len zum Materiellen
(Kiinstler)
und vom
Materiellen zum Unmateriellen
(Beschauer).
Emotion- Gefuhl- Werk
-
Gefiihl
-
Emo-
tion. . . . Das innere
Element,
von der
Seelenvibration
geschaffen,
ist der Inhalt des
Werkes.'
83
U.d.G., pp. 59-69; cf. ibid., p. 137, n. I.
401
ein
Wesen ist. Es ist also nicht
eine
gleichgiiltig
und
zufallig
entstandene
Erscheinung,
die auch
gleichgiiltig
in dem
geistigen
Leben
weilt, sondern,
wie
jedes
Wesen besitzt es
weiterschaffende,
aktive Krafte. Es
lebt,
wirkt
und ist an der
Schipfung
der
gesprochenen geistigen
Atmosphire t~itig.
Aus diesem innerlichen
Standpunkte
ist auch ausschliesslich die
Frage
zu
verantworten,
ob das Werk
gut
oder
schlecht
ist. Wenn es
'schlecht'
in
der Form ist oder zu
schwach,
so ist diese Form
schlecht
oder zu
schwach,
um
in
jeder
Art rein
klingende
Seelenvibrationen
hervorzurufen.84
It did not
worry Kandinsky
that this
description
of the
'spiritual atmosphere',
if taken
literally,
must
appear
fantastic to a reader not versed in occult
psychology;
he was
firmly
convinced that he had the future on his side.
Besant and Leadbeater had adduced various
pseudo-scientific
writers in
support
of their
theories,85
and
Kandinsky similarly quoted
such
sources86
in
support
of his assertion that mediumistic research one
day
will contribute
to the
great synthesis.
Science still
clings
to its
self-imposed positivistic
limitations,
but it will soon be
swept away by
the violent
tempo
of the
present
spiritual
reorientation and face the dissolution of
matter.87
Kandinsky's
discussion of colours is not in its details influenced
by
theo-
sophical
colour
speculations.
There are some trivial similarities
(such
as
blue
=celestial
and thus
spiritual,88
zinnober
=glowing passion89),
but
apart
from these
Kandinsky's theory
rather
represents
an extension of the tradition
from
Goethe,
Delacroix and the
Neo-Impressionists.
The influence from
theosophy
worked on a more
general level,
and is
perceptible
in the belief in
an
extra-physical unity
behind
colours,
musical tones and the vibrations of
the human soul. For
Kandinsky
this accounts for the
possibility
of
synaesthetic
perception,
which he
regards
as characteristic of
highly developed individuals,
and which he
explains
as a kind of resonant vibration in sensitive
souls.90
But this hidden
unity
has also a far wider
significance. Despite
the extensive
use of
analogies
from music in Uber das
Geistige Kandinsky
did not see the
painter's
mission as one of
merely visualizing
music or
feeling.
On the
contrary,
he
regarded
the
painting
of music as
fundamentally impossible,
and the
painting
of
emotions, especially
one's
own,
as
uninteresting.
This
would be to conceive the
purpose
of art too
narrowly,
to
deprive
art of its
cosmic
message. 'My personal quality',
he
declared,
'consists of the
ability
to
84 Ibid., p. 132. Cf. the quotation above,
n.
79.
85 One of these authorities (see Besant &
Leadbeater, op. cit., pp. 3f.)
is a
Hippolyte
Baraduc who had
developed
the
study
of
vibrations into a
diagnostic
method
(La force
vitale, 1893;
Les vibrations de
la
vitalite'
humaine,
1904).
In one of his books
(L'A'me humaine,
ses
mouvements,
ses
lumidres,
et
l'iconographie
de
l'invisible fluidique, 1896),
Baraduc
published
seventy 'photographs'
of aural
phenomena
which influenced Besant's and Leadbeater's
conception
of
thought-forms (cf. e.g. 'coques
odiques', Baraduc, op. cit., pl. Lbis,
with our
P1.
o0c; and and
Thought-Forms, pp. 3f., 40).
86 U.d.G., pp. 41, n. I; 62, n.
I. The
latter reference is to Franz
Freudenberg,
'tber
Spaltung
der
Pers6nlichkeit
und ver-
wandte
psychische Fragen',
Die
iibersinnliche
Welt,
M/Ionatsschrift fuir
okkultistische
Forschung,
xvi, 1908,
nos.
I (pp. 18-22),
2
(pp. 51-67),
3 (pp.
i01-12).
Cf.
Appendix I,
below.
87
U.d.G., p.
i 15.
Kandinsky's
own method
consists of
empirisch-seelische
Empfindung
and
not
positive
science
(ibid., p. 88,
n.
I).
88
Ibid., p. 93
with n.
I.
89
Ibid., p.
0
oo.
9o Ibid., p. 62.
402
SIXTEN RINGBOM
make the Inner sound forth
stronger by limiting
the
External.'91
The
affinity
of
colour,
sound and
feeling
reveals a
unity
of cosmic
dimensions,
since
Nature also
plays
on the
strings
of our
soul, setting
them in
vibration.92
In
fact,
he
says,
Die Welt
klingt.
Sie ist
ein
Kosmos der
geistig
wirkenden Wesen. So ist
die tote
Materie
lebender
Geist.93
It is
up
to the artist to visualize the
'Spiritual
in matter' with the means at his
disposal, by
colours and forms that derive their
efficacy
from
being
extensions
of the
higher unity
into the material world.
IV
A
painter wishing
to render the
Spiritual
in matter is
obviously
faced with
certain
problems.
To
put
it
bluntly:
what does the
Spiritual really
look like?
For
Kandinsky
the solution
lay
in that
higher unity
of which he had once had
a
glimpse;
as we
remember,
his account of the
Lohengrin experience
has a
strong
flavour of a
personal
revelation. The fact that the contents of his
synaesthetic
vision
happened
to
correspond
with the observations recounted
by
the
theosophist clairvoyants
must have made him even more convinced of
the
significance
of his
experience.
In Besant's and Leadbeater's
Thought-Forms
there is an
important passage
where the authors
group
the
form-producing thoughts
into three classes:
first, thoughts
which take the
image
of the
thinker; second,
that which takes
the
image
of some material
object; and, third,
that 'which takes a form
entirely
its
own, expressing
its inherent
qualities
in the matter which it draws round it'.
Only thought-forms
of this third class can
usefully
be
illustrated,
for to
represent
those of the first or the second class would be
merely
to draw
portraits
or
landscapes.
In those
types
we have the
plastic
mental matter
moulded in imitation of forms
belonging
to the
physical plane,
in this third
group
we have a
glimpse
of the forms natural to the astral or mental
planes.94
Besant and
Leadbeater,
who of course did not think of
painters
in other terms
than those of
figurative art,
had
suggested
that the mental
images
of the
artist
belong
to the second class. The
painter
builds
up
a
landscape
out of
mental
matter, 'projects
it into
space
before
him, keeps
it before his mind's
eye,
and
copies
it'.
They
did not
regard
the illustrations to their book
(cf. Pls. 67d-h; 68b, c, e, f)
as works of art but as factual illustrations to the
text.
They
remark that the astral and mental nature of the
thought-forms
'places
an
insuperable
barrier in the
way
of their accurate
description'.95
But,
whether the authors cared about it or
not,
the trick had been
done;
the
91 In a clarifying commentary on U.d.G.
in
Kandinsky, Kollektiv-Ausstellung I9o2-I912,
[1913], PP. 4f.;
also in the MS. notes to an
address in
1914 (see Eichner, Kandinsky
und
Gabriele
Miinter, p. I I6).
92
U.d.G., p. 75.
**
Der Blaue
Reiter, p. 92.
**
Besant &
Leadbeater, Thought-Forms,
p. 24.
>>
Loc. cit.
403
illustrators of
Thought-Forms
had indeed
represented
an
alleged spiritual
reality
behind the
physical appearances.
In the
thought-forms
of the third class the
clairvoyant
could obtain
insights
in the
higher planes
of
nature;
a world where
things
and actions looked
entirely
different from what
they
do on the
physical plane.
The idea that such
patterns
indeed reflect a cosmic order had earlier been
suggested by
H. S.
Olcott in his
preface
to Leadbeater's The Aura.
According
to Olcott the
geometrical configurations
observed in the auras of
theosophical adepts explain
the
geometrical
forms of the visible world which is but 'the
physical
outcome
of the connection with A'kasha of the
primal geometrical arrangements
which
pulsate
in the Divine Mind'.96
Kandinsky may
not have known Leadbeater's The Aura with Olcott's
preface,
but he was familiar with Besant's and Leadbeater's
Thought-Forms.
Moreover,
he knew Steiner's articles in
Lucifer-Gnosis.
In these articles he
could read the most detailed
descriptions
of
clairvoyant experiences
of
spiritual
worlds. In one of the articles Steiner had
argued
that in the
'imaginative world',
that is at the second
stage
of
higher knowledge,
the
tones,
colours etc. no
longer,
as in the
physical world,
occur
coupled
with
physical
objects.
