The Spiritual in Abstract Art
Wassily Kandinsky is commonly credited with being the first painter to venture wholly into the realm of abstract art. Recently, however, it has become more widely know that it was in fact Swedish artist Helga af Klint who first abandoned recognizable imagery in 1906—four years before Kandinsky would paint his first nonrepresentational canvas. [1] This oversight was due in part to a stipulation in her will that her abstract paintings not be shown until twenty years after her death. She did not believe her contemporaries were ready to appreciate their full meaning.
The point of this essay is not to correct the art historical cannon, but to identify what moved Helga af Klint, Kandisnky, and Mondrian to create abstract paintings in the first place. These artists were all motived by a heightened awareness of the spiritual. [2] This suggests that something deeper than the avant-garde tendencies of a few rebellious men led to the birth of abstraction. These artists were not looking to challenge traditional notions of art just for the fun of it. Their own spiritual convictions and the cultural landscape they operated in led artists of vastly different styles and backgrounds to turn to abstraction as a necessary way of depicting a transcendent reality.
A keen sense of spiritual mission characterizes the work of all of these early abstract painters. However, this spirituality was not synonymous with the traditional beliefs of the Christian church. Mysticism, theosophy and the occult all had strong influences on these artists. Klint considered herself a medium, holding séances and claiming that her paintings came from communications with a higher form of consciousness. Mondrian’s zeal for discovering a new artistic language did not arise until he converted to theosophy. His artistic vocation was inseparable from his religious goals. Kandinsky, also a theosophist, aimed to free man from the “nightmare of materialism” by awakening man’s soul through his paintings. [3]
While all three developed different abstract aesthetics, they had similar goals. Their work ranged from chaotic and improvisational to geometric and minimal, but they all sought to show a deeper reality beyond the physical world and to change the culture with a spiritual enlightenment provided through their paintings. [4] These are remarkably optimistic and intentional goals considering that current conceptions often associate abstraction with art about the unintelligibility of the world, the private angst of the artist, an abandonment of traditional values, and the reflection of an existential worldview.
Contemporary art critic Daniel Siedell concludes his essay “A History of Modern Art” with, “The history of modern art is not simply the history of sexual liberation and licentiousness, l’épater les bourgeoisie, and attacking traditional values and mores. It is the utopian projection of a new world, a better world, a perfect world, redeemed and perhaps saved. These aspirations presuppose a relationship between the aesthetic and the spiritual.” [5] In the same essay he quotes a Utopian Socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, who saw avant-garde artists as an advance team of elite cultural combatants who were preparing society for a utopian future: “What most beautiful destiny for the arts, that of exercising over a society a positive power, a true priestly function, and of marching forcefully in the van of all the intellectual faculties, in the epoch of their greatest development! This is the duty of artists, this is their mission.” The history of modern art is full of complexity and conflict, but at its foundation is an earnest desire to change society for the better.
The contemporary art world should be encouraged and inspired by this kind of purposeful zeal. Art is not just a tool for self-expression. It is a powerful vehicle for communicating vision and building a better world. Artists of faith in particular should emulate the artists of the past in both their dedication to the truth and their fearless exploration of new ways to communicate reality. While they may have been motivated by strange or erroneous occult beliefs, these past artists still serve as excellent models of the connection between vocation and religion. They are a reminder that art and faith are not exclusive categories and that strong belief can be a source of passion, inspiration, and strength for the creative process.
Contemporary artists like Makoto Fujimura, Bruce Herman and Delro Rosco are, in fact, doing this. They marry conceptual depth with a progressive effort to depict the limitless expanse of truth and mystery facing mankind and are firmly grounded in their faith. Artists like these help to change culture through their faithful attempts to tell the truth about the world through their art. Like Klint, Kandinsky, and Mondrian, they have a spiritual mission and make profound art while eloquently writing and discussing their faith, process, and vision.
Abstract art is an ideal vehicle for communicating spiritual realities for several reasons. It removes viewers from the world they think they know and necessitates contemplative inquiry. Kandinsky said, “the spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.” Abstraction often allows for an exclusive focus on the experiential or conceptual realms rather than a recognizable realm of representation. Abstraction may reveal something beyond the physical realm, but this does not necessitate it being a gnostic rejection of the material world. This would be impossible as paintings are first, and foremost, physical objects in the material world. Artists like Kandinsky, Mondrian, Fujimura or Rosco have a clear understanding that it’s just “paint on canvas,” and their art, no matter how spiritual, remains firmly in the realm of aesthetic physical experience. An equal emphasis is placed on the visual experience and the transcendent significance. Material beauty somehow becomes incarnation of a spiritual reality.
Abstract artists can create great beauty with nothing more than paint on a canvas. After all, the beauty of the physical world is abstract. Trees and mountains are beautiful because of their form, color and texture, not because they look “just like trees or mountains.” Beauty is a quality of material and not necessarily representation. It’s a different kind of pleasure than recognition. The abstract painter is, in fact, bearing witness to the beauty of nature. When writing about Presence/Absence, a largely abstract body of paintings, Bruce Herman said, “I’ve tried and failed in countless times to capture this place in straightforward landscape painting, but…discovered that I am not here to simply record or verify or instruct. I am here to pray, to witness.” [6]
Many viewers, especially those who have not studied art history, find it difficult to appreciate abstract art. “My kid could do that,” is a common, though unfair and untrue response, and many believe abstraction to be a sign of an artist’s lack of skill, a lack of any kind of clear meaning, or an embrace of nihilism.While this is sometimes the case, the language of abstraction holds countless vibrant possibilities, particularly for artists of faith. We should consider it a sign of artists who are dissatisfied with the status quo and are trying to create a new language for the betterment of culture and a deeper understanding of reality.
1.http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de/exhibition.php?id=40476&lang=en
2. http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Kandinsky—the-birth-of-abstraction-5112
3. Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky
4. http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1065
5. God in the Gallery by Daniel Siedell