Excerpt: ...There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age. An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual ...
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Excerpt: ...There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age. An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives. Like ourselves, these artists sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of external form.
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To me Kandinsky's book is probably of most use and interest to an art historian (which I am). The title might fool you if you're looking for, well, sort of the more familiar poetic ideas about art being moving and transcendent and something close to religion.
Not to say those aren't valid takes on art--they obviously are--but the book probably won't satisfy you in that way.. It was directed mainly at other artists and at critics and theorists of art (at the time). It can definitely be a little tedious, like an old textbook or manual. Not exactly bestseller material.
The book is very much a product of its time, an extremely idealistic European artworld before and during World War I. Much early modern art was almost intoxicated (kind of touchingly at times) with its own imagined possibilities for evolving the human species.. Kandinsky was a perfect example.
