It is unlikely that references to eidetic images will be found in any book on art history.
(A casual examination of a dozen or so such books revealed no references whatsoever.) To demonstrate that this is surprising is one of the aims of this short reflection. It will endeavour to derive a definition or, at least, an understanding of the term and in so doing will be touching on the work of Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Kandinsky and Mondrian. Finally, I will highlight a number of works of art that can be regarded as eidetic and indicate that the term eidetic could be a useful addition to the vocabulary of the art historian or critic.
In this reflection assumption will be made that there is an ineffable ultimate creative Being and that within in each human being there exists a soul.
The term eidetic is included in modern dictionaries, but they merely refer to mental images which doesn’t get us very far and for more specificity we must turn to philosophy and the originator of the term: the philosopher Husserl. Essentially the term is derived from his study of phenomenology,(endeavouring to describe human experience with involving metaphysics) and its function is to focus on what in “my total experiences is (sic) given to me in non-sensory intuition, especially essences”
The concept here of eidetic is expressed, you would probably agree, in rather complex philosophical language and it is necessary at this juncture to relate this concept to the domain of artistic creativity. To begin to develop a line of thought that leads to the eidetic in art it is essential that consideration is given to the purpose of art, the concept of beauty in art, and the spiritual in art
A sensible starting point would be to examine the purpose of art. Whilst Aristotle said: that “Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature’s unrealised ends.” One of the more detailed answers to this question is that of Hegel (1770-1831) who wrote:
…very serious aims have been ascribed to art, and it has been recommended in various ways as a mediator between reason and sensuousness, between inclination and duty, as the reconciler of these elements in the obstinate conflict and repulsion which their collision generates. (Hegel, 1905;43)
Whilst Hegel will be said very much to follow the line of argument that is intended in this essay, it would be unacceptable to omit mention of Winckelman (1717-1768) who some would regard as the father of art history. (Prettejohn,2005;15). There are three elements to Winckelman’s development of the history of art which he saw characterised by first the history of the ancient world (largely derived from the work of Pliny), secondly the political and social circumstances applying at the time the work of art was created and thirdly the demonstration of beauty. (Prettejohn,2005;17). Although beauty provides a link between Hegel and Winckelman, unfortunately Winckelman does not define beauty in general terms, referring instead to its presence in any particular work of art under consideration. It was to be Kant (1724-1804) who endeavoured to express that which is actually happening when we describe a work of art as having beauty – a quality which, in his view, was independent of the object depicted. Judgement, Kant asserts, is entirely subjective, referring to “the feeling of delight experienced by the subject – the viewer or observer – when contemplating an object, and not to the object itself”. (Prettejohn,2005;41) From this it follows that when an object is described as beautiful it does not involve either knowing what kind of thing the object is, or if it exists in reality or in the imagination. Kant insisted that the observer should exhibit in his or her contemplation or observation of the object the characteristic of disinterest. “It is only this disinterested kind of judgement that Kant calls “judgement of taste” and for Kant only objects that can be judged in this way can be called beautiful. (Prettejohn,2005;44
Hegel, whilst acknowledging the contribution of Kant, developed his own concept of beauty from the Platonic idea that all objects of philosophic study should be “apprehended………in goodness, beauty and truth themselves.” (Hegel,1905;76).
In expressing his development of this idea, Hegel wrote:
The philosophic conception of the beautiful, to indicate its true nature at least by anticipation, must contain reconciled within it, the two extremes (particularity and universality) …by combining metaphysical universality with the determinateness of real particularity. Only thus is it apprehended in its truth, in its real and explicit nature. (Hegel,1905;77)
He then argues that the higher truth is spiritual being that has attained a shape adequate to the conception of spirit, which leads to his statement that:
This evolution within the art-spirit has again in its own nature two sides. In the first place the development itself is a spiritual and universal one, in so far as the graduated series of definite conceptions of the world as the definite but comprehensive consciousness of nature, man and God, gives itself artistic shape; and in the second place, this universal development of art is obliged to provide itself with external existence and sensuous form, and definite modes of sensuous art-existence are themselves a totality of necessary distinctions in the realm of art-which are the several arts. (Hegel,1905;175)
It is at this point necessary to introduce another concept into Hegel’s philosophy of aesthetics – the concept of the Idea, being the content of religious, artistic and philosophical experience. Expressed rather dramatically by Knox “Art is the sensuous incarnation of the Idea” (Knox,1958;85). The Idea as art is “an individual configuration of reality whose express function it is to make manifest the Idea- in its appearance” (Knox,1958;85) . The aim of the artist is then to bring out this Idea “in the form of sensuous artistic configuration” which has within it the two components of the spiritual and universal. The resulting object can then not only be “for the understanding alone, but also for the senses and the imagination” (Steinkraus and Schmitz,1980;70 and 71).
