Kandinsky, Kant, and a Modern Mandala
What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were
not from man's imagination?
—Joseph Campbell, "The Way of the Myth"
Michele Roberts has written of the "joy of the human imagination, without
which we would be unable to understand one another, and would thus wither
and perish." This is the baseline for my discursive analysis of imagination
and beauty in art as it relates to the work of Kant and Kandinsky. While
both accepted the forward movement of cognition in art and aesthetics, my
concern is that some cognitively minded individuals neglect the part played
by imaginative intuition in the creative process. Much recent art is lacking
in both imagination and beauty. Although it may be rich in concept, according
to Kant creative intuition is also necessary. Postmodernists' focused emphasis
on the oblique, fleeting, transient, and ephemeral—short-lived, fugitive
fashions or superficial trends in art and aesthetics—confuses the
fleeting and moving present, rushing us forward into the
future when we might do better to look back historically and constructively
at the more enduring influence of Kant and Kandinsky. Of course, it might
in one sense be in the "apparently unremarkable and evanescent that our
lives sometimes find their greatest meaning," but this does not imply that
we cannot also learn from the past.
|
|
