Von Monet zu Picasso, Part I

Translated by Patrick Healy, Terry Mc Carthy and John Conolly.

This is a working translation of the theoretical part of Max Raphael's Von Monet zu Picasso (1913), pp. 8-50. It has been transcribed from the orginal typescript by Jules Schoonman. Handwritten corrections and comments on the typescript have been made visible here while the document is being reviewed. The translation is a work in progress and contributions are welcome. In the next stage, footnotes will be added based on the Suhrkamp Werkausgabe of Von Monet zu Picasso (1989) together with new illustrations.

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Among all the puzzles which the human mind has tried to solve, the eternally provocative problem of art has a special place. It is not just a problem of subject matter but at the same time the question of the very possibility of the problem of the subject matter, if we allow that the posing of a problem always points beyond the immediate issue involved. So, as soon as we start pondering the essence of art, we are inevitably confronted with the Sphinx question of the creative. Perhaps we would have got closer to the puzzle if we hadn't always asked, "What is art and how does it work?" but rather “How does art come into being and what is the meaning of its becoming?” By attempting to tie down art, by mixing it with non—artistic things like nature, beauty, abstraction, metaphysics, one eliminates any possibility of an adequate understanding of the matter. The other way, however, to find the meaning of art from its becoming, illustrates the fundamental fact that man is born with a creative drive which, overflowing in every direction, is constantly seeking ways of expressing itself. The abstract way of expression by concepts, and the concrete way through plastic forms and the ways of architecture and music, are as much part of the drive as the ways of action and life itself.

By presuming that there is a unified creative drive in all expression, not just of the spirit but of life itself, we are already in conflict with one of the accepted tenets of epistemology. The question on which Kant based his Aesthetic was: ‘What differentiates the direction of spirit that is engaged in the production of an art work from the other directions of the spirit which seek to produce science and morality?‘. Here he divided consciousness into three different activitiescapacities, giving each activity its own laws and subject matter. The result of this systematic isolation was that heone took from art every possibility of objectivization which he thought should be conferred solely on science. Kant sums it up thus:

No objective principle of taste is possible.

His attempts, in spite of this, to save art from the arbitrariness of the subjective and make it a concern of science proved to be a long and thoroughly unsuccessful task. His nation of poets and thinkers adhere, even to this day, to his original assertion: "Art is a Question of taste.“ It is the untenability of this result which indicates that the starting point was mistaken. The idea of a unified creative drive erases all differentiations. But with this division of consciousness into three basic constitutive, a priori drives: thinking, feeling, willing — science, action, art — on the one hand one had to ascribe to religion some secondary derived position, and on the other hand it was not possible to conceal that these independent modes of consciousness were, in fact, interlinked, and what was more, the artistic mode was quite a recent invention. So additional modes of consciousness couldn't be ruled out, and they became more and more probable when it was realized that the differentiation lay neither in the subject matter nor in the particular mode of consciousness itself, but rather in the area of its expression and its materials. Then it was evident that this mode of consciousness didn't determine itself in isolation, but was rather a particular ordered combination of all the modes of consciousness, and it was this which determined the subject matter. The starting point is always the totality of the world, only the area of realization is differentiated. But it is in the formal laws where this point differs most obviously [from that of Kant, ed.] Because no longer is it a question of epistemological principles and the laws of valid thought, but rather a question of the principles functioning within the epistemological drive itself, the sole principles according to which work can be produced and achieve the ultimate meaning (of this drive). Even the thought that a logically correct judgement is often quite irrelevant, or that a valid combination of correct judgements still doesn't produce an art work should show that behind these epistemological principles and laws of logic our consciousness is undergoing a process that is far broader and that embraces these laws within itself. This process is the creative process which acting according to its own laws evenpractically defines those other laws (of logic and epistemology).

It is true that epistemology, up to now, has identified a force working within art to unite the worlds of nature and morality. However, what has always been lacking is the clear perception that it is the same creative drive which gives rise to all expressions of the spirit and life. Furthermore, this unity is at the same time the basis for the homogeneity as well as the basis for the total differentiation of each individual form of expression. For, precisely because the individual art form was able to loose itself from the original flux, it is shown to be pure in itself, that means irreplaceable by any other. This self—determination of each art form that our classical artists subscribed to, cannot overstep the limits laid down by the unity of the functioning of the creative drive. In making this (the creative drive) the object of our inquiry (to show that it is capable of an objectivisation that excludes all subjectivity) we will sketch it out in general terms and go into detail only in regard to painting, making no attempt to point to the corresponding forms in the other arts and sciences. These correspondences have already been demonstrated by, to take just one example, Leonardo da Vinci. when he wrote the headline:

The painter gives gradations to the things that present themselves to his eyes just as a musician gives a scale to the notes that present themselves to his ears.

He then goes on to write:

Although everything that presents itself to the eye is part of a gradual, unbroken, continuum where each object merges into the next, that no more stops me from applying my rule (of distances) of 20 to 20 ells than the musician might neglect putting his notes into bars and staves (even though all his notes really blend into each other) and calling them primo, secundo, terzo, quattro, quinto, and hence giving names to each step upwards or downwards of the melody... And if you claim that music is composed out of a multitude of relationships, I would say that I have used exactly the same relationships in my painting, as you will see.

This unified creative drive is pure and originates in itself. Yet because it makes use of objects to realize itself this doesn't mean it is an imitation or any kind of reaction, it comes into being before any process of abstraction or intuition. The fact that it reveals itself to subjects, as the expression of a subject, doesn't come from a need to function or to mediate itself. Its material doesn't bring it down to the level of a handicraft, and when it incorporates practical ends within itself, these do not exhaust it. To define it would be to limit the means of expression which are just part of its content. One could say that the greater the obstacles posed by the (material) means of expression, the stronger the creative drive becomes. In its activity it retains its purity and originality and hence is infinite and teleological.