. . . in der
imaginativen
Welt
spricht
alles so zum
Menschen,
wie wenn es
unmittelbar
intelligent waire,
wahrend in der
physischen
Welt auch die
Intelligenz
nur auf dem
Umwege
durch die
physische Korperlichkeit
sich
offenbaren kann. Das macht eben die
Beweglichkeit
und Freiheit der
imaginativen
Welt
aus,
dass das
Zwischenglied
der ausseren
Dinge fehlt,
dass das
Geistige ganz
unmittelbar in den freischwebenden
Tonen,
Farben usw. sich
auslebt.s7
Steiner's visions of the
freischwebende Tone,
Farben usw. are
strikingly
reflected
in
Kandinsky's
idea of the
'emancipation'
of colours and forms from the
things
of
objective nature,
an
emancipation
on a
spiritual
basis which
already
was
beginning
in his own
'Compositions'.98
Once the observer realizes the true character of
Imagination,
Steiner
continues,
he also finds that the
patterns
of the astral world are more than
mere
images; they
are
nothing
less than the
'Kundgebungen geistiger Wesenheiten'.
This
understanding
leads to the
following stage,
that of
Inspiration.
In the
description
of this
plane
Steiner makes extensive use of
analogies
of tone and
colour. The
observer,
as it
were,
'listens
spiritually'
to the
impressions
of
light
and colour.99
In dem
Aufglanzen
und
Verldschen,
in der
Farbenwandlung
der Bilder
offenbaren sich Harmonien und
Disharmonien,
welche die
Gefuihle,
9
H. S. Olcott in:
Leadbeater,
The
Aura,
pp. 5f.
9 Steiner,
Die
Stufen
der
haheren Erkenntnis,
pp. 42f.
The four
stages
of
knowledge
(material, imaginative, inspired, intuitive)
are described
ibid., pp. I6ff.
9 8U.d.G., pp. 114, 115, 128;
cf.
p. 55,
where music is said to be 'von der Natur
5iusserlich ganz emanzipiert'.
s Steiner, Stufen, pp. 68ff.;
cf.
p.
21:
'Man vernimmt die Form des Kristalles als
Klang.'
An element of Baron Miinchausen is
introduced
by
the assertion that 'auf dieser
Stufe des Erkennens "hdrt man
geistig
das
Gras wachsen"
'.
404
SIXTEN RINGBOM
Vorstellungen
und Gedanken seelischer und
geistiger
Wesenheiten
enthiillen.100
Es sind
gewisse Linienformen, Gestalten,
die man erlebt. Doch nicht
etwa so erlebt man
sic,
dass man sie vor sich in
irgendeinem
Raume
gezeichnet sahe,
sondern
so,
als ob man in fortwahrender
Bewegung
mit
seinem Ich
jedem Linienschwung, jeder Gestaltung
selbst
folgte. Ja
man
fiihlt das Ich als den Zeichner und
zugleich
als das
Material,
mit dem
gezeichnet
wird. Und
jede Linienfuihrung, jede Ortsainderung
sind
zugleich
Erlebnis dieses Ich. Man lernt
erkennen,
dass man mit seinem
bewegten
Ich
hineingeflochten
ist in die schaffenden Weltenkrafte. Die
Weltgesetze
sind nun dem Ich nicht mehr etwas ausserlich
Wahrgenom-
menes,
sondern
ein
wirkliches
Wundergewebe,
an dem man
spinnt.-Die
Geheimwissenschaft entwirft allerlei sinnbildliche
Zeichnungen
und
Bilder. Wenn diese den Tatsachen wirklich
entsprechen
und nicht blosse
ausgedachte Figuren sind,
so
liegen
ihnen Erlebnisse des Beobachters in
hdheren Welten
zugrunde,
die in der oben beschriebenen Art anzusehen
sind.101
Imagination, finally,
leads to the fourth
stage
of Intuition where the observer
reaches the interior of
things;
the
freely hovering
colours and tones at the
second
stage,
and the
display
of forms at the
third,
had after all been
images
of the
highest reality.
Kandinsky
had
sought
an
adequate expression
for his Kosmos der
geistig
wirkenden
Wesen;
in Steiner's articles he found the manifestations of
geistige
Wesenheiten described with vivid
perspicuity.
Steiner's
descriptions depict
spiritual
worlds where
freely floating
colours and
forms,
detached from
material
objects,
reveal the
feelings,
ideas and
thoughts
of
spiritual beings,
worlds where the observer feels himself in the midst of the creative laws of the
Cosmos.
Moreover,
Steiner
already
referred to the
possibility
of
graphic
representation
of such
realities,
and he
may tacitly
have included such
images
as the illustrations to Besant and Leadbeater
among
the
representations
devised
by
the occult
sciences.102
Apart
from
being interesting
documents for the
history
of
expression,
these
colour illustrations can be
regarded
as the first
non-objective representations,
executed about a decade before
Kandinsky's
famous water-colour of
1910.
They
are not
ornaments,
nor are
they
works of art in
any
normal sense of the
word. But
they
do
comply
with
Kandinsky's
basic
requirement
that the artist
should
disregard
the
physical appearance
of matter in favour of the
psychic
reality
of the
spiritual.
The illustrations to
Thought-Forms
are made
by
a Mr.
John Varley,
a
Mr.
Prince,
and Miss Macfarlane
according
to instructions of the
clairvoyant
authors;
a few 'Vibration
Figures' (e.g. P1. 68f)
contrived
by
Mr. F.
Bligh
Bond
are also included
among
the
plates.1?3
In Man Visible and Invisible Leadbeater
1OO
Ibid., p. 7o.
101
Ibid., p. 7I.
102
In an article in Lucifer-Gnosis in I904
Steiner refers to Leadbeater's Man Visible
and Invisible 'zur
Vergleichung
mit meiner
Angaben' (Steiner, Luzifer-Gnosis I9o3-19o8,
p. 117).
103 John Varley,
a minor
landscape painter,
had been one of Madame
Blavatsky's early
students and was the leader of the
group
of
405
thanks Count Maurice Prozor who drew and coloured the illustrations 'from
life'. Count Prozor's
designs
still retain a reference to the
physical plane
in
indicating
the relative
position
of the
physical body
with an outline
drawing
(faintly perceptible
even in the outburst of
P1.
67c),
whereas the
thought-
forms visualized
by
Mr.
Varley
etc. lack all such references with the
exception
of the church in the musical illustrations.
These
non-objective designs depict supersensible
manifestations of
thoughts, feelings
and musical structures.
Kandinsky
shared the
theosophers'
belief that
pure
colour and
form,
detached from material
objects,
are at the
same time
expressive
of,
and conducive to certain mind
vibrations,
which in
their turn are related to occurrences of a cosmic character. It is true that he
deviated from his
theosophical precursors
in some
important respects;
he did
not believe in the
graphic representation
of music as
such,
nor did he
regard
the
depiction
of trivial
feelings
as
profitable.
From his
point
of view the work
of his occult
colleagues
must have
appeared
as a mere
beginning,
since instead
of coarser emotions such as
'agony', joy', 'grief'
etc. he wanted to evoke 'finer
feelings'
as
yet
unheard
of.1?4
But still these non-material
thought-forms
presented glimpses
of the
spiritual
cosmos. And for this reason
they
must
have
appeared highly suggestive
to
Kandinsky,
whose artistic
vocabulary
indeed seems to have been influenced
by
the occult
pictorial
idiom.
Kandinsky's Landscape
with
a
Church
II
(with
red
spot)
(P1.
68a)
is in more
than one
way
reminiscent of the
Meistersinger
Overture of
Thought-Forms
(P1.
68b).
The colour scale is in both cases based on an
interplay
of luminous
tones set
against
a
yellowish background. Kandinsky's painting
has on the
left a
conspicuous
red
spot
which
gives
it its
name;
a
correspondingly strong
red accent is to be found in the centre of the
Wagnerian
vibration structure.
The forms of the two
pictures
also
appear
related:
strange
mountainous
shapes
with
pointed
silhouettes,
and diffuse blots of colour
hovering
in the
midst of them.
Even in the water-colours of the
early 'twenties,
when
Kandinsky
still
mentioned
Thought-Forms,
we come across echoes of the
painter's
occult
precursors (cf.
Pls.
67c, g; 68e). Kandinsky's frequent
use
during
the 'thirties
of
neutral,
dark
backgrounds
to
vividly
coloured
configurations may
also
represent
a reminiscence of the black
nothingness surrounding
the
thought-
forms in Besant's and Leadbeater's book. In fact the
representations
of the
aural
phenomena
and
Kandinsky's
abstract
paintings,
if set side
by side,
provide
a most
interesting study.
Both the
shapeless patterns
of
Kandinsky's
early compositions,
and the
sharply
defined
planes
and
pseudo-organic
forms
of the later works have their
analogies
in his occult sources. The transition
from the 'soft' to the 'hard'
style
is one of the
many puzzling
features in
Kandinsky's oeuvre,
and one
may speculate
whether under the influence of
theosophical
artists
employed by
Besant and
Leadbeater
for the execution of the
plates
of their
books;
see
Nethercot,
The Last Four
Lives
of
Annie
Besant, pp. 47, 89f., I 7.
As
early
as
1947 Robsjohn-Gibbings (Mona
Lisa's
Mustache, p. 86) pointed
out that these
theosophical
artists 'had
produced
the first
purely
abstract
paintings',
which
influenced,
among others, Kandinsky (loc. cit.,
and
pp.
148f., 151);
an observation which has been
ignored by
later abstractionist
historiography.