From this it follows that a) art work is an end in itself, b) the truth which the art work reveals presents itself to aesthetic perception as the beautiful and c) the aesthetic experience is immediate and intuitive. (Steinkraus and Schmitz,1980;73). Hegel then summarises in a later work (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences(1830)) the meaning of beauty as follows: “Beauty is the immediate unity of nature and spirit in intuition (Anschauung)” (Steinkraus and Schmitz,1980;73).
So far it has been established that the essence of Hegel’s philosophy of art is his concept or theory of beauty, with its emphasis on the elucidation of the spiritual or, Hegel’s terms, the divine in intuition. The importance here of the use of the intuition provides a link forward to Husserl where the function of eidetic reduction “serves to focus on what in my complex total experiences is given to me in non-sensory intuition.”
In endeavouring to express, as simply as possible, the true meaning of eidetic in the context of images it could perhaps be said that the essential quality of an eidetic image is that it evokes a response in the viewer (or listener, in the case of music) of the spirituality, the essential reality of the Ultimate Creative Being being in everything, or, in Hegel’s terms, of the universal in the particular.
It follows from these arguments of Hegel, that the creation of an eidetic image stems from an inherent talent, rather than a skill that could be taught – a consideration that may account, in part, for the difficulty or even antipathy that some artists (e.g. Blake) felt in trying to come to terms with the requirements of the academies.
Having reached the point at which at which a philosophical concept has been expressed in terms of art, and in order to keep this reflection within bounds, the next stage will be to examine the practical way in which this has been (or can be) worked out by a number of artists including those whose emphasis was clearly on the eidetic, artists who could themselves truly be considered “eidetics”.
Two artists at the turn of the previous century had a significant influence on the expression of the spiritual as they moved from along the way to abstraction; they were Kandinsky(1866-1944) – who some would argue was the founder of abstract painting (Becks-Malorny,1994;7) and Mondrian (1872-1944) who is said by Etienne Gilson to have achieved a process of natural creation on the road to total abstraction. (Pattison,1998;51) Both painters, in common with William Blake were keen followers of the philosophy of Theosophy and both wrote on the subject of the spiritual in art – Kandinsky rather more lucidly than Mondrian.
Theosophy was an ancient philosophy which endeavoured to relate Eastern and Western religions, science and philosophy. Whilst Theosophy had its origins in the teaching of Ammonius of Alexandria (160-242CE) as a school whose central tenet was as just described, later the term theosophy became applied to the concept of “a higher wisdom concerning the divine and spiritual matters achieved at least in part by mystical experience” (Mautner,2000;563b) Following the writings of Bohme and Swedenborg, Theosophy was revived by Helena Blavatsky who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. The objectives of the Society can be summarised succinctly as: 1. To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, gender, caste or colour. 2. To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science. 3. To investigate the unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in Mankind. (Blotkamp,1994;35)
Kandinsky’s book Concerning the Spiritual in Art was published in 1914. Writing at a time of burgeoning materialism and the “death of God” philosophy of Nietzsche, Kandinsky was concerned to write a counterbalancing view point. “Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul, when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and the gulf of darkness reality.” (Kandinsky,1977;2) He then takes two contrasting views of the artist – Schumann’s: “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts-such is the duty of the artist” and Tolstoy’s: “an artist is a man who can paint and draw everything.” – and with a wry jibe at a typical visitor in an art gallery, superficially describing paintings as “nice” he then emphasises the significance of the artist as defined by Schumann:
The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forward and upwards. This movement is the movement of experience. It may take different forms, but it holds at bottom to the same inner thought and purpose.
Kandinsky then goes on:
Veiled in obscurity are the causes of this need to move ever upwards and forwards by the sweat of the brow, through sufferings and fears. When one stage has been accomplished, and many evil stones cleared from the road, some unseen and wicked hand scatters new obstacles in the way, so that the path often seems blocked and totally obliterated. But there never fails to come to the rescue some human being, like ourselves in everything except that he has in him a secret power of vision.