That it is infinite can be shown from the lack of a starting point. For whether the creative/artistic vocation comes suddenly or, gradually into consciousness, it remains inexplicable. And since it can neither be forced and the gift cannot be aroused by learning, we must conclude that the artist is born with the ability to create just as man is born with the ability to walk, just as Goethe maintained that the Poet brought his vision with him into the world at birth. We also find this same lack of a starting point in each individual conception. Matisse said to me once that he played around with the same things for weeks and months on end until they suddenly forced him to create, and then with an unstoppable energy. Artists say that they hear the rhythm before the text, see a complex of lines before the figure. This corresponds to the energy of the calling the artist feels before he knows which art form he is going to operate in (and the possibility of such a doubt merely proves the unity of the function which lies behind all the other various different forms.)

The active force to create is unrelenting. What is maintained of Marees and Cézanne that they never, never, allowed their eyes or brain to relax can be taken as valid for all artists. And in this endless activity the same contents appear to return again and again. At least Poussin attempted to divide up the various mental phenomena that preoccupied him according to the then familiar modes of Greek music. His biographer Felibien writes:

Since the modes of Ancients were compositions of various things, it can be seen that from all the variety and difference which occur in the juxtaposition of these things there are born a certain number of differing modes made up of diverse parts assembled in due proportion which can excite different passions in the spirit. It was from this that the ancients attributed to each mode a particular property according to which they could recognize the nature of these effects to which it was capable of giving. For example, the effect of the Dorian mode was heavy, serious sentiments, or the vehement passions of the Phrygian mode; the Lydian had everything which was sweet, pleasing and agreeable, or the Ionic which was conducive to the Bacchanals, feasts and dances. And it was by the imitation of the painters, poets and musicians of antiquity that he arrived at this particular idea; what one should see in his paintings is that according to the different subjects with which he is dealing, not only is he trying to represent on the faces of his figures various passions which conform to what they are doing, but one should also have the same passions aroused in one's own mind, an observer of the picture.

This description clearly shows that throughout his creative life the same sort of subject matter kept returning be it in the same or in completely different expressive forms and materials. The simple fact of this constant return (of subject matter) means the task facing the creative drive is an endless one - to plot the periodicity of this “return.”

The ending, even more than the beginning and the duration, is to be sought in infinity; art and finality are mutually contradictory. If you ask an artist, 'When and how do you know that your painting is finished?' he will answer you, if he is really a creative artist, with an ironic laugh. It is a constant process of starting again from the beginning. Granted if art were just imitation of nature, mediation of self, or some kind of stylization or conscious reconstruction, it would have to have an end. But even the broadest totalization still leaves us with the feeling that one has only grasped a small fragment after all. One is familiar with the saying of the Japanese painter — afterwards used by Hofmannsthal in his 'Death of Titian' — that it was not until he was ninety years old that he even started to realize what one can create. But it is in the aim it sets itself that the infinitude of the creative drive is most clearly revealed. The relative finality of this essentially infinite will consists in the creation of an organism which carries within itself all the conditions necessary for its own life: its own space, its own time, its own causality. Its essence is, like that of every other organism, infinite connectedness. This aim which shows us the true meaning of art lies completely beyond the real world in an intended world - in a world that has to be intended before it is created.

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Having made this discovery it is now irrelevant whether these conditions are realised in every single painting, since not every painting is art and not all art is absolute creation. Here we can observe a gradual progression in the activity of the creative drive that leads to this absolute creationcreative drive. On the other hand. we must not forget that the creative drive, which we have identified as an original drive, lies so deeply rooted in every man that its reflection shines through every conceivable perspective one can take on the world. Here epistemology comes to our aid by telling us that the world is never given to us in itself, but always conditioned by our perception of it, so that everything we see or know is already a kind of creation. Psychological experimentation has established a fixed series of possible relations between subject and object, and Baerivald has isolated the following types:

1. The descriptive type
   1. Passive
   2. Conservative
2. The spontaneous type - characteristics: tendency to put things in their overall context, to make comparisons, to theorize about things not exactly similar, to exercise critique and finally, to emphasize relationship with its own person.
3. The harmonious type - a synthesis of the conservative and spontaneous types.

This typology can easily be used as an imaginative framework, and as such we can apply the results of experimental psychology, after a few variations, to the completely different level of expression of the creative drive. The gulf between this and the more simple perspective can be filled in later.

The creative drive begins its activity by simply establishing a fact. This is the lowest level, the naturalism of creation. However, let this not be confused with sheer imitation. Every imitation theory suffers epistemological impossibilities because the world is never simply given, but always has to be discovered by and for the special medium of art (or science.) All imitation theory is meaningless because it only contains the negative concept of duplication. hence shifting the problem away from art and inevitably, into the realm of metaphysics or theology. Even the first level of Art is true creation. This is seen, however, to be merely a sensation arising from a relation between subject and object. Functioning as subject is the personality, the ego-individual made up basicallysubstitution in typescript of passive organs of perception; the object is any chance appearance. And here it makes no essential difference in the generation of the sensation whether the object belongs to the physical or the mental world. One should be unequivocal about this; an experience in the mental world is just as real as an experience in the world of objects. As such, it cannot be a constitutive principle of artistic creation any more than the external world of being can, and its simple reproduction is just as much creative naturalism as the reproduction of the outside world. In fact, the distinction should be of no importance to the artist, since

Nothing is inside, nothing is outside, what is not inside is not outside.

What is more important is that at this level of creation the sensation doesn't stay tied up in itself, but should find a link with a kind of totality which, because of its material make—up, we will call the cosmic totality, and as such it is either moody or atmosphericcheck corrections in typescript. The main characteristic of this level of creation is that the creative drive remains with the perception of the simple fact and cannot free itself from it. Because of a lack of content it remains in the material of the medium and its activity is a sharpening of perception and a refinement of analysis of the object that is to be described. Even if this enrichment is accompanied by a simplification. the relations of unity and plurality never break free from the object.

