Immediately after he begins his essay, for example, he accuses “the nightmare of materialism… for turning the life of the universe into an evil, useless game” (Section 1, Paragraph 3). However strong his language may be, Kandinsky validates this disdain by asking the reader to imagine “a building divided into many rooms” three paragraphs later. In this mental exercise, Kandinsky recounts the experience of a typical museumgoer who “goes from wall to wall [looking at paintings], reading the names… [and] then goes away neither richer nor poorer than when they came, [simply there to] admire the quality of painting as one enjoys a pasty.” For those museumgoers who attend exhibitions simply to seem sophisticated to their social cohorts, this unfortunate occurrence is certainly the norm, and even those who go to a museum for spiritual enjoyment can end up focusing more on the nameplate besides a painting than on the actual painting itself. Armed with this particular example, one can easily see why Kandinsky might disregard his own advice about artistic freedom in his attempt to stave off the more menacing dangers of materialism. Indeed, in Section VI, Paragraph 23, Kandinsky asserts that “there is no ‘must’ in art, because art is free,” even though he states previously in paragraph 18 “[that] the human form [in a rhomboidal composition] must either be replaced…or remain a purely non-material symbol.” If materialism (defined here as the inclusion of a human merely to conform to artistic expectations) can detract from a masterpiece’s meaning like a nameplate besides a painting can, Kandinsky has good reason to ask artists to remove unnecessary materialistic references from their
Immediately after he begins his essay, for example, he accuses “the nightmare of materialism… for turning the life of the universe into an evil, useless game” (Section 1, Paragraph 3). However strong his language may be, Kandinsky validates this disdain by asking the reader to imagine “a building divided into many rooms” three paragraphs later. In this mental exercise, Kandinsky recounts the experience of a typical museumgoer who “goes from wall to wall [looking at paintings], reading the names… [and] then goes away neither richer nor poorer than when they came, [simply there to] admire the quality of painting as one enjoys a pasty.” For those museumgoers who attend exhibitions simply to seem sophisticated to their social cohorts, this unfortunate occurrence is certainly the norm, and even those who go to a museum for spiritual enjoyment can end up focusing more on the nameplate besides a painting than on the actual painting itself. Armed with this particular example, one can easily see why Kandinsky might disregard his own advice about artistic freedom in his attempt to stave off the more menacing dangers of materialism. Indeed, in Section VI, Paragraph 23, Kandinsky asserts that “there is no ‘must’ in art, because art is free,” even though he states previously in paragraph 18 “[that] the human form [in a rhomboidal composition] must either be replaced…or remain a purely non-material symbol.” If materialism (defined here as the inclusion of a human merely to conform to artistic expectations) can detract from a masterpiece’s meaning like a nameplate besides a painting can, Kandinsky has good reason to ask artists to remove unnecessary materialistic references from their