Today I read an inspiring quote from Kandinsky.
I shared it on social media and had some interesting response. I started thinking about the different ways people respond to art and how it makes them feel. Why do some people feel it and others only respond to what they are told about it, or suggestions on how they are expected to respond to it?
I have always been a feeler, but i do like a good back story on the artistic process.
Sometimes it helps me to view the work with a fresh pair of eyes but isn't necessary in terms of how I feel about a work, that's usually instant.
The quote was in reference to spirituality in art, not spiritual art but the spirit 'in' art and how it fine tunes our being when exposed to it.
I believe this to be true. I am often deeply moved and sometimes changed by a work of art.
Most of the Abstract Expressionists from the New York School effect me profoundly.
Rothko has had me in tears on a number of occasions when I've sat in front of his work in a Museum. At the NGV ('Untitled Red') , MoMA ('No 10'), SAM (Orange on Red), DMA , and the Guggenheim., mostly his latter work. (Although, I do like his early abstracts, the earlier figurative's don't hook me in.)
Barnett Newman's Zip Painting 'Onement I' had me spell bound at MoMA. I had seen reproductions in books and felt only admiration he was so sure of his path but in person, I felt attracted to it in a very powerful way.
I've felt a deep waves run through my being from the proximity and engagement with such work.
I feel blessed to be able to receive a resonance like that. It changes your chemistry, which in turn changes your reality in some way.
Some people don't feel much at all when sitting in front of an artwork and that's ok too, I guess it is all about how you're geared but I do think the vibration affects us all in some way, whether we are aware of the effect of not.
Color is pure vibration and art is vibration with intent.
Spiritually that is a powerful combination..in my eyes anyway and Kandinsky's.
The quote from Kandinsky: [In great art] the spectator does feel a corresponding thrill in himself. Such harmony or even contrast of emotion cannot be superficial or worthless; indeed the Stimmung of a picture can deepen and purify that of the spectator. Such works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they “key it up,” so to speak, to a certain height, as a tuning-key the strings of a musical instrument.