The Truth

Wassily Kandinsky:  Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on the fundamental truth.  When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.  An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives.  Like ourselves, these artist sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of external form. 

These two possible resemblances between the art forms of today and those of the past will be at once recognized as diametrically opposed to one another.  The first, being purely external has no future.  The second, being internal, contains the seed of the future within itself.  After the period of materialist effort, which held the soul in check until it was shaken off as evil, the soul is emerging, purged by trials and sufferings.  Shapeless emotions such as fear, joy, grief, etc., which belonged to this time of effort, will no longer greatly attract the artist.  He will endeavour to awake subtler emotions, as yet unnamed.  Living himself a complicated and comparatively subtle life, his work will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty emotions beyond the reach of words.