Here it is necessary to differentiate between, on the one hand, the type of art which, because of a minimum of content never arrives at realization and, on the other hand, the type of art with which a maximum of content can no longer be realized. Hegel has a satisfactory explanation for this - his definition of Romantic art: Romantic art signifies a transcendence by art of itself into the very form of art, a dissolution of aesthetic form in the face of absolute content, whose representation surpasses the limits of aesthetic expression. For two completely different reasons and with totally different contents, the two types of art still retain one thing in common: they remain fixed to the material of (their particular) medium.question mark in typescript

If, on this level of artistic creation, the activity of the creative drive threatened to become mere reaction, then, on the second level quite the opposite applies: all emphasis is laid on the subject and into the place of brute imitation drifts the ghost of formalism. Creation is achieved by linking, clarifying and combining the relations established by the subject. The object that is sought must, of course, be lifted out of the chaos of individual appearances, out of the accidental abandonment of things in space and time.question mark in typescript One is looking only for what is stable, for the essence, the universal. And whether it is the static universal - the essence of being — that one is looking for or the dynamic universal — the essence of becoming — the question always remains the same: 'How has this essence been defined?'. The creative process, which transforms what is given into a conceived, perceived essence, may try to achieve its aims either by elimination and exclusion or by concentration and compilation, but it must always tacitly admit to one governing principle according to which the transformations were made. And insofar as this principle is not absolute creation then it must be brought in from the outside. The power to distinguishquestion mark in typescript between what is essential and what is non—essential is conferred either on the arbitrary nature of the subject, or on some metaphysical necessity or on a nature—teleological aim. But in doing so the creative drive has given up all its own rights. Let us not forget that even Dürer, who certainly strove harder than anyone else to find the ideal beauty of man, finally arrived at the conclusion that such an ideal was not to be found. And this was because he made the wrong starting point, when he mistakenly located absolute creation in the absolute concept of the thing, the form in the norm. This norm, along with the abstract concept, is always destined to kill off, in all its vivacity, the very infinitude that it seeks to portray, to make finite, so that the only type of relations that can be salvaged from it are constructive, not organic relations. At this level of creation there always occurs the significant tendency of gaining knowledge about things, even if this knowledge carries with it the temptation of being led astray into promoting theory as an end in itself, rather than its proper function as a means to an end. But assubstitution illegible the creative drive progressively distances itself from the immediacy of objects, it also shedssubstitution illegible all the expressive forms that are reliant only on the subject and hence rids substitution illegible itself of the curse of not being able to realize itself properly. But at the level of creation where the arbitrariness of the subject is still confined by the objects it confronts, the only relation possible is that set up by the subject, and however free one becomes in dealing with the medium, one is still shackled to the whims of the subject.

We could easily flesh out our descriptions of these two levels of creation by going into their contents and their results, since it seems clear that there is a constant type of correlation between the content and the degree of creative innovation. However it will have to suffice to do this only for the third stage, the stage of absolute creation. According to the psychological model, this third stage should be the harmonious blending of the first two. How then is this to be construedhighlighted in typescript, since at each level the subject has its own bond with a particular object? By positing transcendent being the horizon of being is completely exhausted and neither the real subject nor the object is capable of going any further. However, all Being is inextricably linked to itself in a causal relation, the world of objects to the whole realm of physical existence, the mental experience to all other experiencessubstitution illegible, the essence, the law, to God or the individual case, since that is merely a transformation of the law. But according to our presupposition the world of art is characterized precisely by containing within itself all the conditions ofand possibilities of its own existence, and has broken offunterbrochen direct correspondence with reality. As long as any expression remains tied to reality, is aimed at reality, then its purity is threatened and is in theory replaceable by any other forms of expression. This is the reason for the constant vacillation between naturalism, photography and experience, between idealism, mysticism, and philosophy, between dillentantism and the dandy. This ultimate replaceability however contradicts the ideal of originality and purity proper to the creative drive. So the whole world of being, the reality of the object, subject and material becomes a fabric through which the creative drive must penetrate and hence free itself. It must be plucked out of the world of being and into the world of obligation of valuesof validity. Only when all emphasis is focused on the subject, when the creative drive no longer simply reproduces and orders reality but actually posits itself as a function of its own immanent laws, only when the sensation of locality as time, space and causality is no longer experienced or felt as necessary but can rather be recreated as a new world in itself on the basis of the very laws of becoming of its objects, only when experience is no longer of particularity nor generality but of totality, transferred from the level of psychology to a totally different level where it can find its ultimate meaning and logically consistent form of expression, only then has the creative drive reached the final highest stage of creation, which because of the human condition can only ever remain an infinite aim.

With this construction of the pure creative drive I wouldn't pretend to have included every type of creation. There is also a huge number of impure expressive forms. They are all characterized by an overemphasis on one particular aspect of the art and hence are diverted from any true formalization. In this category belongs, above all, Symbolism and all other types of literary spiritualizations which maintain that an educative work of artsubstitution illegible can communicate thoughts and feelings in some way other than through the pure formalization proper to itself. But not only the violation of the purity of the medium, but also the spiritualization, which can only have a limited meaning that can be quickly comprehended, goes to show that there is no question of this being either creative or artistic. To this category as well belongs formalism, which denies the identity of form and content, and by starting With the apriora form, lapses helplessly into a gulf of arbitrariness. A structured form that is then supposed to cram in some content is a lifeless schema and which. simply by virtue of its existence independently from its content, has absolutely nothing to do with any form of art or creation.A pre-existing form that is then supposed to cram in some content is a lifeless schema which, simply by virtue of its existence independently of and prior to its content, has absolutely nothing to do with any form of art, which is the product of creation.

A methodical principle whose character is not conditioned by the particularity of its object, is equally sterile, since it issubstitution illegible totally arbitrary.

In this category belongs also all types of academic art: the scholastic copyists, the classicists, the syncretists, the simply decorative and monumental; stylization, caricature and improvisation.

