Observations placeholder

Wassily Kandinsky - Concerning the Spiritual in Art

It is interesting to notice three practically contemporary and totally different groups in painting. They are
(1) Rossetti and his pupil Burne-Jones, with their foilowers;
(2) Bocklin and his school;
(3) Segantini, with his unworthy following of photographic artists.

I have chosen these three groups to illustrate the search for the abstract in art.  Rossetti sought to revive the non-materialism of the pre-Raphaelites. Bocklin busied himself with the mythological scenes, but was in contrast to Rossetti in that he gave strongly material form to his legendary figures.

Segantini, outwardly the most material of the three, selected the most ordinary objects (hills, stones, cattle, etc.) often painting them with the minutest realism, but he never failed to create a spiritual as well as a material value, so that really he is the most non-material of the trio.

These men sought for the "inner" by way of the "outer'"

By another road, and one more purely artistic, the great seeker after a new sense of form approached the same problem.  

Cezanne made a living thing out of a teacup, or rather in a teacup he realized the existence of
something alive. He raised still life to such a point that it ceased to be inanimate.  He painted these things as he painted human beings,  because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything. His colour and form are alike suitable to the spiritual harmony.  A man,  a tree,  an apple, all were used by Cezanne in the creation of something that is called a 'picture', and which is a piece of true inward and artistic harmony.