104
U.d.G., pp. 23, I04,
I24.
406
SIXTEN
RINGBOM
Gestalt
psychology105
he
ultimately came, perhaps,
to
prefer
the
regularly
geometrical variants of these same sources.
V
Kandinsky may
have been
impressed by
what he saw as the
spiritual
message
of writers as
Blavatsky,
Besant and
Leadbeater,
but it is difficult to
believe that he could have
approved
of their views on
art,
which
were,
to
put
it
mildly,
rather humdrum. It is here that his
acquaintance
with Steiner's
writings
becomes
important.
In Steiner the aesthetic tradition from Goethe
and the romantic
philosophers
was combined with the
theosophic gnosis.
Steiner
actually
went as far as to
designate
artistic
sensitivity
the best
prerequisite
for
the
development of
the
spiritual abilities,
since 'this
sensitivity penetrates
through
the surface of
things, reaching
their
secrets'.106
Steiner's identification
of the 'cosmic laws' of
theosophy
with Goethe's 'secret laws of nature' had a
twofold
significance.
The former were
given
an aesthetic
application they
had lacked
earlier,
and the latter were invested with an unheard-of
graphic
vividness formulated in terms of a
spiritual
vision of
emancipated
colours and
forms. Artistic
sensitivity
thus
provides
a means of
higher knowledge, by
which the
clairvoyant
can
place
himself in the midst of the creative cosmic
laws.
Kandinsky regarded
art as 'one of the most
powerful agencies'
of the
spiritual
movement towards
Knowledge.
What
theosophy
and similar
spiritual agencies
are
trying
to achieve
by
their
methods,
he seems to
argue,
art is
endeavouring
to
bring
about in its own
way.
Few
people
in our
day
are
as
yet capable
of 'finer vibrations'. But since we are
entering
the
'Epoch
of the
Great
Spiritual'
time is
ripe
for
imparting
this
ability
to
people
at
large.
Kandinsky's
ideas
again
reflect the
teachings
of Steiner who
repeatedly
emphasized
that
now,
on the threshold of the
'beginning Spiritual
Era',107
the
moment has come when esoteric
knowledge
can become
exoteric;
that
is,
the
ability
to
explore
the
higher
worlds can now be made common
property.
Steiner's articles in
Lucifer-Gnosis
and his book
Theosophie
were written and
published
with this
very purpose
in
mind; Kandinsky,
on his
part, forcefully
emphasized
that the main
object
of Uber das
Geistige
and Der Blaue Reiter was
to 'awaken the
ability
to
experience
the
spiritual
in the material and abstract
things,
an
ability
which will be
absolutely necessary
in the
future..
..'.10s
105 Ettlinger, Kandinsky's
'At
Rest', pp. I3ff.
106
Steiner, Wie erlangt man. . ., p. 47.
107 See e.g. Steiner's preface to Schur6's Die
grossen Eingeweihten,
p. vi,
where the book is
called 'eine der besten
Erscheinungen
dieses
beginnenden spirituellen
Zeitalters'. Cf.
also
below,
n.
159.
lo8 Kandinsky, Riickblick, p. 32:
'Ich
glaube,
dass die
ktinftige
Philosophie,
ausser
dem Wesen der
Dinge,
auch ihren Geist mit
besonderer Aufmerksamkeit studieren wird.'
.
'Dadurch aber wird den Menschen im
allgemeinen
erst das Erleben des
Geistigen
in den materiellen
Dingen bedingt.
Und
durch diese neue
Fahigkeit,
die im Zeichen
des "Geistes" stehen
wird,
kommt der
Genuss der
abstrakten-=absoluten
Kunst
zustande.' The books U.d.G. and Der Blaue
Reiter were intended 'diese
unbedingt
in der
Zukunft
notige,
unendliche
Erlebnisse
er-
mbglichende Fihigkeit
des Erlebens des
Geistigen
in den materiellen und abstrakten
Dingen
zu wecken.' 'Der
Wunsch,
diese
beglckende Fahigkeit
in den
Menschen,
die
sie noch nicht
hatten, hervorzurufen,
war
das
Hauptziel
der beiden Publikationen.'
Cf. also
U.d.G., pp. 23, 39, 115, 124,
and a
passage
from an article of
1931
in
Essays, p.
141.
407
Kandinsky's conception
of the artist and his activities is determined
by
these
lofty
views on the function of art. The work of art emanates 'out of the
artist' in a
mysterious way (see above, p.
4oo);
feeling
and inner
orientation,
not rational
consideration,
are the
principal
sources of art as well as of other
spiritual
achievements. The artist
possesses
innate
qualities
that
through
Begeisterung
can be
heightened
to
geniale
Offenbarung.
Hence the future
grammar
of
painting
will be
founded,
not on
physical laws,
but on the laws of the inner
necessity,
which are of a
psychic
character. The innate
feeling
is a talent in
the
real, Gospel sense,
and it can be cultivated
by exercising
the
spirit;
such
exercise
being
the
duty
of the
artist.109 Kandinsky's
three
types
of abstract
designs,
the
'Impressions', 'Improvisations',
and
'Compositions',
are
clearly
intended to form an
ascending series,
like the
degrees
of
mystic insight.
In
the
'Composition'
the artist's
feeling
is the ultimate
arbiter,
and it is his
highest type
which for
Kandinsky
stood in a direct connexion with the advent
of the Great
Spiritual.110
In an artistic
programme
of this
kind,
the
concept
of
beauty naturally plays
a minor
part.
In Uber das
Geistige Kandinsky rarely
refers to
it,
and in
doing
so he
usually places
the word between
quotation
marks.111 'The
beauty
of
colour and form is
(despite
the contentions of the
pure
aesthetes or even the
naturalists,
who
chiefly
aim at
"beauty")
not a sufficient
goal
of art.'112
Outer
beauty
has no
meaning, Kandinsky argues; every
colour is
intrinsically
beautiful since
every
colour evokes a soul vibration and
every
vibration
enriches the soul. Real
beauty
is derived from inner
necessity,
and what is
intrinsically
beautiful
may superficially appear ugly.11a
Kandinsky
not
only rejected
conventional
'beauty'
in favour of the new
definition of the
concept;
he also introduced a new
concept
of
'fidelity
to
nature' in the
place
of the old one with its materialistic connotations. In the
first theoretical works this
concept
is not
explicitly formulated,
but in the course
of time it was to become the central notion of his
theory
of abstract art. In
109 U.d.G., pp. 85f. For the expression
'Evangelic Talent',
see also
ibid., p. 26,
n.
i.
In the MS. notes for a
speech
of
1914
Kandinsky gives 'logic'
an
importance equal
to 'intuition': 'Die
Entstehung
des Werkes
ist kosmischen Charakters. Der Urheber des
Werkes ist also der Geist. Das Werk existiert
also abstrakt vor seiner
Verkdrperung,
die
den menschlichen Sinnen das Werk
zuging-
lich macht. Fur diese also
notwendige
Verk6rperung
ist
jedes
Mittel recht. Also die
Logik
ebenso wie die Intuition.
...
Beide
Faktoren sind aber ohne die Kontrolle des
Geistes an und fur sich fruchtlos und tot'
(Eichner, op. cit., p.
I Io).
11o
U.d.G., pp. I42f.
Cf. also n.
Io8,
above.
In fact the
break-through
to abstraction
happened fairly suddenly (L. Eitner,
'Kan-
dinsky
in
Munich', Burlington Magazine,
xcix, i957,
pp.
i93ff., p. i96).
The first
experiments
were of a
chiefly graphic
character,
executed with the utmost care and
repeated
over and over
again (repr. Eichner,
op. cit., figs. 65, 67).
Eitner
(p. 196) suggests
Art nouveau ornament as a
possible
source of
inspiration;
in our context the
analogy
between
Kandinsky's graphic
exercises and
Steiner's visions of
'gewisse Linienformen,
Gestalten' is rather
suggestive.
111
U.d.G., pp. 48,
86 n.
I,
124.
112 Ibid., p. I15.
Cf. Der Blaue
Reiter, p. 84:
'Das zum Minimum
gebrachte "Ktinst-
lerische" muss hier als das am
stirksten
wirkende Abstrakte erkannt werden.'
1"o U.d.G., pp. I36f., esp. p. 137,
n.
i;
cf.
also
p. 86,
n.
i.
Steiner had referred to 'die
Wesen der
h6heren Welten,
die niemals sich
physisch verkdrpern,
mit ihren oft wunder-
vollen,
oft auch
grisslichen
Farben'
(Wie
erlangt
man. .
., p.
55).
408
SIXTEN RINGBOM
Punkt und Linie
zur Fltiche"4
he
regards
the entire 'World' as a cosmic
composi-
tion. This cosmic
composition
forms the
subject
matter of abstract art. In
1931
Kandinsky prophesied
that the
new, blessing ability
to see
through
the
surface of nature will
prove
that abstract art in no
way
excludes the con-
nexion with
nature;
on the
contrary,
this connexion will indeed be found more
intensive than ever in recent
times.115 During
the 'thirties
Kandinsky
also
became
firmly
convinced of the Goethean
proposition
that all true art is
subject
to the laws of
nature.116
Kandinsky's
theoretical
writings
of the 'twenties and the 'thirties
may
at
first seem more rational than the romantic Uber das
Geistige
and Der Blaue
Reiter. Yet the later
writings
are based on the same semi-occult
presupposi-
tions as the earlier
ones;
there is never a hint of a
revision,
let alone
retraction,
of the foundations formulated around
I910.