The pure creative drive gives us three forms of expression, of which each made the claim to be art. The first was the result of a subject—object relation in which each foundsubstitution illegible the other, and the description of the resulting sensation was art. At the second level the subject sought an essence for which it possessed no real designation and which forced it, if it itself wanted to legitimate its own claims and rights to choice and evaluation, to grasp beyond itself into the transcendental. Between these two stages and the third stage we said there was an abyss, which is generally described as the difference between talent and genius, or more precisely as the difference between preaching and educating. For the preacher everything becomes part of his ego—rhythm and, in spite of the priority of the object, passivity des Gehaltes reigns overall. But for the educator everything is activity and the dissolutionsubstitution illegible of the subject—matter. If we wanted to illustrate the difference graphically, the first two levels would have to be construed as two-dimensional discs, the third however, as a three-dimensional sphere. We saw, at this level, there is no longer an accidental subject, but rather the radiation of the functions of consciousness. and that these rays are no longer confronted by an undefined, exisiting object, but rather by the very laws of becoming of objects. Where they meetsubstitution illegible the sphere of a new world is created which contains within itself the whole nexus of its own relations. Therefore, what I have been calling the 'creative drive‘ is obviously just movement, function. And hence our task is clear; first we will attempt to clarify for ourselves the functions of consciousness, then the laws of the becoming of objects, and finally we will pose the fundamental question, what laws control the movement of the two towards each other, which produces that new sphere of the world of art?

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Consciousness or the thinking subject is based on a continual and endless activity and hence on the priority of the will. In its duration, this has a tendency towards the anti—thetical.

The most fundamental essence of the subject is precisely this interval relationsinternal relation between its own acts and their opposites. Every act of will is a refusal of not willing, affirmation would be meaningless if there were no negation, and negation attempts to exclude affirmation; briefly, the input of the will in experience necessarily demands its own opposite and it is in the decision between opposites that the meaning of the subjective act of consciousnesshighlighted in typescript resides.

It is in this decision thatillegible addition the third attribute of consciousness, theits will, realizesto realize itself. The positing of reality entails nothing new or even different, since the simple movement of consciousness would remain, as a function, completely in a vacuum, indeed it would neither come to be nor persist in existence, without positing an object. The reality of the artist, as shown up by the creative drive consciousness—substructure, can be more clearly defined. For the majority of people, everything that they perceive, whether from the outside or from inside, is made up of a mixture of memories, feelings and intentions; so that the

object is constantly being compared with some other basically unrelated sensation.

It is impure and falsified, and it is never independent, but always an unoriginal mixture of associated feelings, opinions and conventions. The artist on the contrary grasps the reality (both inner and outer) in its original dimensions and forms and in the original immediacy of its temporal duration. The fact that reality as such is alive for the artist means that he receives a far larger amount of stimulii to which he reacts in his own, novel way, and hence has a greater, more personal grip on experience and the world.

The sum total of my worth is that I am a man for whom the visible world exists.

But even what the artist sees is different from the optical experience of the lay person. No longer bound to the single, discrete thing he constantly sees connections, relations, proportions. This totalizing view means that space is alive for him, with forms moving in all dimensions; the painter's eye sees them as bearers of space bringing it to life and creating it.

In speaking of the self—positing subject's will to realize itself we have given the impression that it was a question of perceiving a world existing independently of us. Here we see the abyss that exists between the self—positing subject on the one hand, for whom subject and object are still one, and on the other hand the observing objectsubject, in whom dualism is set up between the two. On the basis of this new subject — no longer striving and willing, but observing, no longer self—positing but psychological - there develops from the infinite activity of the will a demand for the totality of the forces of the soul. Since this totality is not the product of mutually exclusive elements, but is, rather, due to their common origin in the self—positing subject, an inner unity of forces, so the demand for totality can also be seen as a demand for harmony among these forces.

To satisfy this demand the psychologically observing subject must go beyond its own individual contents and positin Einklang setzen a social and religious ego alongside its own individual ego. Formerly the social ego was regarded as a limitation insofar as it was seen as productive. However, today we find these once glorious theories of Taine quite boring, since they managed, by a remarkable feat of absentmindedness, merely to absolutize environmental influences. Even in the Middle Ages, which burdened its artists like no other epoch in history with regulations, conventions, bizarre materials and instructive requirementshighlighted in typescript, the respective limits of responsibility were clearly delineated. “The artist is responsible only for his Art, instruction is the task of the Church Fathers," said the Council of Nicaea in a judgement which was adhered to throughout the Middle Ages. For the true artist all obstacles, chains and addition illegibleobstructions — resulting from the literary content of legends, from the preordained number of characters, from the unchangeable designs of their emblems and even their clothing and all the other obtrusiveunumgänglich hinderances - these were all just a spur to the creative drive which seemed to grow stronger in direct proportion to the number of difficulties by which it was confronted. And, just as in the glorious times of Pericles, the others produced art of far lesser value.

The social can, however, also be shown to expand the ego by giving it larger and generallysubstitution illegible more important matters to work on. The individual's existence is unique and tied up in itself and its life progresses according to its own laws. But as soon as the psychic subject tries to attain the totality of its forces it is forced out beyond the individual to the other, theat masses of others which operate according to quite different needs and histories from those of the individual or even the largest possible number of individuals. But because of the totality and harmony of his own psychic forces the artist possesses a particularly strong individuality, and in his constant attempts to attain this harmony he is a born enemy of that aspect of the social which brings with it a levelling of differences or alienation. However, he can never perfect the totality without taking on the social and bringing it into harmony with his own life. Hence the groundswell of his being, simultaneously driving him into and out of himself. World history provides us with many striking examples of this tragic conflict of the creative person, like St. Francis and his order, to give but one example. The tension cannot be overcome, either by complete individualization or by complete socialization. In both cases the result would be paltry banality. The only solution lies in the harmonization of the two aspects, individual and social, in the experience of humanity, in the cry: this kiss of the whole world!

The tendency to the totalization of his powers also drives the artist beyond himself to God, from the finite individual to the infinite. And again, the artist is an individual who must be particularly sensitive to the finite. In looking at the world as a future source of order, he loses in the act of creating this order too much of the materiality of things and even of the things themselves.

Are not all beautiful things created by renunciation? [Degas]

His love which is deeper than his hate, and his yearning for necessity that is greater than even his love, gravitates to God as the primeval womb from whom all things come and in whom they all once reposed. And then, does not his own work, in all its puzzling forms, come somehow from God? And how would his existence be possible without that unshakeable fatalism?

