“The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forwards and upwards.” is what artist Wassily Kandinsky wrote in his 1912 book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and in many ways he was right. At the centre of whatever “Art” is is the need to move “forwards and upwards.” In other words, when you look at a painting the logical part of your brain should be activated into thinking of what a piece of art means, and the illogical part should be motivated to use this knowledge for some purpose. You gain something from looking at a piece of art-- it is a transaction. And without the viewer’s participation in the transaction, the art is hollow. In this particular way, Wassily asserts, the soul benefits from art.
When we hang a painting on our wall we are taking this relationship between the soul and art even further, and a piece of art can do many things to a room. Art is not machine made, and so paintings add humanity to rooms usually filled with monotonously machine made items. Indeed, Kandinsky pointed out how art holds the possibility to cut through materialism to reach at what is human in all of us. Additionally, as art reaches into what is human, it also reaches into what is individual. A painting hanging on a wall can act as a translator of an individual taste, outlook, or style to a new person walking into a room. Furthermore, good art has the potential of bringing out an emotional response, and reminds us to stop and look and wonder.
And while Kandinsky’s philosophy of art is rather serious in tone, there is joy to be found in good art as well. Joy is just as unique of an emotion as anger, sadness, nostalgia, or melancholia. It is joyous to look at a painting and think of the human being who creates each brushstroke, who covered the canvas in a specific and particular way, who made decisions and perhaps mistakes. This is what Kandinsky would certainly call “the movement of experience.” The movement of experience is what separates alive art with dead art and creates humanity in a painting-- it is what benefits our soul. The movement of experience in a painting can influence a room, translate our emotions, remind us of our humanity, and above all-- rouse us out of our passivity.
