Studying art literature and what artists have to say about their work will not yield masses of material. Artists historically have not written much about their process. Kandinsky is a notable exception though his small book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art is not an easy read. This may be due to the translation from German to English. He does talk about an artist’s need to express the ‘inner feeling.’ He attempts to discuss how color and compositional design can effect those inner feelings. It becomes apparent just how careful he was with color, even in apparently random paintings. His paintings could not be classified as random and he makes efforts to place art in a position where art is meant to lift us spiritually. He feels art should raise the consciousness of a civilization and in fact the ‘Arts’ in general are uniquely capable of this task. He calls it a noble task, a noble responsibility.
The departure from naturalistic forms into the abstract is considered a more direct line towards this responsibility. The constraint of fusing natural settings with inner feelings hampers this direct relationship. Abstract art is considered more responsive to an artists’ inner feelings. As I mentioned before in previous articles, Ekhart Tolle explains this expansion of consciousness more completely and more thoroughly. He explains how we can more fully appreciate our own inner consciousness. As an artist I have found this to be helpful.
Abstract art can be defined then as primarily a response to an inner feeling rather than to natural forms. Attenuation of forms can get in the way of a more spontaneous response to an interior drama. We immediately think of a Jackson Pollack whose work is completely free of any reference to natural forms. Gerhardt Richter uses the process of dragging paint and relies upon this as an accidental effort to create spontaneously. We might call it ‘controlled accidents’ because he is obviously carefully choosing where to place the colors to be dragged and which hues to implement. In any case Abstract art, by definition divorces itself from copying natural forms . This effort brings to bear new disciples such as a refined approach to color sympathies. Paradoxically rythmn and composition becomes even more valuable and more important to the concept of the painting. Kandinsky speaks of the harmony that needs to take place in an abstract painting and this must come from the jumble of inner feelings – that is, a certain order from the drama of our inner feelings.