On the
contrary
his use as a
matter of course of
terms,
distinctions and definitions taken from the
early
works
suggests
that he
regarded
these as more or less definitive. These
circumstances, together
with the immediate
response
to Uber das
Geistige
among
the
early
abstract
painters
account for the
lasting
influence of Kan-
dinsky's
occultism on later aesthetic
speculation.
Various trends flow
together
in
Kandinsky's early
art
theories,
and ideas from
Worringer,117 Fiedler118
and others are
mingled
with
Kandinsky's own, undeniably original thought.
Yet the occult influences received
during
century
affected his basic outlook more
profoundly
than
any
of these other sources.
The
place
of art in the
spiritual development
and the contribution of art to
the future
synthesis;
the vibration
theory;
the
correspondences
between
art,
feeling
and the cosmic
laws;
the notion of
emancipated
colours and forms as
specific
for the
spiritual reality
behind
matter;
and even some elements of
Kandinsky's pictorial
idiom;
all these basic features are derived from
theosophy
or its confrontation with Goethean
speculation
in Steiner's
teachings.
Kan-
dinsky
is
by
no means the first
painter
to
attempt
to
represent
the
inefabile;
that his
attempts
resulted,
not in ideal or
symbolic figures,
but in
emancipated,
non-objective
forms and colours
may
be ascribed to the influences from the
movement which had
taught
him that such was the nature of the
Spiritual.
VI
Until the outbreak of the First World War Herwarth Walden's Berlin and
Kandinsky's
Munich formed
leading
centres of
progressive
art. Klee had
joined
the Blaue Reiter in
1911, Arp
came to meet
Kandinsky
in
1912,
and
114
Kandinsky, Punkt und Linie zur Fldche,
4th
ed.,
I959, p. 38.
Cf. the
theosophical
notion that 'the
umverse
itself' is 'a
mighty
thought-form
called into existence
by
the
LOGOS'
(Besant
&
Leadbeater,
Thought-
Forms, p. 34).
115 Originally
in
Cahiers
d'Art,
no.
i, I931
;
quoted
after
Essays, pp. I4If.
116
See ibid., pp. 145, 203, 215.
117 See e.g. Herbert Read, The Philosophy
of
Modern
Art,
1955,
p.
i o6;
idem,
A
Concise
History of
Modern
Painting, 1959,
pp.
64, 191;
Cassou in:
Kandinsky, Gegenkldnge, p. I3.
Yet
Lipps's
definition of the aesthetic ex-
perience
as
'objectified self-enjoyment',
on
which
Worringer
founded his
Abstraktion
und
Einfiihlung,
must have been
unacceptable
for
Kandinsky.
118
See
W. Hofmann,
'Studien zur Kunst-
theorie des
2o. Jahrhunderts', Zeitschrift far
Kunstgeschichte, I8, I955, pp. I37ff.
INVOLUTION & EVOLUTION
HAf/IAPAPA/#PRYA4/C A4'FA#
PAP4A'4?MYIC PLA#[
Bt/DDB//CPIAAEt
A:.7.1 :
A S T
Rii~ii iii iii-iiiiii------l--~-
MATTER
A:%4 Ji5!*AUii i4WAij4i
#UME#
ii'ifliL
a-The Planes of Nature. C. W.
Leadbeater,
Man Visible and Invisible.
1902,
P1.
iv
(p. 398)
b-The
Mental
Body
of the c-Intense
Anger. Leadbeater,
op
Average
Man.
Leadbeater, cit.,
P1.
xiii
(pp. 398, 405)
op. cit.,
P1.
ix
(p. 398)
d--On
the First
Night.
Annie Besant and
C. W.
Leadbeater, Thought-Forms, 1905,
Fig. 31 (pp. 398, 402, 417)
e-The Gamblers. Besant and
Leadbeater, op. cit., Fig. 32
(p.
398)
g--Sudden
Fright.
Besant and Leadbeater,
op. cit., Fig. 27 (pp. 398, 405)
f--At
a Funeral. Besant and Leadbeater, op. cit.,
Fig. 34
(P
398)
h-At a
Shipwreck.
Besant and Leadbeater,
op. cit., Fig. 30 (pp. 398, 417)
0\
00
Courtesy
Mrs.
Peggy Guggenheim
and the Arts Council
of
Great Britain
a-Wassily Kandinsky, Landscape
with a Church II
(with
red
spot) (p. 405)
b-'Wagner: Overture to The Master-
singers'.
Besant and
Leadbeater,
op.
cit.,
P1.
W
(pp. 398, 399, 402, 405)
c-'Mendelssohn: Songs without Words
No. 9'. Besant and Leadbeater,
op.
cit.,
P1.
M (pp. 398, 399, 402)
d-Paul
Klee, Ways
of
Studying
Nature. Staatliches
Bauhaus Weimar
1919-i923, I923, p. 24 (P. 4I1)
e-Detail
from 'Gounod: Soldiers
Chorus from Faust'. Besant and
Leadbeater, op. cit.,
P1.
G
(pp. 398,
399,
402,
405)
f-An Aspiration to Enfold All.
Besant and Leadbeater, op. cit., Fig.
38 (pp. 398, 399, 402, 404)
409
Walden's Sturm
gallery
maintained contacts both with the Italian Futurists
and the French
avant-garde. Kandinsky's
Uber das
Geistige
was
reprinted
twice
within a
year,
and the Blaue Reiter almanac was issued in a second edition in
1914.
Among
the Blue Riders Franz Marc was
considerably
influenced
by
Kandinsky's mysticism.
In the
essay Geistige
Giiter
in the Blaue Reiter almanac
Marc
regarded
the
mystisch-innerliche
Konstruktion as the
great problem
of the
present generation.19
He had also himself studied the German
romantics,
and in his conviction of the
religious
mission of art we
recognize
echoes from
Schiller and
Schelling. According
to Marc the collections of museums and
galleries
show 'that there is no
great
and
pure
art without
religion,
that art
was the more artistic the more
religious
it was
(and
the more
artificial,
the
more
irreligious
the
period)'.120
But the exalted tone of Marc's
aphorisms
shows that he shared
Kandinsky's
belief that the
spiritual turning-point
had
arrived.
Die kommende Kunst wird die
Formwerdung
unserer wissenschaftlichen
tberzeugung sein;
sie ist unsere
Religion,
unser
Schwerpunkt,
unsere
Wahrheit. Sie ist tief und schwer
genug,
um
die
grdsste Formgestaltung,
Formumgestaltung
zu
bringen,
die die Welt erlebt
hat.121
Marc arrived at abstraction
by
a
slightly
different
path
from
Kandinsky's.
He had asked himself what nature looked like to an
animal,
and
regarded
the
visualizing
of the animal's world as a
profitable
task of the
artist.122
From
such
speculation
he came to abstraction-which
appeared
to him even more
exciting-'to
the second
sight,
which is
entirely
Indian-untemporal'.'23
The
'European eye'
has
perhaps poisoned
and distorted the
world,
and Marc
instead
sought
this 'second
sight'.
The artist divines the True Form of the
world,
'a demon allows us to see
through
the slits of the
world,
and in dreams
he
guides
us to the back of the
motley stage
of the
world'.'24
Unser uralte
Wille,
die
triigerische
Welt mit dem wahren
Sein,
dem
'Jenseits'
zu
vertauschen,
kleidete
frther
dieses
Jenseits
kiinstlerisch in
die Formen der sichtbaren Welt. Heute traumen wir nicht mehr
eingeengt
von den
Dingen,
sondern verneinen
sie,
da unser Wissen zu
jenem
Leben
vorgedrungen ist,
das sie
verbergen.125
The last assertion in
particular,
shows Marc's debt to
Kandinsky
whom he
believed to be on the track of the
truth.126
Then as
now, only
occultists
claimed to be in
possession
of
knowledge
of 'the life concealed
by
the
things',
and Steiner had as we remember
published
his works with claims to scientific
exactness.
119 Marc, 'Geistige Giiter',
Der Blaue
Reiter, p. 3.
Cf. Marc's remarks on Die Wilden
Deutschlands
(ibid., p. 7):
'Die
Mystik
er-
wachte in den Seelen und mit ihr uralte
Elemente der Kunst'.
12
F.
Marc, Briefe, Aufzeichnungen
und
Aphorismen, i, 1920, p. 124.
121
Aphorism 35, ibid., p.
128. Cf.
Aphorism 78, ibid., p. 129.
122
Annotations from 1911-12[?]; see ibid.,
p. 121;
also letter of
12 April 1915
in Marc's
Briefe
aus dem
Feld, [4th ed.], I948, p. 64.
123
Letter of 12 April 1915, loc. cit.
124
Annotation [1912?] on Absolute Paint-
ing, Briefe, Aufzeichnungen
und
Aphorismen, i, p.
124.
125
Aphorism 55, ibid., p. 129.
126
Letter of 12 April 1915, ibid., p. 49;
also in
Briefe
aus dem
Feld, p. 65.
