40 pages 1 hour read

Wassily Kandinsky

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1911

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Part 1, Chapter 4

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “About General Aesthetic”

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “The Pyramid”

As the various arts contribute to the spiritual revolution, they are coming together as never before in history to create a “spiritual pyramid.” Music provides the model for the other arts because it is inherently nonrepresentational and, therefore, less tied to the material world and more directly expressive of “the artist’s soul” (19) than any other art form. Visual artists, Kandinsky says, are learning from the musical sense of rhythm and abstract structure. Because visual art has no time element, it is in some respects ahead of music in the depiction of the abstract and eternal. Kandinsky foresees a bright future for the rapprochement of the arts in the search for “spiritual possibilities,” as long as the borrowing of one art from another is “not superficial but fundamental” (20).

Part 1, Chapter 4 Analysis

This brief chapter concludes the part of the book devoted to general aesthetic ideas. As a complement to the idea of the spiritual triangle, Kandinsky introduces the metaphor of the pyramid, expressing his vision of the unity or coming together of the arts. The idea of the various arts having a kinship, and the possibility of combining them in some way, was prominent in 19th-century Romantic thought.