Modernist Spirituality Explored in Abstract Expressionist Painting

Should We Reference Modern Painter's Spiritual Understanding in the Post-Modern Age?

Abstract expressionism was an integral painting movement within the Modern Art period. Coined as the opposite to impressionism which focused on abstract, fluid, and imaginative representations of the outer world, expressionism focused on abstract, fluid, and imaginative representations of the artist’s inner world. Abstract expressionism was a method for artists to communicate existential ideas based on their subjective experiences and emotional states, an introspective and personal process antithetical to many traditional art styles.

Often completely non-representational, abstract expressionism relied on the idiosyncratic application of the elements and principals of art and design, especially color, line, shape, and rhythm, to create compositions on a canvas. The style involved impasto applications of paint with loose, thick brushstrokes and lines to reveal the canvas beneath and expose the picture plane as a material object, not an illusion of scene, as in past traditions. Abstract expressionist painters used this style to reflect not only personal emotional moods or ideas, but also contemplate individual and universal expressions of spirituality.

Perhaps the most notable abstract expressionist artist who pioneered discussions on abstract painting and spirituality in the Modern period was Vassily Kandinsky. Known for his extensive publications on theories of spiritual qualities in painting, including his fundamental book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky imagined the spiritual realm as an invisible world of influential forces and energies which could be reached through artistic creation, especially through specific colors. He developed his own catalog of colors and their corresponding emotions, for example considering blue to be the most sacred and spiritual color because it represented divinity, with white meaning unknown possibility and clarity, and black the void of possibility, representing death (White, 33-25.)

Kandinsky was deeply attuned to color theory because of his Synesthesia, a condition which blurred visual and auditory senses; when he heard music, he visualized colors accompanying each instrument and note. Because of this, he viewed his abstract paintings as musical movements (33.) Kandinsky also believed the prevailing source of despair in the modern world was caused by an obsession with materialism, and a lack of soulful understanding and attunement (31.) He therefore concluded that his role, and that of all artists in the modern era, was to reach and harness these spiritual energies, as if artists were rousing spiritual guides amidst a lost and spiritually hungry population (29-30.)

Many of these ideas can be observed in his abstract expressionist paintings, such as Vassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (Second Version), Oil on Canvas, 1912. This painting is entirely non-objective abstract, meaning that it contains no discernable forms of material reality, only gestural aspects. The work uses a variety of vivid colors including bright red, royal blue, yellow, orange, and turquoise, although the most prominent color is white, with large areas of white and grey tones. The composition is energized with many thick, jagged, black lines, creating diagonal force. Although the composition is horizontal and therefore more stable, the sharp black cutting across the canvas signifies disruptive energy.

According to Kandinsky’s color theory, there is a complex tension in this piece between the purity and hope of white, the despair of grey tones, and the jutting void of black sprawled across. The forms in this work are abstracted, but some triangular and circular forms are present, giving the piece more familiarity of the representational world. The composition appears as a mountainous landscape with hills, valleys, and a horizon line, although that may only be a viewer interpretation, as the work is still non-objective. The piece’s title suggests that this visual art is akin to a musical improvising, where the artist was guided by spirit to create each stroke intuitively, rather than planning any arrangement. The piece implies a spiritual vibration released upon the material world in a painterly form, with Kandinsky as artist merely guiding the energy along as a conduit between the spiritual and physical domains.

Exploring further into abstract modernist painting and complicating the theories of spirituality is artist Piet Mondrian. While Kandinsky was an innovator of abstract expressionist painting, Mondrian developed his own theory of abstract painting called De Stjil, or The Design, likewise inspired by spiritual ideas. De Stjil was geometric design configuration which relied on grid systems and primary colors plus black and white, to represent all of nature. Influenced by theosophy and Eastern spiritual ideas of Hinduism which recognized material, objective reality as an illusion housing everything’s true spiritual essence, Mondrian deconstructed abstract art into what he considered its purest forms (Fingstein, 2-3.) Horizontal and vertical lines symbolized the cosmos’ opposing energy forces, while true blue, red, yellow, white, and black, were the most concretized visual cues on which to meditate, often using squares and circles, harkening to the Hindu symbol of a mandala, which was used by Monks for meditational transcendence (3-4.) Like Kandinsky, Mondrian was frustrated with modernist materialism, and viewed art as a method of channeling universal divine energy.

These concepts are reflected in his work, Piet Mondrian, Composition A, Oil on Canvas, 1920. In this, Mondrian showcases his mathematical grid system, with the entire canvas organized into squares and rectangles and divided by uniform black lines. Each square contains a single block of pure color, blue, red, yellow, white, and grey. Each color block is outlined in black and fits together with mathematical precision. While every block is a different size, there is a balance created using the visual impact of color to distribute an even weight. This De Stijl painting differs greatly on first appearance, from the chaotic and fluid art of Kandinsky, but it is built on similar intentions of artist-as-mystic-spiritual-visionary.

While Kandinsky’s meditations and exaltations of soul were communicated through improvisational, musical, and jumbled lines and colors, Mondrian conveys his devotion to spirit through careful and strict measurements to ensure a purity of form. Mondrian anally devalued any depiction of the natural world which resembled its illusionary material form, disallowing even a suggestion of a landscape or representational element like in Kandinsky’s mountainous composition. De Stijl work venerated pure spiritual form so exclusively that years later, much of the spiritual concepts were lost on general audiences in favor of the minimalist geometric aesthetics; yet the theories remain as important spiritual philosophies which would shape future artists.