27
41o
SIXTEN RINGBOM
Whether Marc came into contact with
theosophical
ideas
mainly through
Kandinsky,
or whether he also studied the
thing
himself,
is not
quite
certain.
In one of his letters from the battlefield he discusses
Kandinsky's sources, and,
with
apparent surprise,
realizes that 'we knew
Kandinsky
himself
very
little
indeed'.127
Not until the
documentary
material on the relations between these
painters
has been made
public,
will it be
possible
to assess
Kandinsky's
role
as a transmitter of various occult ideas to his fellow artists.
Still, Kandinsky
had
quoted theosophical
writers in
Uber
das
Geistige,
and he is also known to
have been inclined to discuss these
things.
In the
published writings
of Marc
there are indeed
passages suggesting
an active interest in
theosophy
in
addition to the notions transmitted
by Kandinsky.
Marc's reference to
reincarnation,
and his Indian romanticism in
general, point
in this
direction;
the
popularization
of Indian lore
had,
as we
know,
tended to become a
theosophical monopoly during
century.
At the same
time Marc's notion of 'the
European
as a
physician
and reviver
[Wieder-
verkiinder]
of the ancient
truth'"s2
reflects the
special
form of German
theosophy
preached by
Steiner who had
opposed
the deutsche Geisteserbe to the one-sided
Oriental enthusiasm of the
Anglo-Indian theosophists.
Although
Marc believed
Kandinsky
to be on the
right track,
he was
apprehensive
of the
dangers
of 'dilettantism and a certain kind of
vanity'
for
which he
thought Kandinsky
had better look
out.129
By
this remark Marc
gives
vent to
misgivings
that earlier had been
expressed by August
Macke.
After the Blaue Reiter exhibition in
January 1912
Macke wrote a letter to Marc
where he
openly
showed his irritation with what he
regarded
as 'the
conceit,
pusillanimity
and blindness' of the Blue Riders. He
was,
for his
part,
thoroughly
fed
up
with 'the
beginning
of the Great
Spiritual'.
In another
letter he makes his
point
clear: he felt that
Kandinsky
and Marc asked for
too
much,
he disliked the
pompous
words,
and he warned Marc
against
thinking
too much on
Kandinsky's
'Spiritual'.'30
Personal
antagonism may
have had some share in these
outbursts,
but Macke was no doubt
expressing
his sincere
convictions.131
He held
Kandinsky responsible
for
introducing
an
alien element into
art;
whether he knew what
Kandinsky's
sources
were,
does
not
appear
from the
published
documents.
The relation between
Kandinsky's
and Klee's art theories is
complicated
127 Letter of 24 November 1915, ibid., pp.
Iof.
By
this time Marc had read
Tolstoy's
What is
Art?,
and found that he understood
Kandinsky
better than before. He also
speculates
whether
Kandinsky might
have
read Gerhard
Hauptmann's
Der Narr in
Christo Emmanuel
Quint.
12s
'So erscheint dem
spiten
Denker
das
Abstrakte wieder als das
nattirliche
Sehen,
als das
primire,
intuitive
Gesicht,
das
Sentimentale aber als
hysterische Erkrankung
und Reduktion unsres
geistigen
Sehver-
mdgens.-Alle
hohen Volker und nicht zum
wenigsten
die Orientalen verfielen alternd
dieser Krankheit'-'Wie wir unser Problem
auch
wenden,
es wird immer
ernster,
dringender' (Aphorism 89, Briefe, Aufzeich-
nungen, i, p. 131).
Cf. letter of 2
February
1916:
'. . . der Stolz muss in Menschen
siegen
uber alle
Dinge,
nicht die indische
Trauer'
(ibid., p. 104).
129
Letter of
24
November
1915,
see n.
127,
above.
130
August Macke-Franz Marc, Brief-
wechsel,
ed. W.
Macke, 1964, p. 96f.
131
A
diary
note
by
Lothar Erdmann of
1908
describes Macke as a
person who,
not
being
interested in transcendental
specula-
tion, regarded
the
brooding
on
metaphysical
problems
as a waste of time
(Vriesen,
August Macke, p. 43).
411
by
the fact that
long
before he
joined
the Blaue Reiter Klee had formed an
outlook which in its Goethean
components partly overlaps Kandinsky's
Goetheanism. As
early
as
1902
he had
opposed physical nature, corporeal
construction and Diesseits to
spiritual nature,
the dissolution of the con-
structive element and
Jenseits.132
In
1905
he
speculated
on
'pure' art;
a
drawing,
he
argued,
is a
symbol,
and the
deeper
the
imaginary
lines of
projection
of the
higher
dimensions
penetrate,
the better.'33 He
regarded
the
invention of
photography
as a fair
warning against
the materialistic outlook.
Was ist da 'Natur'? Um das Gesetz handelt es sich
doch,
nach dem die
'Natur'
funktioniert,
und so wie es sich dem
Kiinstler
jeweils
erschliesst.'34
This is of course a
thoroughly
Goethean
declaration,
and it recurs in various
forms in Klee's
writings.
In Uber die moderne Kunst
(1924)
he formulated his
famous motto 'Vom
Vorbildlichen zum Urbildlichen':
Anmassend wird der
Kuinstler,
der dabei bald
irgendwo
stecken bleibt.
Berufen aber sind die
Kuinstler,
die heute bis in
einige
Nahe
jenes geheimen
Grundes
dringen,
wo das
Urgesetz
die
Entwicklungen speist.
Da wo das
Zentralorgan
aller zeitlich-raumlichen
Bewegtheit,
heisse es nun
Hirn
oder Herz der
Schdpfung,
alle Funktionen
veranlasst,
wer mdchte
da als Kiinstler nicht wohnen?
Im Schosse der
Natur,
im
Urgrund
der
Schdpfung,
wo der
geheime
Schliissel
zu allem verwahrt
liegt.a35
The last
aphorism actually goes
further than Goethe's
speculations
on
geheime
Naturgesetze;
like Steiner's aesthetics it
presents
an occult elaboration of
Goethe,
who had after all
emphasized
that Nature harbours no secret which
does not
leap
to the
eye
of the attentive observer.
Klee,
on the other
hand,
maintained that modern artists
'nicht
nur
Gesehenes mehr
oder
weniger tempera-
mentvoll
wiedergeben,
sondern
geheim Erschautes sichtbar machen'.a6
Klee's outlook is
perhaps
best illustrated
by
a
diagram
which
accompanied
his article
Wege
des Naturstudiums of
1923
(P1. 68d).
In this circular Cosmos
there are three lines of connexion between the entities of the
Ego-Artist
and
the
You-Object.
The horizontal short cut of
optico-physical
observation reflects
only
the surface of the
Object,
the thin membrane to the left of the
pear-like
shape.
In contrast to this the
non-optic
or
metaphysical ways
of cosmic
community
(dynamic)
and common
earthly
rooting (static) penetrate
into the interior of
things, rendering
a visible condensation of the
object.
This is indicated
by
the
132
Diary note, i902 (Felix Klee, Paul
Klee,
Leben und Werk in
Dokumenten, 1960,
p. 14):
'Idee einer
Qberwindung Roms-Antike--
zur
Klarstellung:
I.
Komplex Objektive Anschauung, phy-
sische Beschaffenheit.
Korperliche Konstruktion,
Diesseits-Erde.
II.
Komplex Subjektive Anschauung,
geistige Beschaffenheit.
Verflifssigung
des Konstruk-
tiven, Seele-Jenseits.
ad II.
a)
Das Christentum.
b)
Die Musik als neuer
Hauptzweig
des II.
Komplexes.'
133
Paul
Klee, Tagebiicher,
ed. F.
Klee,
I957,
p.
I93.
134 Ibid., p. 195.
135
Paul
Klee, Uber
die moderne
Kunst, 1951,
p.
47.
For Klee's admiration of
Goethe,
see
Grohmann,
Paul Klee
[Engl. ed.], 1954, pp.
32, 152, 190.
136
Grohmann, Paul Klee, p. 49.
412
SIXTEN RINGBOM
horizontal section
through
the
You-Object.
All three meet in the
eye,
and result
in a
'Synthese
von
dusserem
Sehen und innerem
Schauen'.137
The
gradual maturing
of
the
study
of nature results in abstract
presentations
of a new
'naturalness',
the
Natiirlichkeit
des Werkes. The artist then creates a work which is a simile to
the work of
God.13s
Klee calls his
non-optic ways 'metaphysical';
a more
appropriate adjective
would
perhaps
be
'occult',
since he
emphatically
rejected
the idea of the scientific
verifiability
of his
Naturtreue.139
The dualism of Klee's
diagram
with its
earthly
and cosmic
poles140
has an
analogy
in Steiner's idea of the dual
impulses affecting
the
Ego,
one
working
from below and one from above.141 Klee's
personal conception
of artistic
inspiration
also has a
definitely spiritualistic ring:
My
hand is
wholly
the instrument of some remote
power.
It is not
my
intellect that runs the
show,
but
something different, something higher,
and more distant-somewhere else. I must have
great
friends
there, bright
ones,
but sombre
ones,
too.142
Now
Klee, however, categorically
denied
any
connexion with the
teaching
of
Steiner,
and once when
presented
with
anthroposophical
books
by
a
friend,
he
rejected anthroposophy
as 'either false or a
piece
of
self-deception'.143
Nor do we in Klee's
writings
find
any
indications of a direct
dependence
on
theosophical writings.
