Submenu: The Arts
Art Art brings the supernatural and sensual to sensual representation. The artist is a mediator of the spiritual world, he brings the spiritual world close to the art viewer. In this way man can recognize spiritual facts through the help of art. Art thus has an essential, serious and sublime task in our world. Whoever feels called to be an artist seeks the path of higher knowledge in order to bring spiritual truths to physical manifestation. People today are striving to find the way back to the spiritual world and it is art that offers us the possibility of bringing spiritual experiences and perceived facts to physical manifestation. Only the artistic is able to express the spiritual in its fullness. "This is why the great works of art seem so enormous, because they are deeply connected with the meaning of the world order." Artistic activity is also, the search for a conscious connection to the spiritual world, in order to find in it the source for artistic creation "Art, which is inspired by the spiritual science, is at the beginning, the beginning of development. This is the art of the future", (both B083, lecture 14.11.1911). Such art concerns all people, so it should not be seen as a luxury or investment market, but should be recognized as a general human good. Today's surplus society offers the greatest opportunities to benefit from all life, to make everything artistically possible. The artist brings the spiritual-divine to a physical appearance and thereby raises the physical-earthly to new heights. Only in religious knowledge, in the seriousness of knowledge, can the artist create art. Through this it is also given to every human being, as a being that has a share in the divine, to recognize art out of himself. As Goethe says: "The beautiful is a manifestation of secret (note spiritual) laws of nature, which would have remained hidden forever without its appearance. Today, many, due to a lack of self-confidence, pass judgement on a work of art to others. It is the judgement of others that is supposed to bring them closer. Thus, it is not the uplifting moment of an art appreciation, but, among other things, the desire to increase possessions that contributes to the judgement. In this way the will to do/activity is also reduced. Art has a task to convey the truth of the world and beauty to people, to help them to understand desires and passions and to transform them into something higher. Where art fails such a task, human societies emerge which do not ennoble their desires and passions, but increase them. The people then do not develop their own moral force, a human world view of love and freedom, do not rise to noble goals, but remain aimlessly stuck in arbitrariness. Such an art devoted to spiritual science acknowledges a person's higher spiritual capacity for knowledge. As Novalis formulates it: "... the belief in the true revelation of the spirit. It is not looking - hearing - feeling - it is composed of all three - more than all three - a feeling of immediate certainty", (B108, chapter "The Theoretical Work, Mixed Remarks (Pollen), No. 23"). Spiritual knowledge can be drawn from a source that opens when the spirit visibly detaches itself from the influence of the physical body, freely experiencing perception and revelation of the spirit. The spiritual world that surrounds us is not only a good one, but also the adversary beings are present and active in it. An art that wants to be true, that wants to be beautiful, must also represent truth. Not only the good alone but also the evil is part of our world. An art should try to find the expression to make this evil and good visible in its true forms. "That which is beautiful seems to carry its inner being to the surface. That is the essence of beauty, that it does not hide itself, but that it carries its inner being to the surface, into the outer form ... reveals the essence", (B161, 9.6.1923). For art, as a revelation of the interior, of the spirit, it can therefore bring to light the Luciferian, the Ahriman and the Christian. If these representations are true, then they are art. Precisely the physical sensualization of the spiritual as art of the future will have a positive effect on the viewers, because their souls can absorb truth. Through his higher senses of perception the artist can perceive the inner being / the idea / the feeling / the secret / what lies behind it and by means of his abilities transformed to the means (e.g. surface, colour, form, movement, relationship, architecture) of his artistic activity. He is in inner ego-activity and transforms / an abstraction but also new representation of the object occurs. He shows us one and/or more representations of the object in new form and clarity. In his artistic activity, man allows more than just the sensual, also the supersensory perceived to flow in and thus increases it to new things, which go beyond the nature of the sensory world. In the work of the artist the sensual and the supersensual then meet in a new appearance. Thus the artist often precedes the development of mankind and shows ways to new abilities and processes. The artist will make use of a higher perception and a higher consciousness, as well as of the increased mastery of the work. In this way, art that surpasses existing natural existence with a new one can be seen as a creation from the higher. This new comes as an impulse from the spiritual world, the justified future development of mankind wants to penetrate into the physical world. How man has descended from the spiritual world into the physical world. So spiritual forces work in our astral body, which then shapes the forms and movements in the etheric body and the latter forms the physical body from it. "That which first lived in the astral body as feelings, sensations and ideas continues as a process of movement into the etheric body and forms the physical body in its present form", (B118, 28.12.1907). The mental and intellectual contents have a forming effect on the etheric body and physical body. What man will need in new form for his justified further development, comes to him from the spiritual world first as ideas, sensations, as symbols of the future in the astral body already today. It is the task of art, design and architecture to create such forms and works that express the supersensible in a sensual way. "... where that which is the means of artistic creation will be experienced much more intensely by the human soul, can be experienced morally-spiritually by the human soul, so to speak, and where in the creations of artists we will be confronted with the traces of the experiences of the artist's souls in the cosmos, so to speak", (B173, 1.1.1915). The supernatural that gives image or symbol of the future development of humanity. The work of art as a sensual-trasensory representation affects the astral body of man and gives him impulses