Kandinsky:
Kandinsky views history as a succession of periods of culture, each with its own unique style of art and its own unique characteristics. The Theosophical view of history, the primary subject of the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, is fully in accord with Kandinsky’s view. . . . Past cycles represent not lesser forms of culture and intelligence than ours, but different forms. . . . Blavatsky herself repeatedly emphasized that modem Theosophy is no new idea or innovation, but merely a restatement of an ancient teaching that can be seen in the writings of earlier cultures.
In ancient times and modern ones alike, humanity has been blessed with certain persons having “a deep and powerful prophetic strength” and “a secret power of vision,” persons who see and point the way to others. In a famous metaphor, Kandinsky likened humanity to an acute-angled triangle, whose base consists of the mass of humanity. At the apex of the triangle are a few beings, and ultimately often a single one: “His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman.”
Kandinsky’s triangle of humanity is Theosophical in two ways. First, it envisions humanity as consisting of persons at different stages of progress, at different stages of intellectual evolution. And second, it envisions each level of humanity as aiding and assisting those who are less advanced, helping them to progress, along with the self-sacrificing individual of sorrows or bodhisattva at the top, who lives only to raise the rest of humanity to greater spirituality—that is, to greater self-awareness.
The consequence of the upward movement of the triangle and the labors of the bodhisattvas at its apex is the gradual improvement of the human condition. Kandinsky quoted with approval Blavatsky’s vision of the future betterment of humankind at the end of The Key to Theosophy: “The new torchbearer of truth will find the minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival, which will remove the merely mechanical, material obstacles and difficulties from his path.” And then Blavatsky continues: “The earth will be a heaven in the twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now,” and with these words ends her book.”
For Kandinsky, the improvement of the world and the human condition is the purpose of art. That improvement can result only from an increase in self-awareness, that is, an increase in spirituality. Like Blavatsky, Kandinsky saw both universal and human history as governed by an evolutionary impulse that responds to purpose as well as causes.
Although he did not develop the concept in detail, Kandinsky posited the existences of subtle worlds of matter, in which feeling and thoughts have form and existence as material entities: “Thought which, although a product of the spirit, can be defined with positive science, is matter, but of fine and not coarse substance.” . . . The existence and nature of worlds subtler than the physical is one of the most characteristic Theosophical doctrines. Kandinsky held that the ability of art to modify the nature of those subtle environments, either directly or through the response of human beings to the physical art work, was the means by which it could further evolution.
Kandinsky repeatedly talked of “vibration” as the method by which we respond to our surroundings. So in his autobiography he remembered events in his early university life that “made the strings of the soul sensitive, receptive, especially susceptible to vibration.” In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, he talks about color, form, and the object itself as involving a “corresponding vibration in the human soul.” It is easy to take such talk as metaphor of a kind prevalent in turn-of-the-century discourse. However, vibration is the Theosophical explanation of how feelings and thoughts are influential on living beings, and Kandinsky could not escape being aware of that.
The Theosophical view of all matter—dense and subtle—as vibrations at different frequencies within an ultimate substance provided Kandinsky with an explanation of how art could affect humanity and the world. The vibrations within our psyches and minds respond to the vibrations around us, and in turn influence those outer vibrations. Our feelings and thoughts respond to those of others, and help to shape the atmosphere of feelings and thoughts in which we all live.
Kandinsky develops . . . a circular color chart containing the six main chromatic variations. Of this chart he says: “As in a great circle, a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol of eternity, of something without end) the six colors appear that make up the three main antitheses.” In this comment, Kandinsky uses the serpent swallowing its own tail, which forms part of the seal of the Theosophical Society, with the same basic symbolism it has in Theosophical use.
Kandinsky . . . believed that in each person is an inner Notwendigkeit—need, necessity, inevitability, essentialness—which ultimately determines all outward forms and actions. That inner essential is what the Hindu tradition refers to as the swadharma of a being—its self-nature or inner foundation. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky speaks of it in these words: “The Universe is worked and guidedfrom within outwards.”
Kandinsky’s pervasive recognition of inner and outer realities echoes the Theosophical distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric. The very title of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine shows how essential is the concept of esoteric, hidden, or inner reality to Theosophical thought. As with Blavatsky, Kandinsky’s inner meaning is not something deliberately hidden to keep it from the vulgar crowd, but rather a truth whose perception requires a form of knowing that has to be developed.
For Kandinsky, art was more than a pastime, more than a livelihood, more than a profession, more than a form of expression. For Kandinsky, art was the means by which the artist comes to know the world and himself.