There
were, however,
several
possible channels, by
which such influences could have reached him
indirectly.
Christian
Morgen-
stern,
whom Klee
admired,144
had in
1908/9
turned
Steinerian,
and artists
such as Alexei
Jawlensky
and Hans
Arp,
and the Dadaist
Hugo
Ball had also
had their occult
periods.
But the most
important
influence is
represented by
Kandinsky
whom Klee admired from the outset. Klee was not
perhaps
sufficiently
interested in
theosophy
to have
recognized
the exact sources of
that
mysticism
of
Kandinsky's
which influenced him so
deeply
both before
[914
and later
during
the Bauhaus
years.
This
explains
his
sharp
reaction to
anthroposophy
which,
he must have
found, presented embarrassing analogies
with his own and
Kandinsky's pretensions
to
extra-physical knowledge.
The
reason for his
negative
attitude cannot
possibly
have been that
anthroposophy
137
In Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 19 19-
1923, pp. 24f.; reprinted
in H. M.
Wingler,
Das Bauhaus
19 9-z933,
Weimar-Dessau-Berlin,
I962, p.
86.
138 Cf. Goethe's dictum
quoted
above,
n.
28.
139
Klee, Uber die moderne Kunst, p. 45.
140
For Klee's elaboration of the theory,
see his
Pddagogisches Skizzenbuch,
1925,
P.
37:
'Symbole
des statischen Gebietes sind Lot
(Stand)
und
Wage.
Das Lot richtet sich nach
dem
Erdmittelpunkt,
wo das irdisch-
gebundene
Schicksal
verkntipft
ist.-Es
gibt
aber
Regionen
mit anderen Gesetzen und
neuen
Symbolen, geldsterer Bewegung
und
beweglicher
Ortlichkeit
entsprechend.-Als
Zwischenreich
mdgen
Wasser und Atmo-
sph~ire gelten.'
141
See
e.g.
Steiner's Der Dornacher-Bau als
Wahrzeichen
geschichtlichen
Werdens und
kiinst-
lerischer
Umwandlungsimpulse [lectures
de-
livered
10-25
October
1914], 1937, pp. 25f.
142
Quoted
after W.
Grohmann,
Paul
Klee:
Drawings, 1960, p. 17.
143
Grohmann,
Paul
Klee, 1954, p. 6o.
In
1919
he told Oskar Schlemmer that he had
never studied the
anthroposophic
movement
(loc. cit.).
144
See Carola
Giedion-Welcker,
Paul
Klee,
tr. A.
Gode, 1952, p. 12;
cf. Felix
Klee,
Paul
Klee, p.
26.
413
does not stand the test of a rational
examination,145
since he knew that his
own theories did not stand such a test either.
Klee's fascination with the hidden and fantastic also
appears
from his art.
His
preoccupation
with
ciphers
and
mysterious scripts
is echoed in several
pictures,146
but in contrast to conventional emblematic
iconography,
Klee's
secret
script
is
freely
invented and
treated.147
Titles such as
Message of
the
Air
Spirit,
The
Creator, Lady Demon, Demonry, Temple of
the Sect
of
the Green
Horn,
Angelus Novus,
and the
many
formed with the word
'mystic', speak
for them-
selves. Another
question
is whether Klee
through Kandinsky
came to know
Besant's and Leadbeater's
Thought-Forms.
This work
might
have
provided
a
stimulus for his numerous abstract studies of states of emotion such as
Thoughts
(1917),
Fear
(I934)
and Outbreak
of
Fear III
(1939),
a
possibility
which in the
present
writer's
opinion
has to be
seriously
considered.
The
'spiritual' aspiration
of
Kandinsky
and Klee is
brought
out in
sharp
relief
by
their
activity
at the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus
was,
as we
know,
divided
in two
factions,
one concerned with 'the
spiritual
in art' and the other with
'the technical in art'. Klee had been
appointed
a master in
192I
and Kan-
dinsky
in
1922,
and
they were, together
with
Feininger,
to form the kernel of
the former
faction,
which later was
joined by
such
painters
as
Johannes
Itten
and Oskar Schlemmer. Max
Bill,
who was a student at the
Bauhaus, regarded
the
underlying
idea of the movement as
essentially
religious.148
Schlemmer
gave compulsory
courses in
'Anthropology',
in which he made use of such
auxiliary disciplines
as
astrology, physiognomics, phrenology, graphology
etc.149
Malewitch's Die
gegenstandslose
Welt was
published
in the Bauhaus
series illustrated with
'suprematist' compositions
called
Empfindung
einer
mystischen
' Welle' aus dem Weltall
(
1917)
and
Empfndung
des
mystischen
Willens.:
unwillkommen.15o
In the 'twenties an
inspiring
contact was also established between the
Bauhaus and De
Stijl,
which had been founded in
1917.
Mondrian and van
Doesburg published important
theoretical works in the
Bauhausbiicher
in
1925.151
It is a remarkable fact that Mondrian had also conceived his abstract idiom
under the influence of
theosophy.
In reaction to his native Calvinism
Mondrian turned to
theosophy
in
1899/1900.
He studied the
writings
of the
movement with intense
interest,
above all
Schurd's
Les
grands initils,
which he
mentioned as late as
1934.
The
intensely theosophical phase
seems to have
145
As seems to be suggested by Grohmann
(Paul Klee, p. 6o).
146
Giedion-Welcker, op. cit., p. 66.
147
Cf. Schiller's neoplatonic idea that the
Universe is a
thought
of
God,
and that the
laws of Nature are the
symbolic language,
the
alphabet, by
which the
Thinking Being
be-
comes
intelligible ( Werke, Nationalausgabe,
xx:
I, 1962, pp. II5f.).
The notion recurs in
Steiner's Die
Geheimwissenschaft
im
Umriss,
1910,
p.
330,
where the 'Lesen der
verborgenen
Schrift'
is made one of the
prerequisites
for
inner
knowledge.
148 Quoted after Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 163:
'Bauhaus ist eine
geistige,
fortschrittliche
Richtung,
eine
Gesinnung,
die man
Religion
nennen kann'.
149 See
Wingler, op. cit., p. 471,
with illu-
strations. The
second,
'scientific'
part
of this
course was introduced with 'the riddles of the
world',
'aether and
plasma'
etc.
150
Bauhausbicher, I I, 1927, figs. 87-88.
151
Piet Mondrian, Neue Gestaltung, 1925
(Bauhausbiicher, 5);
Theo van
Doesburg,
Grundbegrife
der neuen
gestaltenden Kunst,
1925
(Bauhausbiicher, 6).
414
SIXTEN RINGBOM
lasted until
1916
or
1917.
In
1909
he
joined
the
Theosophical Society,
and
his admiration for Madame
Blavatsky
is shown
by
the fact that he even had
a
portrait
of her in his Laren studio.
Mondrian,
as a
rule, gave away
books
he had
bought
or
acquired
as
presents; among
the few
publications
he
kept
until his death were a lecture
by Steiner,
Mystiek
en esoteriek
(mikrokosmos
en
makrokosmos)
delivered in The
Hague
in
I908,
and Krishnamurti's At the Feet
of
the Masters in a Dutch translation of
1913.152
As
early
as
1895
H. S.
Olcott
had connected the
geometrical configurations
observed
by clairvoyants
with 'Plato's
aphorism
"God
geometrizes" ',
and
posed
the
question
whether these
'geometrical
manifestations in an aura as
pure
as that of the Universal
principle,
whose
pulsations beget
all forms in
objective Nature,
show us how to understand the
mysterious
occurrence of
identical
geometrical arrangements
of matter in the
mineral, vegetable
and
animal
world?'153
Besant and Leadbeater had
expressed
similar ideas in
their works which
appeared
in Dutch translations
during
the
early years
of the
century.154
The
spiritualized
world
conception
of
theosophy
is noticeable in
Mondrian's first abstractions around
I913.
By
this
period
we find him work-
ing
with
elaborate, diagrammatic
studies of
trees,
church architecture
(the
'centres of
magnetism'
of the
theosophists),
and
seascapes
enclosed in ovals
reminiscent of the
theosophical
aural
diagrams.155
The decisive
impulse
to Mondrian's
Nieuwe Beelding
came from a Dutch
theosophist,
M. H.
J. Schoenmaekers.156
This
pseudo-philosopher
had
developed
an occult
epistemology, positieve mystiek
or beeldende
wiskunde, by
which
he,
like
Steiner, hoped
to
bring theosophy
in a
scientifically acceptable
form. Mondrian lived in Laren at the same time as
Schoenmaekers,
and the
two are
reported
to have met
frequently.157
The Dutch
theosophist
influenced
Mondrian's art as well as his
philosophy,
and the texts
placed
side
by
side
by
Jaff6
show that Mondrian's art
theory
is a
paraphrased
elaboration of
Schoenmaekers's
teachings.
Like
Kandinsky
Mondrian
regarded
art as a
path
to
higher knowledge;
152
M. Seuphor, Piet Mondrian, Leben und
Werk,
I957, pp. 54, 56ff.
153
See n. 96 above.