I wonder how many artists have at times been in need of that special human being
That special human being he describes is, I would argue, an eidetic. Kandinsky does not totally deride the “aimless, materialistic” art of Tolstoy, – the few exceptions, believers in the doctrine of ‘art for art’s sake’ serve a higher ideal, but ultimately one which is a useless waste of their strength. “External beauty is one element of a spiritual atmosphere. But beyond this positive fact (that which is beautiful is good) it has the weakness of a talent not used to the full. (The word talent is employed in the biblical sense.)” (Kandinsky,1977;4)
After highlighting the work of the Impressionists whose aim was “to put on canvas the whole glitter and brilliance of nature”, Kandinsky wrote of Cezanne that “he raised still life to such a point that it ceased to be inanimate. He painted these things as he painted human beings, because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything”. (Kandinsky.1977;17) Two other artists he lauds are Picasso and Matisse – “In their pursuit of the same supreme end Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing colour and Picasso form.” (Kandinsky,1977;18) The section on the psychological working of colour concludes with the sentence “It is evident therefore that colour harmony must rest only on a corresponding vibration in the human soul; and that this is one of the guiding principles of the inner need.” (Kandinsky1977;26)
This inner need is defined by Kandinsky as built up of three mystical elements: “(1) Every artist, as a creator, has something in him which calls for expression (this is the element of personality). (2) Every artist, as a child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age (this is the element of style). (3) Every artist, as a servant of art, has to help the cause of art (this is the element of pure artistry, which is constant in all ages and among all nationalities). A full understanding of the first two elements is necessary for a realisation of the third.” (Kandinsky,1977;34) He then highlights a number of practical details regarding colour (e.g. yellow – warm and ex-centric, blue cold and concentric, the former is bodily i.e. movement towards the observer, the latter is spiritual i.e. movement away from the observer) and completes this major work with articles on theory, and art and artists. He concludes with two aphorisms:
“The artist must have some thing to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning” and “That is beautiful which is produced by inner need, which springs from the soul”, and emphasises the triple responsibility of the artist: “1) He must repay the talent which he has; 2) his deeds, feelings and thoughts, as those of every man, create a spiritual atmosphere which is either pure or poisonous. 3) The deeds and thoughts are materials for his creations, which themselves exercise influence on the spiritual atmosphere.” (Kandinsky,1977;54-5)
Turning now to Mondrian, there is a different approach to abstraction. As Caral Blotkamp expressed it,
“For Kandinsky (abstraction) was a matter of liberating the expressive form: he dreamt of a new, articulated system of signs whereby it would be possible to express feelings, or other communications of an individual nature, without reference to visible reality. Mondrian, by contrast, abstracted the visual phenomena until he felt he had found the common denominators that formed the essence of reality, the true reality behind the illusions that make up the visible world.” (Blotkamp,1994;94)
This is, of course, a comparison of how they worked; the similarity is in that which they were endeavouring to portray. Piet Mondrian was born into a Christian household and was influenced by fellow Christian Dutchman, Van Gogh and shared an exhibition with him in 1905.
His spiritual quest was developed initially by his Christian upbringing and then by theosophy, joining the Theosophical Society in 1909. This quest was to reach a culmination with the publication of a theoretical paper entitled Neo-Plasticism in Painting (Neo-Plasticism was Mondrian’s word for Abstraction) in 1918, published as a book in 1920. This paper was controversial inasmuch as it placed painting at the top of the hierarchy of the arts (displacing architecture, or, perhaps, rhetoric) and endeavoured to relate all of the arts much in the way that theosophy related philosophy, the religions and science. The work is very complex, was not widely understood at the time of its publication and is certainly beyond the scope of this short paper. However, it shows a parallel with Kandinsky’s (rather more successful) intention to write about the way in which “the essence of reality, the true reality behind the illusions that make up the visible world” could be portrayed.
Many of Mondrian’s early letters have been lost but from the Collected Writings we have a number of important statements, giving some insight into Mondrian’s thought.
For example, he makes a clear distinction between emotion and spirit: “Emotion is more outward than spirit. Spirit constructs, composes; emotion expresses mood and the like. Spirit constructs most purely, with the simplest line and most basic colour” (Riley quoting Mondrian,1997;12)
Mondrian writes of the intended effect of his images: “ ‘Unity, in its most profound essence, radiates; it is. The radiation of unity’s being wrecks itself upon the physical… The ray is the symbol of radiation (the inward).’ Unity is not only dictated by the visual means of line, colour and composition. Much more important is the radiation emanating from the image itself, making visible the inner self. Mondrian is speaking here of the soft, unceasing radiation of the image that in Red Tree was responsible for the ‘unweaving of the soul’.” (Riley,1997;30) Mondrian was probably influenced more by nature than Kandinsky but both were clearly eidetic and aiming always to achieve that metaphysical universality combined with the determinateness of real particularity. As Brigit Riley concludes in her essay on Mondrian:-
“It can be taken as a proof of Mondrian’s rigorous and somewhat antiquated effort to achieve the ‘equilibrium of the universal and the particular’ that his paintings have not been rendered obsolete by history. However frail and modest their physical appearance may be, they shine amongst the best works of this century (20th) with a unique vitality and mysterious timelessness.” (Riley,1997;18)
Before completing this essay it would seem logical to highlight a few images from the two artists that I have discussed that are regarded as eidetic, i.e. the eidetic is the predominant component in their work.