for the future. How, for example, the people of the Gothic period could receive sensory impressions in their cathedral, from which new ideas were formed. It was only later that a mystical movement such as that of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart could develop. It is the task of art to be the initiator of human development. In doing so, art arises from the inner activity of the artist and inner self - activity is what human future development wants. To think a line, you need a point at the beginning and a point at the end, in between a straight line. In order to think a curvature, which constantly changes its radius, it requires correspondingly, continuous points and bending radii. Even the observer does not think and feel every shape in day-consciousness, his astral and ether body will continuously perceive and feel shapes. If one wants to create a straight line and a right angle, in simple terms it requires an active application of will from a starting point to an end point, a deliberate change of direction and then the will to reach the end point. With curved forms, only a continuous application of a willful change of direction can result in a curvature that changes in curvature. In a cuboid room with right angles and straight walls of minimalist cubic furniture, one will be able to feel unaffected, but also to experience how "cold" it is. Surroundings where beautiful forms, curves and surfaces take place, the feeling may be comfortable, warm, carried away and experienced as a pleasure. If colour perspectives, lines, forms, harmonies, tones and words from the supernatural are represented, then these also have a content-ful, touching, fulfilling effect on those who perceive them. The German painter August Macke once described his paintings as, made for love. That is how it is with art, it is a loving, a delighting of the world, artistically transforming the human world into a beautiful, true living world. It is not only the human right to create the world, it is also a human duty to create the world with sacrifice, love and art. Art is a world beauty force, is creative love, the work of art is a beloved work, artistic activity is a transformation of the joy of love. Creating out of moral intuition, freedom, wanting in thinking, thoughts in acting, love for action (B042, 10.12.1920). Drawing from the supernatural, out of joy in the existing and thus helping the justified gods to build the future world. It is up to us human beings whether we let the world go on like this or whether we rejoice in the immeasurable wonders of world nature and man. All the love that is given to us, that we love anew, will transform the world into a new future humanity, that will then be a "love joy change". "Then, when man thinks, feels and wants what lives in the cosmos in the right way, the gods take it up again and plant it in the world's design, so that man can help to build the whole cosmos, when he gives back in sacrifice and art what the gods reveal to him through the starry worlds. (B161, 8.6.1923) From the divine spiritual we get ideals, moral intuition, spiritual design impulses. These shape the physical human body. Man can grasp these creative powers in a devotion to the Christ, to the spiritual world, and from there become creatively and artistically active. A new art that draws from the supersensible and a new technique that directs the supersensible is created in this way. "The power of imagination is only the natural power of growth metamorphosed into the soul. ... That which makes our arm grow larger from the small is the same power as that which is active in us poetically in imagination, and artistically in imagination in general, in the transformation of the soul. ... In short, the stimulus is created for man to feel in the imagination a divine power that is present in the world. (B161, 20.5.1923). Man is the ideal of the gods, the ideal on which they rule and work, "World is I-wanting spirit-word", (B124, 18th hour). In the human being all the hierarchies of the angels are at work, this ruling work can be brought into artistic representation by people who perceive accordingly. "It rises up into human consciousness from the undergrounds of human organization, the living sum of forces of all that which, as an ethereal human body, places the physical human body as the greatest work of art in the world, and the one who ascends to the real imagination encounters on his way what is the artistic experience. ... Thus the imaginatively discerning person moves into precisely those regions from which the life of the artistically creative person actually springs", (B196, 23.8.1921). The macrocosm and the microcosm as the world's work of art of the spiritual world, gives us everywhere the sight and view of divine spiritual wisdom of artistic creation. „... If you try to live a little into what has been described in the "secret science" as the existence of Saturn, the sun and the moon, then you will discover that the description of the existence of Saturn is indeed based on an architectural mood, the representation of the existence of the sun is based on a sculptural mood and the representation of the existence of the moon is based on a picturesque mood", (B173, 30.12.1914). Art is the representation of the supersensible in the sensual, so it is the search for the divine, the reception of divine spiritual revelations, it is like a devotion that humbly offers the divine the medium for representation. "We modern people must create works of art in which form says more than nature says, but speaks naturally, so that every single line, every single colour becomes like a prayer of nature for the divine. Actually every plant, every tree wants to look up to the divine in a prayer. ... Let us bring out what lives in the lines of colour, in the inner vitality, in the lines of the tree and plant, in cloud and stone, let us imprint it in the building material, let us imprint it in the sculptural material, then nature will speak to the gods through the work of art. We discover the Logos in nature. And a higher nature appears to us in our art than the nature outside, a nature that now in turn lets the Logos flow up to the divine-spiritual world in a very natural way", (B155, 22.2.1923). Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once described the composition of a piece of music as the embodiment of a spiritual essence, expressed in notes. How he already experiences the whole piece as a being in spirit before he can put it into notes. That is what art can be. A service to gods who want to have expressed divine beingness, in the earthly. So it is the higher human perceptive faculties that draw their content from the artistic world of ideas. "Art appears as the surest pledge of our ability to freedom", (Rudolf Steiner, 1904). extract from the book "Mensch"
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