Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 42-43))

terms, has caused the transmutation of art-activity into art-scholasticism,
i. e. an artisanship consisting of an interaction of two distinctly opposed
spheres of activity. Art itself—the domain of racial source and racially
approved manifestation—is not affected by this scholasticism, just as science
itself keeps on, within its positive domain, in its literal revelation of the con-
crete, undisturbed by the uncertainty of its building-stones’ logical doom.
Even if they do not know the absolute meaning of time, space, etc., scientists
persist in working out an invaluable system of science based upon these terms.
Their scientific validity remaining unshaken, their usefulness is undiminished.
Parallel with this, Cezanne has been operating with color, form, tone, line,
mass, space, etc., etc., solely on the basis of their art-validity. Their absolute
meaning was no concern of his; it belonged to the system of logical and not
racial activity; to science, and not to art. Their determination is always a
matter of analysis, and not synthesis. Hence it comes that the comprehensive
mining of the hidden treasures of the mystic inner compulsion can lead only
to a scholastic manipulation of abstract terms, foreign to art, and, if forced
to an unnatural union, these two can engender only artisanship.
Cezanne and Van Gogh, the arch-artists, could conceive only in art-terms,
i. e. in raciality, which can no more be seized from the focus of a logical system,
than mediaeval life could be dwarfed to monasticism. When Poe and Maeter-
linck summon racial-feelings by imagination-stirring word-construction and
visual suggestion they follow the imperative of art: to operate within a syn-
thesizing sphere. When they ponder upon the secret of poetry and art, they
analyze and make science. Then they consciously forsake the raciality of
their art, because they are then after art’s abstract skeleton. They pluck
the flower, flatten it between the leaves of a book, then find it fit for service
in their scientific collection.
Kandinsky sees, with Plato’s eyes, an abstract “idea” behind every reality.
“Der Innere Klang” is the expression of his dualism, his disruption of being—
the very antithesis of raciality. His dualism logically leads to plastic solipsism.
He permeates the world with logical ether, until it loses its reality, except within
the sancta sanctorum of his imagination. There, in the anchorite’s seclusion,
reigns supreme the concept, a thought-vessel ever hungry for content. Truly,
the abstract number is the symbol of this art, as Kandinsky himself concludes.
The recognition of the opposite pole of his dualism—the world of matter—
introduces, as in all dualistic philosophies, an irreconcilable partner. The
intruder is admitted upon a condition of subjection to the “inner imperative.”
Even when “zerstiickelt” and “kontrapunktirt,” he persists to dwell in the
canvas in fullest separation from the other partner in dualism—the idea.
One is, and ever will be, entirely separated from, and even opposed to the
other; as, by this theory concrete elaboration is, unavoidably, a spiritual
limitation. Thus an internecine struggle between the matter and the spirit
of a composition is the unavoidable outcome. Over the din of conflict, we
are, therefore, to await the harmonizing verbal elucidation of the artist, who,
we have his assurance, in time will be able to formulate precisely the con-
structive process of his work.

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