Yet, the ways in which the religious and artistic persons overcome these tensions are different. The religious person posits God as origin, as Father. As such he is transcendental Being, but all the same potentially attainable. The artist on the other hand sees the world as a future source of order and God as the result, as the Son. This source of order will be found in this world, not the next, and is composed, if not of real forces, then certainly not of supernatural forces, and it has its aim in a project to be accomplished in this world. Of course this aim is just a stopgap for the basically irreducible infinitude of the creative drive. The abyss between these two approaches is unbridgeable. One could put it this way: if God did not create the world then there would be no need for artists to put it in order. And if the artist could ever order the world in all its infinitude, then there would be no need for God as Creator. Where, as in the case of Michelangelo, an attempt was made to bridge the gap, this is always the result of scepticism about the absolute form of the creative drive, and it leads inevitably into the inevitably into the religious domain. As soon as the artist concedes to a God as Creator of the world, then he gives up his right to be like God.By surrendering to God as the creator of the world, the artist gives up his right to be like God. As a religious person he will be unproductive.

The complete antinomy remains; the finite ego, seeking beyond itself for the infinite cannot, as a creative ego, find it in the infinitude of the religious absolute. Even here the tension cannot be overcome by simply ignoring one of the two contrasting sides, but only by dissolving the two into a third, new form: “To find the liberating perfection of life in life itself, to create the absolute in the form of the finite.“

Now that we have seen how those parts of the subject that go beyond the purely individual have the tendency to acquire for themselves new content and form by dissolving productive tensions, which lie completely beyond normal reality, we must now investigate the pure expressions of individuality, the states of the ego in the narrower sense. Here we must abstain from attempting to portray the whole set of contents because of their large variety — a variety which is only held together by the demand for totality and harmony and by the condition that these contents never become an end in themselves but remain a means for the creative drive. The way forward prescribed by this demand for totality is best explained by reference to the function of those organs which join the psychological subject with the separate world of objects. Hence we mustn't forget that it was this very same link within the self—positing subject that we started our inquiry, and that we are being imprecise if we don't speak of the creation of the artistic world through the coming together of objects formed by the functions of consciousness and subjects formed by the laws of the becoming of objects. This separation of perception and action is an artificial one, but necessary for our explanation. This priority of the will evenright at the outset protects us from all perception theories in general and sensualism in particular. Art can no longer be the result of the eye as a single sense or of tastes as a single faculty, but must be contributed to by all the organs under the tutelage of the will.

We cannot characterize the will in terms of psychology, but from our epistemological premiss as movement.

What we‘re trying to introduce here as the consciousness of movement is... the very direction and tendency forwards into the future. It is not the consciousness of thought, which progresses by representation from one element to the next and in this progression manages to achieve, eventuallyat last, the unity of all the elements with the representations and with the unity of thought under the concept. What we are concerned with is another type of progression, which starting from A to go over to B, actually produces this B in the act of crossing over... But this act of production is, in fact, creation, because it aspires to being such; because consciousness sets a course for a particular element which, is, and insofar as it is, not there, but exists only as a content of consciousness which still has to be brought to lightsubstitutions in typescript. This consciousness is consciousness of movement. not as it is represented, even as creative, but as it actually behaves in consciousness. It is this fact that is new; that consciousness itself leads this progression, this striving beyond itself, this projection into the beyond of consciousness.

From this arises the rebuttal of the notion of disinterested perception. There is always some degree of interest involved forsubstitution illegible nonpractical purposes. At the psychological level action becomes the basis for a perception of the world, and the only thing that keeps it united. What would otherwise fall apart into body and soul is kept together by the priority of the will in consciousness, so that the emotions, as the psychic expression of what is inside, become intimately linked with it. Here the demand for a psychological definition is getting stronger, but all we can do is reject any evaluation based on the senses which is divided into attraction and repulsion, being just the extreme poles of a long chain with many shades of feeling in between. We can only understand emotions and the will with regard to their functions, as opposed to the will in terms of blood, its warmth, its life and gestures, with which love and humanity project themselves onto things, in the sense of Christ or, quite the opposite, in the sense of a prophet.

The will and the emotions as principles of creation still belong to the subject, grasp things in their totality and guarantee them to us as such in unity with the subject. The intellect is the first to graspsubstitution illegible the things in their individual component parts. But not by first subjecting them to an ordered analysis in order to then 'synthesize' them into a box by some artificial unity of the concept or of perception, etc. Pure analysis yields the possibility of an infinite dividing up of the object in favour of keeping it alive, but also reveals the impossibility of any combination other than a purely mechanistic or nature—teleological (and hence unartistic and unscientific) one. Synthesis, on the other hand, entails rendering the object finite by killing off its aliveness in favour of conceptual fixation. The relation, therefore, is always a construction. But the intellect as function not only assumes both these aspects into itself, but at the same time goes beyond them to the very basis and origin of things, in order to remake them in a new form. The presupposition of an intellect with these kinds of functions and contents (like cleverness. education, etc.) can perhaps be made to seem less arbitrary by the following passage:

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of a spirit which, in penetrating nature, discovers spirit by which it is itself animated. It is the joy of the intelligence which sees clearly into the universe and recreates it by inspiring it with conscience. Art is man's most sublime mission. since it is the exercise of thought which tries to understand the world and to make it understandable...

Remember that these are the words of an artist who, in all his observation of nature, always placed great emphasissubstitutions in typescript on the material function of analysis. Rodin's definition clearly shows that, for him, the artist's drive for knowledge is not localized in one organ, but rather involves the whole complex of organs lying between the subconscious and the conscious. between instinct and intellect. Here it is quite clear that the intellect is not a structure but a process, not a being but a function. We have already seen that this function is directed at the origin of objects with a view to remaking them in a new form. In this way the intellect dissolves the being of things and creates for them a new unity that comes from origins and laws of their becoming. And thus it makes clear to us what was formerly inconceivable.