154
C. W. Leadbeater, De zichtbare en
onzichtbare
Mensch, 1903; idem, Werken, 1904;
A. Besant & C. W.
Leadbeater,
Gedachtevor-
men, 1905.
155
In numerous articles in The
Theosophist
and other
journals
Leadbeater had
developed
a
completely spiritualized
world
conception.
The articles were collected in the book The
Hidden Side
of Things, 19I3.
Here he dealt
with 'natural
surroundings'
and the
'physical
environment,'
'Our Great
Cathedrals,
Temples etc.', sounds, actions, etc.,
which
all radiate influences visible to the
spiritual
eye.
Cf. two leaves from Mondrian's sketch-
book
ofc.
1910-ii
(repr. Seuphor, op. cit., pp.
i IO-II),
one with a
study
of a church
facade
(accompanied by
a note where it is
said that 'de
geest
beter benadert wordt door een
vorm die korter
bi"
den Geest
is'),
and the other
with a tree inscribed in an oval.
156
The relation between Mondrian and
Schoenmaekers has been
fully
dealt with
by
H. L.
Jaff6,
De
Stijl 1917-31, 1956, pp. 55ff.,
and
Seuphor, op. cit., pp. 57f., 134.
Schoen-
maekers's
principal publications
are Het
geloof
van den nieuwen
mensch, Amsterdam,
n.d.
[4th
ed.
1914],
Het nieuwe
wereldbeeld,
1915,
and
Beginselen
der beeldende
wiskunde,
I916.
An
interesting explanation
of Mondrian's
mature
compositions
as reflections
ofJapanese
architectural decoration has been
proposed by
D.
Gioseffi,
La
falsa preistoria
di Piet Mondrian
e le
origini
del
neoplasticismo, I957
(Universith
di
Trieste,
Facoltk
di lettere e
filosofia,
Istituto di
storia dell'arte antica e
moderna, 8).
157Jaff6, loc.
cit. For Mondrian's some-
what reserved comments on Schoenmaekers's
personality,
see
Seuphor, op. cit., p. 134.
415
what the
theosophers
are
aspiring
to
by
their
methods,
the artist visualizes
by
the means at his disposal. Mondrian even put it more clearly than Kandinsky:
Two
paths
to the
spiritual:
the
path
of doctrinal instruction or of direct
exercise
(meditation, etc.);
and the slow and sure
path
of evolution. This
is revealed in Art. In art we see a slow
growth
toward the
spiritual,
but
the artists are unconscious of
it.158
In the Bauhaus the two mainstreams of abstract
art, Kandinsky's expres-
sionism,
and Mondrian's
'neo-plasticism'
flowed
together.
The intellectual
starting-points
of the two had been similar:
theosophical mysticism
combined
with the conviction that art is a
major
road to
spiritual knowledge.
Yet the
practical application
of
Kandinsky's
and Mondrian's theories went in
dif-
ferent directions.
Kandinsky's
romantic
temperament
and his Fauvist back-
ground
made him
responsive
to the
vividly graphic prose
of Steiner's occult
writings,
whereas Mondrian's cooler
personality
and Cubist
training
seem to
have been suited to the
Platonic,
more intellectual form of
theosophy repre-
sented
by
Schoenmaekers.
The
early
theorists of abstraction
regarded
art as a branch of a
synthetic
whole where
religion,
science and art were indivisible. But in such
gnostic
combinations,
historians of
religion
like to tell
us,
the
religious
element tends
to
predominate,
and to some extent this rule
applies
to
Kandinsky's
and
Mondrian's
teachings,
too. Of the three main
components
of
Kandinsky's
spiritual synthesis,
science thus had to surrender its fundamental demand for
empirical verifiability
and
proof,
and art its time-honoured
concepts
of
beauty
and aesthetic
appeal; only
the
religious
element can be said to have remained
intact. In a doctrine of this
type
art
becomes,
not
only religious,
but a
religion.
Kandinsky
was himself
fully
aware of this
consequence,
and in the Riickblicke
he confesses that he was
surprised
to find that 'this view of art is Christian and
that it at the same time harbours in itself the
necessary
elements for the
receiving
of the "Third"
Revelation,
the Revelation of the
Spiritual'.159
The
salvationist character of his doctrine is underlined
by
the fact that he saw
abstract
painting only
as a
beginning
of
something
to come. The elimination
of
subject-matter
in art
will, by cultivating
the 'inner
experience'
of the
beholder
prepare
him for the 'Third Revelation'.
So werden die
Bedingungen geschaffen,
die eine neue
Atmosphire
bilden.
In dieser
Atmosphare
wird sich
viel,
viel
spater
die reine Kunst
bilden,
die
'ss
Seuphor, op. cit., p. I I6 (Engl.
ed.
p.
I
I7).
Mondrian's
diary
notes show that
he,
like
Kandinsky,
believed the case of theo-
sophy
to be
proved by
modern science
(ibid., p. I I8).
He
was, however,
humbler
than
Kandinsky;
in
1934
he wrote to
Seuphor:
'It is in
my
work that I am some-
thing,
but
compared
to the Great
Initiates,
for
instance,
I am
nothing' (ibid., p. 6o;
Engl. ed., p. 58).
x59
Kandinsky, Riickblick, pp. 3of. Kan-
dinsky's concept
of the 'Third Revelation'
following
on the earlier ones of the Old and
the New Testament is derived from
Steiner,
who counted with
Preparation,
Illumination
and
Initiation,
the last
being
the revelation
of the
Spiritual.
See
Steiner,
Wie
erlangt
man . .
., p. 4i; idem,
Das Christentum als
mystische
Tatsache und die
Mysterien
des Altertums
(Ist
ed.
I902), I9I0, p. I6I;
of. K. von
Stieglitz,
Die
Christosophie Rudolf Steiners,
I955,
p. 157,
and
pp. 155-82 passim.
416
SIXTEN RINGBOM
uns in den von uns
weggleitenden
Traumen mit einer
unbeschreiblichen
Anziehungskraft
vorschwebt.16o
The
prophetic optimism
of
Kandinsky's teachings, although partly forgotten
or reformulated
beyond recognition
in our
present
era of
pop
art and action
painting, yet
survived
among
his closer followers161 and some
philosophically
minded
partisans
of abstract art. And it
may perhaps
be added that Kan-
dinsky
in his
painting
succeeded in
satisfying essentially religious
needs.
Though heavily
influenced
by
the artist's own
theosophic jargon
the
'public
comments' of visitors to the
Kandinsky
exhibition in the
Guggenheim
Museum
show that abstract art can serve as an occasion to a more or less sincere
religious experience.162 Opinion may
be divided on whether this is an
essential,
or even
legitimate, purpose
of
art; yet
we have to admit that the
painter Kandinsky
served the thinker
Kandinsky
with
impressive
success.
160
Riickblick, p. 31.
Cf. Punkt und Linie
(p.
120,
n.
I)
where
Kandinsky prophesies
about a
development
to more and more com-
plicated structures, confessing
that one can-
not foresee where the
development
will lead.
In the
pre-abstract days Kandinsky had,
inspired by
the French doctor Charcot's
accounts of
telepathy,
formed the
expectation
of a future art
functioning
without brushes
and tubes of
colour,
an art where the
repre-
sentations of the artist would radiate into
space
without material media
(see Eichner,
Kandinsky
und Gabriele
Muinter, p. 19).
161 See in
particular
the
writings
of Hilla
Rebay, e.g.
Innovation: une nouvelle dre
artistique,
1937, p. 15:
'Comme toutes les
grandes
6poques,
la n6tre est une
6poque religieuse.
L'inobjectivit6
est la
religion
de l'avenir.'
'L'art
inobjectif
est le
prophhte
de la vie
spirituelle'; p. 69:
'evolution vers une
spiritualit6 imprfvue
. . .' etc.
162 'Public Comments' on record in the
Guggenheim Museum,
in: W.
Kandinsky,
On the
Spiritual
in
Art,
I946, pp. I27-52, esp.
pp. 127,
128
(two comments), 129, 130, 131,
132, 140, 148, 150, 152.
Cf. also P.
Hossfeld,
'Abstrakte Malerei abstrakte
Religiosithit',
Archiv
fur Religionspsychologie, 8,
I964, pp.
255ff.,
and P.
Fingesten,
'Kunstmotive als
Symbole
des Lebens und der
Gesellschaft',
Antaios, vii, 1965, 3, PP. 291ff., esp. p. 3o3f.
APPENDIX I
The
'Mystical
Books'
of Kandinsky
and Gabriele
Miinter
In
1914
Gabriele
Mtinter
took care of
Kandinsky's property
in
Murnau,
and in
1957,
when the Gabriele
Miinter
Bequest
was made to the Stadtische Galerie in
Munich,
it was found to include the
following
books. It should however be noted that some
works
may
come from the
Mointer
family
and that several titles mentioned
by
Kan-
dinsky
are
lacking
in the collection. The author wishes to thank Dr. Hans Konrad
Rbthel,
Director of the
Stidtische
Galerie,
for
putting
this information at his
disposal.
Aksakow,
A.
N.,
Animismus und
Spiritismus,
i-ii, I890.
Braunschweig, R.,
Was muss man vom
Vegetarismus wissen?,
1902.
Du
Prel, C.,
Studien aus dem Gebiet der
Geheimwissenschaft,
2nd
ed.,
1905.