Starting with Kandinsky, this artist was throughout his career aiming to divine the “inner life
The Blue Rider was an important theme within Kandinsky’s work and it was repeated a number of times being used as the cover for his Blaue Reiter Almanac, and was the name of a partnership formed with Franz Marc. The Blue Rider was representative of a virtuous knight, possibly St.George, conveying the idea of the triumph of good over evil. The formation of this partnership and the 1911 exhibition marks a significant point in Kandinsky’s road to total abstraction. Kandinsky’s raison d’être was to portray the inner life and almost all of his images could be described as eidetic – on his Improvisation 30 (cannons) 1913, he had this to say: “The designation ‘Cannons’ …is not to be conceived as indicating the ‘contents’ of the picture. These contents are indeed what the spectator lives, or feels, while under the effect of the form and colour combinations of the picture”. In his last (purely abstract) work – Tempered Elan, 1944 – painted just before he died, the predominant colour is red, of which Kandinsky had written:-
“Red is a limitless, characteristically warm colour, with the inner effect of a highly lively living turbulent colour …. reveal(ing), for all its energy and intensity, a powerful note of immense, almost purposeful strength. In this burning, glowing character……we find, so to speak, a kind of masculine maturity.”
(Becks-Malorny quoting Kandinsky,1994;184)
Mondrian’s route to abstraction retains a link to nature and a number of very significant images is to be found on that path. The first is Sheepfold in the Evening which was painted in 1906. Israel Querido in describing the significance of this work said that it is in these evening landscapes Mondrian was ‘able to “unweave the soul”, meaning that the paintings emanated a contemplative, inwardly orientated effect’. . The palette in this particular picture is subdued and may possibly owe its origin to the influence of Picasso on Mondrian. This was an early work and shows little of the abstraction that was to come later, but is nonetheless endeavouring to show an inner meaning through the depiction of quiet, extensive space. The next chosen image is Mill in Sunlight, painted in 1908 and which eventually evolved via Red Tree into Red Mill (1910-11). Mill in Sunlight was one of the first of Mondrian’s painting to achieve critical acclaim, being regarded as “the pinnacle of Luminism”, (the movement that searched for different light and mood through the dissection of colours and a quick direct touch). In this particular example, the heat almost shimmers off the page, and it is regarded as “less an impression of a moment than a bearer of everlasting meaning”. Evolution (1910-11) was a very significant work inasmuch as it marked a very clear association with Theosophy and was a further step along the way to abstraction. It received a mixed response, with the painting itself drawing criticism (pictorial deficiencies noted by Riley (Rilet,1997;10)), as well as acclaim.
Robert Welsh explains (Blotkamp,1994;54) that this triptych portrays what theosophical doctrine “saw as the development by which Man is transported from a lower, material state to a state of spiritualization and insight.” Without going into detail, the use of triangles pointing in different directions represents symbols of theosophy and the raising of the central panel above that of the two side-pieces highlights the culmination of the theosophical development and the achievement of redemption. The crowning glory of Mondrian’s work is his Composition with Yellow Lines, which in the words of Janssen, creates with contrasting white and yellow, a “clarity that scintillates with the same qualities as a clear sparkling sky in the early morning. After a career of almost 50 years, in Composition with Yellow Lines Mondrian finally brought about the light that had concerned him as a painter throughout his entire life.” (Janssen writing in Riley,1997;33)
By their avowed intent and by their corpus the eidetic component is the strongest element in the whole of Kandinsky’s and Mondrian’s creative output.
This reflection begun by describing the meaning of the word eidetic. Essentially the term is derived from Husserl’s study of phenomenology, and its function is to focus on what in “my total experiences is (sic) given to me in non-sensory intuition, especially essences”. Having expressed the meaning of the term in philosophical language, its meaning when specifically applied to art was examined, looking in particular at the work of Hegel. The writing and artistic corpus of Kandinsky and Mondrian was then discussed highlighting both of their aims to bring out the inner need. This inner need is built up of three mystical elements viz: Every artist has something in him which calls for expression, Every artist is impelled to express the spirit of his age and Every artist has to help the cause of art which is the element of pure artistry.
The term eidetic is one that could be applied to so many images of all true artists, other than those whose aim is solely to highlight socio-political injustices or to illustrate historical events, that it is indeed surprising that it has not become established in the everyday language of the art historian.
(References can be supplied if anyone would like to investigate these themes in more detail.)
Dr David Greenwood. D.greenwood@uwtsd.ac.uk June 2022
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