If the notion of art as a spiritual act has saved the ordered progression of the creative drive from the fragmentation into endless plurality of objects and from the artificial and arbitrary construction of subjects, it now seems that the sense organs, as the psychologically first and most immediate connections with the world, are going to lead us inevitably into the chaos of being and even of appearances. What can be more obscure and deceptive than the information we get from our eyes — the organs that have the greatest influence on the creation of the world of painting? When we open our eyes we get an incomplete, accidental insignificant picture, a diagram of reality. But where else should the meaning of art reside than in the sharpness of eyesight? But all questions about how we perceive things (whether in two or three dimensions, whether inside or outside us, whether in colour or just in lines) shy away from the main pointsubstitutions in typescript, which is that art — even naturalism — has nothing to do with the perception of things, but rather with their creation. This is dependent on the ultimate aims of the art. The ultimate aim is that all the human organs should contribute to creating the object, under the heading of one particular organ specific to each manifestation of the creative drive which, in the case of painting, is the eye. But because of its movements the eye already involves two senses — that of looking and that of touching, the perceptions of space and time. Perhaps movement can be seen as the basis of all the senses. Without wanting to polemicize against the theory that each sense has its own specific energy, I must point outinsist that in Holbein's pictures of Passion Scene one can see the tears, in another picturein Monet's pictures one can feel the wind and in others one can see the smell of the sea. These facts merely back up the claim that in each sense organ - at least in the eye — all others are functioning alongside it so that all their specific data can be expressed, for our consciousness, in this one sense, and that conversely, pure perception attempts to replace the functions of all the other organs. In this way what is perceived is perceived fully and led from mere appearances to reality. The objects of painting are never the result of a pure optic, which is an empty abstraction. Even the act of perceiving is shot through by the whole man. Seeing is always eye and psyche. This explains why everyone sees something different and also why one cannot be justified in the demand that what the painter paints should look the same as in nature.

Just as, by its quality, the single perception points beyond any single sense organ to the whole set of sense organs, so its extension forces it into the realm of the intellect and the will. As soon as the eye can no longer take in the space that is represented without moving, an act of the intellect is required to bring it together into a unified impression. This only serves to underline what Poussin said quite clearly:

There are two ways of seeing a thing: the first is just to see it, the second is to observe it carefully. Just seeing something means making out the form and similitude of a thing with the eye. But to observe means to go beyond simple perception by concentrating one's attention on a way of getting to know the object well. Thus one could say simple seeing is a function of nature, but that observation is a duty of the intellect.

In this way seeing is brought down to a pure function of the intellect, through this to the will, then to the self—positing subject and finally freed from all subjective arbitrariness, it is obedient to the basic principles of absolute creation. There is no other law of artistic optics than that of creation.

So it is neither a single organ nor an isolated faculty that creates the world of art for the subject, but the inner totality of all of them with one specific preponderance. Originating in the consciousness the creative drive concentrates itself in the specific and at the same time most unreliable organ, all the more, the closer it comes to the object which is appearing. But since it cannotsubstitutions in typescript, because of its origin, remain stuck in materialism or sensualism, the organ points beyond itself. If the priority of the will was the reason for the first process of the materialization of consciousness, so complete fertilization is the reason for the second process of dematerialization of the object back into consciousness. This experience cannot simply be passed over; it must be thoroughly fertilized at its most basic levelit must rather, by being thoroughly apprehended, become fertilized through and through. After this impregnation the experience loses its solid materiality and becomes force, movement, and instinct and as such the sole possession of the artist to do with it what he pleases. If this process of creation is transferred to the psychological world, onto the contents with which it is inextricably bound, then all those familiar questions of aesthetics arise, dealing partly with the activity of the subject, for example, the relation of the subconscious to the conscious, naiveté to divisions of the ego, inhibitions and impulses, freedom and conditioning by the law of associations - partly with the position of the subject in relation to the object, for example, the relations of recognition, love and respect to negation and scepticism, sacrifice to self-preservation, activity and passivity: partly the question of the object - as well as the important question of the relations of sensation and life to the form and death. We cannot go into all these questions here, in what is just a sketch of the basics of nature. It must suffice to merely point out that they all take on the form of the dialectic, and that their solution does not lie in the elimination of one of the contrasts, nor in their homogenization, but rather in the preservation of both poles, in following them through and overcoming them in order that a new world might come to be. It will only be possible for someone to offer such a solution if he keeps it in mind that the problems must be projected back to their old level of creation and portrayed as they undergo that very process.

1.4 (Page 26)

Just as we started with the selfpositing consciousness to characterize the subject, in order to get to the psychic through its will to realize itself and, if possible, to get the the psycho—spiritual subject, so now we must adopt a precisely corresponding way of dealing with the object, by starting with the laws governing its coming into being. The object must no longer be treated as a finalized product, a more or less changeable result, but those forces, who by their opposition allowed the thing to come into existence, must be sought. And from these founding conditions of their being the artist must recreate these objects for art. In doing this he must obey the normal rules for the creation of objects - that the object should exist, and that its existence should be finite. But being in itself does not imply that it must be fixed and stable. Relations can also be an object for the artist as long as they are totally self—enclosed and their movement doesn't extend to other things. Finitude only means that the thing should be limited and should have a form, not that it must be unique and live only in relation to itself. Finitude of form does not exclude plurality of relations, although these are not infinite but governed by the demands of being and hence, calculable.

These principles of object creation have the tendency to manifest themselves in the real object, just as the functions of consciousness strove towards the psychic subject and thus necessarily posited an object at the same time. In the same way the basic laws governing the creation of objects: by positing an object a subject is posited with it.

Our perception, in its purest state, is in fact part of the things themselves.

And in further parallel we find that it must be the totality of objects in which the principles of object creation are found to realize themselves. And it is precisely at this point that people have sought for a difference of opinion between art and science.

