In his early
intellectual struggles with spiritualism, ethnology and
children’s art, Kandinsky was trying to reconcile art-making
with human biology. Whilst retaining his fundamental
anti-materialistic convictions he drew on the theories of science
and engineering in order to support his contention that there was a
fundamental similarity between art and evolution. In the
1920s he had reached the following position:
“ Abstract art, despite its emancipation, is
subject….to ‘natural laws’, and is obliged to
proceed in the same way that nature did previously, when it started
in a modest way with protoplasms and cells, progressing very
gradually to increasingly complex organisms. Today, abstract art
also creates primary or less primary art- organisms, whose further
development the artist can predict on in uncertain outline, and
which entice, excite him, but also calm him when he stares into the
prospect of the future that faces him. Let me observe here
that those who doubt the future of abstract art, are, to choose an
example, as if reckoning with the state of development reached by
amphibians, which are far removed from fully developed vertebrates
and represent not the final result of creation, but rather the
‘beginning’.
This is a roundabout
way of stating that making works of art is an evolved aspect of
human tool- making. Paintings are tools to reinforce social
communication within groups where the members share the same values
and perceptions of environment. Over tens of thousands of
years, the principle of using coded messages has remained.
But the codes have developed from those close to real objects, to
more idiosyncratic collections of pictographs invented by talented
individuals to turn their mental ideas into framed shapes and
colours for sharing with others. The social aims behind the
tooling of art also remain those of reinforcing group identify.
Indeed, the most powerful evidence for art having this role is the
fact that even works, such as those of the Blue Rider Group, which
were reviled by contemporary critics, now grace the walls of
museums and are objects of group consumption through the commercial
industry of museology. It is common to decry the
astronomical prices paid today for works by modern classic
artists. However, this is missing the point that this is
evidence of the place of art as one of the mainsprings of
capitalist culture.
The social role of
art is only limited by the ability of the artist to match the
levels of the public’s capacity to read their codes, where
the common response is ‘I only like what I know’.
Innovation and education, whether in science or art, has to
overcome this threshold of innate social conservatism. It is
not always a problem of education. Conservatism, in all
things, has a survival value in holding back society from
destroying its past before it has a firm platform of values for the
future. As deep- thinking primates we cannot escape the need
to seek new social arrangements as past values and structures
disintegrate through forces connected for the most part with
advances in technology. In this sense art movements are just
one facet of social evolution, arising at an individual level, but
with the potential to move society into a new cultural
paradigm.
In the final chapter
of his book, ‘The Art of Modernism’ published in the
last year of the 20th century, Sandro Bocola makes the
point that, at all times, artistic creativity runs with other
cultural changes, which are mainly political and technological
variations on past themes. In particular, he takes up a theme
that we are moving rapidly towards a global culture of capitalism,
and cultural evolution is going to be increasingly bound up with
electronic data processing and satellite communication of
ideas. For Bocola, new methods, outputs and aesthetic
norms associated with artistic creativity will emerge from computer
networking;
“…. whose potential for art has hardly
been explored and is far from being exhausted. These media, too,
open up a variety of new creative possibilities, which-
like photography and film- will probably influence
future artistic developments and may even lead to the formation of
new and hitherto unknown types of art”
We can be certain
that this type of future will emerge through social evolution, and
will probably come sooner than we think. In particular, we
can also be sure that the technology of digital imaging, which
offers an unlimited capacity for everyone to command the entire
process of image- making, from capture to display, will play a
powerful role in broadening the social base of artistic creativity.
A computer screen is the most potent interface with information
ever created. This is particularly true for self-education of
the ‘what happens if I do this’ type. We can only
speculate how computer graphics would have accelerated
Kandinsky’s intellectual development, and spread his ideas
around the world at the speed of light.