Gessmann,
G.
W., Magnetismus
und
Hypnotismus,
2nd
ed., 1895.
Hellenbach,
L.
B.,
Geburt und
Tod, 1893.
Die neuesten
Kundgebungen
einer
intelligiblen Welt,
i88i.
Kiesewetter, C.,
Die
Entwicklungsgeschichte
des
Spiritismus
von der
Urzeit
bis zur
Gegenwart,
1893.
Geschichte des neueren
Occultismus,
I89I.
Marryat, F.,
Die
Geisterwelt,
[1895].
417
Melchers,
G.
A.,
Aus dem
Jenseits!,
1909.
]Neue metaphysische Rundschau,
Monatsschrift, I-2, 1908,
5-6,
1911.
Perty, M.,
Die
mystischen Erscheinungen
der menschlichen
Natur,
i-ii, I872.
Die sichtbare und die unsichtbare
Welt,
i88
I.
Ramacharaka, Yogi Philosophy
and Oriental
Occultism,
I91' i.
Ritual
of
the Order
of
the Eastern
Star,
I897.
Sphinx,
Monatszeitschrift fir
Seelen- und
Geistesleben,
i
8, [Jahrg. ix],
i894.
Spiritistische Rundschau,
Monatsschrift,
viii,
no.
3,
1900.
Steiner, R.,
Lucifer-Gnosis, 13-35 [I
904-8;
I
3-28
= Wie
erlangt
man Erkenntnisse der
hoheren
Welten, 29-32, 34-35
=Die
Stufen
der hdheren
Erkenntnis].
Die
iibersinnliche
Welt,
Monatsschrift fair
okkultistische
Forschung,
I904, I906, I908
[7
fascs.].
Volker,
Siderische
Geburt,
191
0.
Z611ner, F., Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen,
iii: Die transcendentale
Physik
und die
sogenannte
Philosophie, I879.
APPENDIX II
Specimens of Besant's & Leadbeater's Elucidations of the Colour Plates to Thought-
Forms
(1905; quoted
after
1961 edition).
P1.
67d
On the First
Night.-Fig. 3'
is also an
interesting specimen-perhaps unique-for
it
represents
the
thought-form
of an actor while
waiting
to
go upon
the
stage
for a
'first-night' performance.
The broad band of
orange
in the centre is
very clearly
de-
fined,
and is the
expression
of a well-founded self-confidence-the realization of
many
previous successes,
and the reasonable
expectation
that on this occasion another will be
added to the list. Yet in
spite
of this there is a
good
deal of unavoidable
uncertainty
as to how this new
play may
strike the fickle
public,
and on the whole the doubt and
fear overbalance the
certainty
and
pride,
for there is more of the
pale grey
than of the
orange,
and the whole
thought-form
vibrates like a
flag flapping
in a
gale
of wind. It
will be noted that while the outline of the
orange
is
exceedingly
clear and
definite,
that of the
grey
is much
vaguer. (Op. cit., p.
44-)
P1.
67h
At a
Shipwreck.-Very
serious is the
panic
which has occasioned the
very interesting
group
of
thought-forms
which are
depicted
in
Fig. 3o.
. . .
They
were called forth
by
a
terrible
accident,
and
they
are instructive as
showing
how
differently people
are
affected
by
sudden and serious
danger.
One form shows
nothing
but an
eruption
of
the livid
grey
of
fear, rising
out of a basis of utter selfishness: and
unfortunately
there
were
many
such as this. This shattered
appearance
of the
thought-form
shows the
violence and
completeness
of the
explosion,
which in turn indicates that the whole
soul of that
person
was
possessed
with
blind,
frantic
terror,
and that the
overpowering
sense of
personal danger
excluded for the time
every higher feeling.
The second form
represents
at least an
attempt
at
self-control,
and shows the attitude
adopted by
a
person having
a certain amount of
religious feeling.
The thinker is
seeking
solace in
prayer,
and
endeavouring
in this
way
to overcome her fear. This is
indicated
by
the
point
of
greyish-blue
which lifts itself
hesitatingly upwards;
the colour
shows, however,
that the effort is but
partially successful,
and we see also from the
lower
part
of the
thought-form,
with its
irregular
outline and its
falling fragments,
that
there is in reality almost as much
fright
here as in the other case.
A
very striking
contrast to the
humiliating
weakness shown in these two forms is the
splendid strength
and decision of the third. . . . For this is the
thought
of the officer in
418
SIXTEN RINGBOM
charge-the
man
responsible
for the lives and the
safety
of the
passengers,
and he rises
to the
emergency
in a most
satisfactory
manner. It does not even occur to him to feel
the least shadow of
fear;
he has no time for that.
Though
the scarlet of the
sharp point
of his
weapon-like thought-form
shows
anger
that the accident should have
happened,
the bold curve of
orange immediately
above it betokens
perfect
self-confidence and
certainty
of his
power
to deal with the
difficulty.
The brilliant
yellow implies
that his
intellect is
already
at work
upon
the
problem,
while the
green
which runs side
by
side
with it denotes the
sympathy
which he feels for those whom he intends to save. A
very
striking
and instructive
group
of
thought-forms. (Op. cit., p. 42f.)
POSTSCRIPT
After the
present study
had
gone
to
press,
a note-book
containing Kandinsky's
annotations to Steiner's articles in
Lucifer-Gnosis
(nos. 8,
io-i
I, 18-19, 30-34)
was
discovered
by
Dr. H. K. Rothel
among
the Munter
papers.
With characteristic
generosity,
Dr. Rothel
promptly put photocopies
of the relevant
portions
at
my
disposal.
The annotations
begin
with a
summary
of Steiner's
teaching
on
meditation,
concen-
tration
etc.,
and the six
'qualities' required
of the
adept.
Then follows a
passage
of
particular importance
in the
present
context
(cf. above, p. 403):
Imaginative
Welt. Das Schweben der Farben etc. 'ohne Grund u. Boden'
(==ohne
phys. Gegenstand)
ist die
Offenbarung
der
Wesenheiten,
die den Menschen stets
umgeben.
Beim
Aufsteigen
in die
h6heren
(d.i. imag.)
Welten nimmt der Mensch
auch die Wesen wahr welche
Farben,
Tone etc.
ausstr6men.
Der
Weg
dazu ist
Inspiration-Intuition. Notwendigkeit
des
'Gurus', Geheimfuhrers,
in der
imag.
Welt.
In dieser Welt erst
eigene
Seelenbilder
(wie
im
Spiegel,
d.h. was
ausstrdmt,
scheint
auf
den M. zu
gehen),
wobei
gute
Gefuhle
h~isslich
aussehen konnen u.
umgekehrt.
Man unterscheidet erst
nicht,
was Seelenbild ist u. was andere Wesenheiten. Und
wenn diese
Unterscheidg.
erreicht
wird,
so sieht sich der M. von aussen u. die
phys.
Welt von innen.
(Heft 32
u.
33).
Inspiration.
Von den
3 Grundkr~iften
des seel.
Lebens-Vorstellen, Fuhlen,
Wollen-f'allt
die erste aus u. die 2 anderen bilden der
Mutterboden,
von dem bei
Inspirationen
die
Vorstellungen
innerlich wachsen. So
mtissen
also Fuhlen und
Wollen besonders
gesund
sein. Man muss 'Wahr'-'Unwahr' unterscheiden in sehr
akuter Form
('Unwahr'-direkt
Schmerz
u.a.).
Andererseits
Notwendigkeit
sich
die 'naturlichen'
Folgen
einer
Wirkg.
einer
aufregenden Erscheinung
=Vorstellg.
Man muss
tiben:
solche
aufregende Vorstellungen ruhig
anschauen u. sich der
Aufregung
enthalten.
Solche tObungen
fuhren zur
Inspiration,
welche nicht 'vom
Himmel
fiallt',
sondern durch
Erziehung
zu erreichen ist
(auch
in fruheren Erden-
leben).
Die
eigenen tObungen gentigen
nicht. Das Vertiefen in die
Erzhhlungen
anderer von den h6heren
Welten,
das starke
Empfinden
derselben-ist
gleich
ndtige Bedingg.
der
Inspiration. Inspir. fthrt
uns zu Erkenntniss der
Vorgdnge
in den
hdh. Welten
(Entwickelg.
des
Menschen,
der Erde u. ihrer
planetarischen
Ver-
k6rperungen u.s.w.).
Wenn aber Wesen in Betracht
kommen,
so ist die Intuition
nbtig (Heft 34).
Steiner's
prerequisites
and
practical precepts
for occult
knowledge
are
carefully
enu-
merated. It also
appears
that
Kandinsky
was familiar with the French occultist Albert
de Rochas
d'Aiglun,
whose books
(L'exteriorisation
de la sensibiliti
[1895],
L'dxteriorisation
de la motricite
[I 896],
Les
sentiments,
la
musique
et le
geste
[I 9i o])
contain curious illustra-
tions of aural
phenomena.
The
meanings
of the aural colours are
arranged
in tabular
form
by Kandinsky.
The annotations end with Steiner's
theosophical anthropology:
the
tripartition
of consciousness and the seven human bodies.

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Art in 'The Epoch of the Great Spiritual': Occult Elements in the Early Theory of Abstract

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