The particular which is only concerned with its particularity is art and only art... the particular concerning itself with the universal is science... and just for this reason of subjective art the artist must push the present into the past and in objective art he must excise the space of the art work from real space, so that even the sculptor is only occupying an ideal space and not the space of our own environment, all this is necessary so that the acts and objects do not fit into real relations, are never the origins for effects in space and time that are outside the work of art, and can never be regarded as motives or aims for any behavior whatsoever. Artistic truth must be completely free from all universals, and the basic laws of art can be deducteddeduced from this attempt to eliminate all relations just as the basic laws of science can be understood as an attempt to find these relations.

Obviously there is a mistake here. From the tendency of the creative drive to extract one's work from real relations and make it selfsufficient, the conclusion has been drawn that the only possible material for art is the particular, the individual, the unique, the fragmentary and the unrelated. But any book is just as free from any real relations (portrayed symbolically by its cover) and the relations which are set up by science have no more or no less to do with real life than those of art. Science is just as concerned as art with totality and hence the relations of objects.

So many mistakes have been made in attempted definitions of these concepts that our definitions will be clearer if we first turn a critical eye on some of the other suggestions. Some maintain, for example, that totality can be attained by adding togetherthe largest possible number of variations on a theme or, indeed, the largest possible number of differences. This is an extenalization and finitization of the creative process. Others maintain that totality is a reduction of objects to one single basis, that is, either a mood or a concept which in turn gives rise to the whole range of individual cases. highlighted in typescript Totality here stands for a formal spiritual or psychic accumulation. And while on the one hand this merely entails making the concept Gehalt finite, it also brings with it the danger of formalism. Others think totality can be obtained on the theistic level. This involves all the specious problems of classicism. Generalization is not a broadening, worldlessness is not universalization. Totality cannot be achieved by either a broadening or a narrowing in one direction. but only through bilateral feeling, and not even from contrast itself, but from its dissolution. As Fichte noted it is a thetic judgement, a true infinity. As such, it has no fixed conceptual definition nor is one possible, since it contains an infinite number of possibilities.

The main question of epistemology, whether the universal is the sole object of science or if the individual can also be an object, has been undermined by our inquiry insofar as neither the universal nor the individual on their own can be a sufficient object for the creative drive, but only totality. And we defined thisAnd it resolved itself into neither as a substantive nor formalistic concept, but asinto a formal concept, i.e. the point of contact of the functions of consciousness with the object.

After defining the extent of our inquiry, let us now turn to the representation of the realization tendencies of the laws governing the formation of objectslet us once again try to characterize those tendencies to realisation evinced by the laws governing the formation of objects. Here we must confine ourselves to that particular form of object—formation that is relevant to painting. This is the concrete. The concrete means that form of things in their solidity unumgänglichsten and three-dimensionality. Originating from the principles of object—formation, as a rendering into three—dimensional form it presents itself as a concretization. The realization tendency of the object goes further than this losing itself completely in the wealth of qualitative categories of colour, material, etc. Hence, the object presents a number of external forms which conceal the basics and seem to make any approach to the origins of the object impossible. Psychologically seen, they are the starting point of the perception and the problem now iswas to force on towards the essence of the object. Our definition of totality showed us that one often gets stuck with the finite — real or transcendental being - without being able to get right to the origins of the formation of the object of art. We isolated the two roots — we will speak of the third one later - the functions of consciousness, which realized themselves in particular forms attached to a specific organ, and the different types of object—formation which analogically concretized and materialized themselves until, laden down with all their contents, they turned back on the road of dematerialization into consciouness and their own basic laws. Because of these two tendencies they became intimately linked, so that object and subject posited each other and existed with and through each other. This unity of mutual conditioning must be distinguished from all psychophysical parallelism, from all unities of body and soul and from all metaphysical identities which remain either in the psychic subject of the concrete object, or even pre—exist them, since these are not just presuppositions or results of the fact that the original unity exists. It is not just a matter of an existing relation, but of mutual creation, so that the totality of the psychic forces manifest unfold entfaltet themselves in the totality of objects. If we logically follow through this thought we cannot avoid some doubts about Kant's doctrine of the apriority of consciousness.

In this scheme of mutual creation the whole scandal intriguing problem of a special role for the pictorial arts or for music comes to light: the assimilation of an ornament—affixed and unchanging form into this process of creation. This interesting problem has, up to now, been given far too little consideration and for this reason should be particularly highlighted.

The creation product of opposing movements from between subject to object and vice versa is generates the creative mood. Born out of the two (not as contents and materials, but rather as forces) it is neither a unified mood nor a synthetic concept, but a plurality, although not a confused one: it contains, in the Bergsonian sense, 'qualitative pluralities' that is, a unity of forces striving for expression.

Their formation normally has a particular equivalent in our consciousness that becomes the material basis for the artistic creation. And here we must say a few words about these equivalents, not insofar as they are pure contents, but insofar as they are directions of feeling and can be lined up as categories of the aesthetic or of the individual arts. Here they all find their place — with the one important qualification: that a feeling like the tragic is not confined simply to drama and literature, but also has a place in the pictorial arts. But as soon as one tries to make this regulative categorization into an actual constitutive principle (and hence also a way of measuring value) of artistic creation, the following objection must be heeded: neither the beautiful nor the noble, neither the tragic nor the epic create art; they are merely directions of feeling that strive towards art, and as such are characterized by their respective deployment by the active forces of the creative drive. After this equivalence has been eliminated (since it obviously needs to have nothing more in common with the substance of the experience) there remains a pure intensity, the intensity and the power left over form render the experience, which separates itself from its unidentifiable state in the experience and joins up with all the others. Here the individual experiences mix with all the others, particularly with their oppositions, and creating new values, they are all exisiting in the present as a summation of all their pasts, so that the resulting work is no longer an act of intellectual abstraction, but a totality, resulting from the concentration of one's whole life in a stimulus freed from all materiality. At the same time this represents a ( naturally of course constructed) collection bowl, a replacement for the psychological moment of phantasy imagination/creative imagination/passion What differentiates the two is above all the fact that in phantasy see previous the content is always already given, and it is only a question of "its repetition, the means of getting it to return. What is given is always given. even if it is to be altered." However, the creative mood is only ever a moment in the formation of the contents. Hence phantasy always had arbitrariness at its basis, in its combinations and its results, whereas the creative mood which originated according to certain laws can never but comply with them.

