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Page 19
Since colours and forms are well-nigh innumerable, their
combination and their influences are likewise unending. The
material is inexhaustible.
Form, in the narrow sense, is nothing but the separating line
between surfaces of colour. That is its outer meaning. But it has
also an inner meaning, of varying intensity, [Footnote: It is
never literally true that any form is meaningless and "says
nothing." Every form in the world says something. But its message
often fails to reach us, and even if it does, full understanding
is often withheld from us.] and, properly speaking, FORM IS THE
OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF THIS INNER MEANING. To use once more the
metaphor of the piano--the artist is the hand which, by playing
on this or that key (i.e., form), affects the human soul in this
or that way. SO IT IS EVIDENT THAT FORM-HARMONY MUST REST ONLY ON
A CORRESPONDING VIBRATION OF THE HUMAN SOUL; AND THIS IS A SECOND
GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF THE INNER NEED.
The two aspects of form just mentioned define its two aims. The
task of limiting surfaces (the outer aspect) is well performed if
the inner meaning is fully expressed.
[Footnote: The phrase "full expression" must be clearly
understood. Form often is most expressive when least coherent. It
is often most expressive when outwardly most imperfect, perhaps
only a stroke, a mere hint of outer meaning.]
The outer task may assume many different shapes; but it will
never fail in one of two purposes: (1) Either form aims at so
limiting surfaces as to fashion of them some material object; (2)
Or form remains abstract, describing only a non-material,
spiritual entity. Such non-material entities, with life and value
as such, are a circle, a triangle, a rhombus, a trapeze, etc.,
many of them so complicated as to have no mathematical
denomination.
Between these two extremes lie the innumerable forms in which
both elements exist; with a preponderance either of the abstract
or the material. These intermediate forms are, at present, the
store on which the artist has to draw. Purely abstract forms are
beyond the reach of the artist at present; they are too
indefinite for him. To limit himself to the purely indefinite
would be to rob himself of possibilities, to exclude the human
element and therefore to weaken his power of expression.
On the other hand, there exists equally no purely material form.
A material object cannot be absolutely reproduced. For good or
evil, the artist has eyes and hands, which are perhaps more
artistic than his intentions and refuse to aim at photography
alone. Many genuine artists, who cannot be content with a mere
inventory of material objects, seek to express the objects by
what was once called "idealization," then "selection," and which
tomorrow will again be called something different.
[Footnote: The motive of idealization is so to beautify the
organic form as to bring out its harmony and rouse poetic
feeling. "Selection" aims not so much at beautification as at
emphasizing the character of the object, by the omission of non-
essentials. The desire of the future will be purely the
expression of the inner meaning. The organic form no longer
serves as direct object, but as the human words in which a divine
message must be written, in order for it to be comprehensible to
human minds.]
The impossibility and, in art, the uselessness of attempting to
copy an object exactly, the desire to give the object full
expression, are the impulses which drive the artist away from
"literal" colouring to purely artistic aims. And that brings us
to the question of composition. [Footnote: Here Kandinsky means
arrangement of the picture.--M.T.H.S.]
Pure artistic composition has two elements:
1. The composition of the whole picture.
2. The creation of the various forms which, by standing in
different relationships to each other, decide the composition of
the whole. [Footnote: The general composition will naturally
include many little compositions which may be antagonistic to
each other, though helping--perhaps by their very antagonism--the
harmony of the whole. These little compositions have themselves
subdivisions of varied inner meanings.] Many objects have to be
considered in the light of the whole, and so ordered as to suit
this whole. Singly they will have little meaning, being of
importance only in so far as they help the general effect. These
single objects must be fashioned in one way only; and this, not
because their own inner meaning demands that particular
fashioning, but entirely because they have to serve as building
material for the whole composition. [Footnote: A good example is
Cezanne's "Bathing Women," which is built in the form of a
triangle. Such building is an old principle, which was being
abandoned only because academic usage had made it lifeless. But
Cezanne has given it new life. He does not use it to harmonize
his groups, but for purely artistic purposes. He distorts the
human figure with perfect justification. Not only must the whole
figure follow the lines of the triangle, but each limb must grow
narrower from bottom to top. Raphael's "Holy Family" is an
example of triangular composition used only for the harmonizing
of the group, and without any mystical motive.]
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