Mark Rothko is a considerable example of a later abstract expressionist painter who was influenced by the spiritual frameworks laid out by Kandinsky and Mondrian. Known for the color field style of painting he originated, Rothko believed in the meditative and spiritual qualities of abstract painting, especially of color. Color field painting further disrupted conventional painting styles by disregarding the illusion of canvas as a space to represent the outside world, instead favoring large stretches of color which revealed the texture of canvas beneath to evoke emotional responses, spirituality, and transcendent experiences. Intended for intimate viewing, the color fields allowed for transcendental meditation as the observer gazed into the simplistic painterly color for spiritual purposes.

Like his predecessors, Rothko was influenced by theosophy, particularly the work of Carl Jung, which theorized how each person’s “individual unconscious” made up a “collective unconscious” (Remington, 20-22), or more plainly, how an individual’s energy was part of a larger cosmic lifeforce, with the individual organism only an aspect of a universal ecosystem. Rothko explored the Jungian unconscious through his paintings which he viewed as mechanisms for self-discovery and self-actualization; the process of becoming united within one’s dueling energies and achieving the highest form of self (23-24.) While exploring similar theories of universal soul-energy expressed intuitively through painting like Kandinsky, his focus on individuation separated him from Mondrian in that he was most interested in introspective self-expression of Being versus a universal expression of collective cosmic meaning, although he intended viewers to consider both for themselves.

A prominent work which demonstrates Rothko’s color field style is, Mark Rothko, Lavender and Mulberry, Oil on Paper, mounted on fiberboard, 1959. This painting uses large swatches of lavender to form a simple rectangular form encased within another rectangular form, painted using crushed mulberries to access their rich purple hue. Using an element of nature helped relay the significance of natural divinity found in all things and evoke a vivid and inspiring sense of awe as one contemplated the painting and The Self. The brush strokes are loosely applied with layers of paint built up to create a blurring effect. The purple haze and simple forms evoke a tranquility and calm when viewed closely, as the viewer is beholden to confront themself within the fields of color. This work is one of many which were displayed in the Rothko Chapel, a meditative installation for considering the divine, and was regarded as one of the most famed cases of how abstract expressionist painting filled a void of religious experience and God in the modern enlightenment era.

What can be gleaned from the 3 painters Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Rothko, is the modern painter’s sense of spiritual and philosophical duty to themselves and a larger communal effort to inspire meaning in an age of increasing nihilism and material devaluation of spiritual concerns, religion, and higher values. Abstract expressionist painters believed in universal truths which could be discovered and venerated through abstracted forms, shapes, lines, and colors. Like many modernists, they were inspired by innovative psychological insights of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the unconscious mind, and a blending of theosophical principles. They believed in “art for art’s sake” and that in creating art, one could create The Self, partaking in a transcendent state and revealing meaning that many non-artists could not “see”. Although approaching and revealing the spiritual in different ways, they all felt an obligation as artists to evoke in the eyes of the public, the divine qualities which art evoked in themselves.

Extending and applying these ideas into the post-modern era, or as some would argue, the metamodern or post-post-modern times of contemporary culture, the void of The Spiritual and states of transcendence are still widespread in the western world. The hungering for divine fulfillment, an obsession with vacuous self-love, and the infinite, hapless wandering from one material good to the next as we consume in order to sustain our lives, is progressively worse than at the time these painters were writing their philosophies and creating their work. Nihilistic social justice activism and political tribalism have replaced inner awareness and spiritual connection with the earth and with each other as many have become stuck in virtual reality online and through technological advancement.

It appears relevant as in the modern age that we examine the philosophies of The Dao to appreciate awareness and Being in pure consciousness and flow, and favor psychoanalysis to reveal our mountains of unconscious, unprocessed, unhealed, and unfulfilled lives and selves. With a hyper focus on persona, ego, and the masks of individuality worn in mass media, many fail to successfully individuate and instead churn round on the wheel of shallow “self-love” rather than return to a deeper and more universal sense of Oneness, united in the human condition and existing as only part of the natural world, not the center of it. Although popular culture has adopted modern art styles into its canon of artistic representation, the spiritual acts of connecting with the consciousness beneath the ego has been lost amidst the commercialization of art as objects for commodification like everything else.

Despite “art for art’s sake” being widely embraced as a form of creativity and no longer considered avant-garde, contemporary western culture is still lacking the fundamental concept behind the idea which could be applied infinitely across everything; Being for Being’s sake. That transcendence is the behavior of embracing our existence and moving and flowing with awareness and radical acceptance through each step of the way. Many speak about “the journey” but few understand the spiritual drive, evolutionary, of what it means to transcendent beyond material ephemera and live with intention for Being present and grounded within the process of life’s cycles. The west would benefit from examining the theosophical ideas laid out by the modernist thinkers and artists, and taking another look at their abstract wall art.

Bibliography

Fingesten, Peter, Spirituality, Mysticism and Non-Objective Art, Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Autumn, 1961), pp. 2-6

Remington, Erin, The Modern Art Father of Spirt: Spirituality in Color and Experiences in the Paintings of Mark Rothko, Azusa Pacific University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016

White, J, Richard, Kandinsky Thinking about the Spiritual in Art, Religion and the Arts, 2019.