The Prophet of Color: Concerning the Spiritual in Art – Editions Rémanence

Editions Rémanence book reviews

If there is a bible of modern art, it is this slim, fervent volume written by a Russian mystic who happened to be a painter. Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst), published in 1911, did not just argue for a new style; it argued for a new epoch. Kandinsky believed that humanity was awakening from a long, materialistic nightmare, and that art was the vehicle for this spiritual resurrection.

Writing at the dawn of the 20th century, Kandinsky saw a world obsessed with goods, physical science, and "progress." He argued that true art must turn its back on the external world of objects—the "nightmare of materialism"—and focus entirely on the "inner necessity" of the artist. For Kandinsky, a painting of a house or a tree was a distraction; the true subject of art was the invisible life of the spirit.

The Spiritual Triangle

To visualize the movement of the human spirit, Kandinsky uses the metaphor of a large, acute triangle divided into unequal horizontal parts.

The base is the broad mass of humanity, mired in materialism and atheism. The apex is the solitary visionary—the artist-prophet—who sees the dawn of a new spiritual reality before anyone else. The whole triangle moves slowly upwards and forwards. Today’s avant-garde truth becomes tomorrow’s commonplace knowledge. For Kandinsky, the artist bears a heavy burden: he must drag the heavy cart of humanity up the mountain, often facing ridicule and isolation.

The Language of the Soul

Kandinsky’s most famous contribution is his theory of the psychological effect of color. He treats color not as a physical property of light, but as a direct influence on the soul. He writes: "Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul."

He creates a complex taxonomy of feelings:

• Yellow: Earthly, aggressive, like the sharp blast of a trumpet. It cannot be profound.
• Blue: Heavenly, retreating, drawing the soul toward the infinite. The deeper the blue, the more it calls man to the eternal.
• Green: The bourgeois color of self-satisfaction and immobility (like a fat cow, he says).
• White: A silence that is pregnant with possibilities (birth).
• Black: A silence with no future (death).

A Critique of Disincarnation

From a traditional Catholic perspective, Kandinsky’s vision is both inspiring and cautionary. It is inspiring in its fierce rejection of materialism. He correctly identifies that a culture without a spiritual dimension is a dead culture. He yearns for the "upper room" of the soul.

However, there is a distinctly Gnostic flavor to his theology. Kandinsky seems to view matter itself as an obstacle to the spirit, something to be transcended or discarded. In the Incarnation, God became matter (flesh) to redeem it; He did not bypass it. Traditional Christian art (like the icon or the Gothic cathedral) uses the material world to reveal the divine, affirming that creation is "very good."

Kandinsky, heavily influenced by Theosophy, seeks an escape from the form. By detaching art from reality, he risks turning spirituality into pure subjectivity—a wash of emotion without a vessel. If art is only about the artist’s "inner necessity," it loses its objective grounding. It becomes a private language, a "shout" that may vibrate the soul, but perhaps fails to inform the mind with truth. We must ask: is the "spiritual" merely a feeling, or is it an encounter with the Real?

The Legacy of the Invisible

Despite these theological dangers, Concerning the Spiritual in Art remains a vital text. It challenges the artist to be more than a camera. It demands that we ask why we create. In a world that is once again drowning in the noise of the material, Kandinsky’s call to listen to the "sound" of colors is a necessary discipline—even if we might disagree on where that sound is leading us.