The title of Kandinsky's first great theoretical work, On the Spiritual in Art and in Painting in particular (1912) which had a huge influence, thus … - Michel Henry
" "The title of Kandinsky's first great theoretical work, On the Spiritual in Art and in Painting in particular (1912) which had a huge influence, thus has a rigorous meaning. It bears a twofold judgment, both on this epoch whose distress is perceived by Kandinsky and on the true reality of things. Our time is a distressed time because it is forgetful of reality and has abandoned itself to the increasing objectivism promoted by science. The ideological fulfillment of this type of thought which is given over to the External and thus deprived of what is essential is naturalism, to which the stiff and empty art from the nineteenth century provides overwhelming testimony. Its practical consequence is the materialism that spreads the negation of life's true essence across all the spheres of life, thereby offering itself as a sort of concrete nihilism whose true name is death. Faced with this situation, On the Spiritual in Art and in Painting in particular offers a programme of revitalization.
English
Collect this quote
About Michel Henry
Michel Henry (10 January 1922 – 3 July 2002) was a French philosopher, phenomenologist and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States, and Japan. His novel L'amour les yeux fermés (Love With Closed Eyes) has won the Renaudot Prize in 1976.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Phenomenological definition of God
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Michel Henry
Art will rediscover its way in a different type of nature (from the Galilean nature). The sensible qualities of this nature are not reduced to external features, as mere signs that are limited to 'representing' a foreign reality. These qualities are modes of life: impressions, tones and tonalities. This is what I mean: by tearing colours and linear forms away from the ideal archetype of meanings that constitute the objective world and by taking them in their non-referential pictoriality, Kandinskian abstraction does not depart from nature but returns to its inner essence. This original, subjective, dynamic, impressional and pathetic nature -- the true nature whose essence is Life -- is the cosmos. A dazzling claim from The Blaue Reiter Almanac, highlighted by Kandinsky himself, defines the Arche (or the Origin) where Art and Cosmos are identical: 'The world sounds. It is a cosmos of spiritually affective beings. Thus, dead matter is living spirit'.
The speech of the Word of Life is not made up of words lost in the world and stripped of power. Its word is its embrace, the pathetik embrace in which, holding itself, it holds the person to whom it speaks by giving him life – by giving him to be embraced within this embrace in which absolute Life embraces itself. The embrace in which absolute Life embraces itself is its love, the infinite love with which it loves itself. Its word is that of love, in the end the only one that the anguished people of our day, lost in world’s ennui, still want to hear. But what does this word say to them? Just itself, just their own life, too – the unspeakable happiness of experiencing oneself and of Living.
Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
The media of culture -- mosaics, frescoes, engravings, books, music -- usually had a sacred theme; in any case, their theme was the growth of life's powers up to the exalted discovery of its own essence. The medium was art, namely, the awakening of these powers with the aid of the sensibility that carries all the other ones. The ideal aesthetic image -- whether visual or sonorous -- was the object of contemplation. It was that which remained and that to which one always returned in the repetition of transcendental processes that led to its creation. To become their contemporary is precisely to reproduce these acts and increased powers of life within oneself. It is to reach them in and through the exaltation of the Basis (Fonds). Culture was the set of brilliant works that enabled and gave rise to this repetition -- culture was the set of signs that human beings gave to one another through the centuries in order to surpass themselves.
Loading...