Kandinsky's Concerning The Spiritual

Is there a relationship between Modernism and spirituality that caused artists to abandon representation in favor of abstraction? There are many reasons to believe so; in fact, there is a plethora of evidence suggesting the importance of art to religion and vice-versa. Places of worship across the globe and across time are filled with sacred imagery as aids to prayer in every major religion. This alone is proof enough that art has at least served as a vessel for connecting with the divine. The beginnings of abstract art has its roots in spirituality as evidenced by the writings of Mondrian, Malevich, and Kandinsky, all of whom were seeking something greater and transcendental in nature. But what was it that caused Modernists to abandon pure

Nothing more was thought of the relation between art and spirituality until Kandinsky founded Der Blaue Reiter in the early 1900’s. While lacking a concrete manifesto, Der Blaue Reiter had several guiding principles which are outlined in Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual which stressed the importance of form and color as they may signify something more. Kandinsky’s influences are clear in Concerning the Spiritual as he drew ideas that surrounded the symbolist movement. Kandinsky then began to name his paintings after musical works, such as Composition VIII, Improvisation 26, and so on. His reasoning for using music in his work, as either inspiration or even as a medium, is well justified. Kandinsky sought something that would be able to reverberate within the human soul and thus began to move away from representation. Why? Because he believed that the colors had more potential than just being a color with an assigned name. In fact, Kandinsky and his acquaintance Franz Marc came to a conclusion that blue is the most spiritual color, something Post-war artist Yves Klein will investigate in the 1950’s and will be later discussed in this paper. Additionally, Kandinsky’s paintings often depicted mythical imagery of death and rebirth, destruction and creation, which he felt were imminent, eerily enough in the pre-World War I domain. The most common motif was of a figure on a white horse blowing a horn, signifying the apocalypse; this mirrors imagery seen in the Book of