1.5 (Page 30)

We saw that art is content — now we must make the proviso: only as long as the content appears in this specific expressive form. And these are dependent on the materials. For reasons of composition exposition we have been forced up to now to exclude them from our observations. Therefore it should be made quite clear that they are not external or in any way superfluous, but rather absolutely necessary and interesting in their own right. For the medium makes the strongest demands on the observer.

The psychological view of art which, because of the difference in media dismissed the "ars una in artes" and always spoke of the arts in the plural, also coined the phrase that the usage of colours impinged on the lines, etc. But since we have located a unified, infinite creative drive operating throughout the arts and have shown it has a typical function which underlies all individualization we will again proclaim the 'ars una' and we will further maintain man that the medium media , although it they separates and breaks up the original drive, is are still subject to some logic, a logic that is as yet unknown to us.

The three media of the line, colour and light were accorded fundamentally different areas of expression and value as constitution principles by abstract theorecticians. Everyone knows the hyperbole of the sentence:

In art everything pertaining to the uppermost (the laws of the moral order) is expressed in the form; colour, in opinion stands for a more materialistic aspect.

According to the necessities of their one—sided talent artists have said the same about colour and light, thus using all those false dogmas about the pure line of highlighted in typescript the pure colour to conceal their own impotence. The aestheticians, who were the most obstinate defenders of the pure line, have now gradually allowed all three media a constitutive role.

Here it must be observed that no media exist a priori. Neither a particular blue nor a symmetry has any meaning for creative activity prior to or outside the act of creation. The artist must know his medium and its effect, both in connecting feelings of desire or non—desire and in the moral order - this is part of the handiwork. But its usage is neither a naturalistic description nor formalism, but the factor of creation or rather a result of creation. Before creation every medium is just dead material, an obstruction to the spirit. Only in the process of creation does it become a medium, alive, handiwork. Hence it can exist neither for its own sake nor for the achievement of effects, but purely and simply for the purpose of creative expression. This then is the answer to the question about the effects of media and materials. The only legitimate effect is that which results directly from the creation, everything else is just prostitution. As there can be no creation without this material expression:

The best artist is the one who can irrevocably bind together his creative and imaginative powers with the material with which he is working.

Or in the words of Flaubert:

Precision of thought both creates and is the word.

The beauty of the material comes to its fullest expression in the act of creation. The question is — how?

Illustration 1

Even in its isolation every medium has the tendency to point beyond itself. The line as an artistic medium of expression is quite different from mathematical lines. Every point represents a penetration of the straight lines or and the curves - a tension in the dimensions. The same is true of colour. As an artistic medium it always has within it a tendency to black and white, so that as the accompanying diagram (which should be read as three—dimensional) illustrates, the colour system forms a three—dimensional continuum. If, for example, we want to establish all the possibilities of mixing blue and red there are two equal ways of getting to violet and purple — either by the dominant black through red—brown and grey—blue, or by the white undertone through flesh-pink and sky—blueIf we want to establish all the possibilities of mixing, for example, blue and red, we have the direct, you might say planar, path through violet and purple; the path with black dominating takes us through reddish-brown and greyish-blue; that with the untertone white through flesh pink and sky blue. Every line. apart from its pure linearity, also has a greater or lesser degree of light, just as the colours have a surface or dimensional value. The artist's task is to unify into one medium all the different elements of his materials. That doesn't simply mean expressing the same thing in each individual material and then adding the three parallel aspects together to form one, but that rather a unified medium should be formed from their unification. Hence, one can only speak of a linear or painterly style with reservations, since pure lines or colours are extremes and hence impoverished. It is precisely the unification of differences in the creative act that defines the meaning significance and the greatness of an artist. But that doesn't mean that the unity should be a harmony of parts of equal value — these can be given different degrees of emphasis, can even be opposing each other. But what is indispensable is that in this unity the divergence of parts and the materiality of the elements should disappear. Its fluctuations give various values to the functionings of the different organs, and within its determinations Bestimmtheit it contains an infinite number of possibilities. Our systematization logically requires that this unified medium responds specifically to the demands of technique, because art form can only attain to its highest degree of perfection by bringing all its immanent possibility totally into play.

Every material portrays space in its own particular way; colours advance or fall back, light values give perspective and lines shorten themselves according to their positions. But they are not there to create notions of space as such, rather to create shape and space in their relations to the overall form, as we will explain later. Hence they serve the form and follow the basic laws of creation, i.e. they obey neither the natural type of material nor the scientific law - like that of complementary colours. So in their totality they present a world that is completely divorced from the material world. No consistent sensualismNo sensualism, be it even so [?] consistent can explain the world of colours and tones in painting and music, because they die Welt are on two different levels. And no eye, however sharp and objective, will find the colours of Claude Lorraine, Goya, or Monet in the natural world because seeing is no more an abstract process than thinking, but a function in which the whole human being and, one would hope, his whole humanity has a part to play.

With subject, object and medium we have covered the whole content of the creative drive. We must now explain how — when they come together — the world sphere of art is born, and what laws hold it together. We will have to go through the discharge process of the creative mood and also the way in which the new world comes to perfection.

1.6 (Page 33)

We saw that the movements of the contents in their dematerialized form gather together in the creative drive, and it was only a simplification for compositional reasons Darstellungsgründe if we implied if we employed the fiction that the whole movement from object to subject happened without any action or mediation, without the paint brush. From the psychological standpoint this is just an extreme case, indeed epistemologically impossible because this world cannot exist without its representations. But this is not just a copy of some interior finished product, but part of the evolutionary process and hence it happens parallel to the formation of content. The stage at which the action is initiated is irrelevant for our purposes. What is important for us is the moment of birth of the totality of content, i.e. the its transformation into the conditions of being of the creative drive in general and of the pictorial arts in particular. The most indispensable form of birth is the self—positing conflict. It can only result from those moments of that process that we have already examined, and in fact it does seem to be the result of the dialectical will of consciousness and the being of the formation of objects. But as an act of consciousness it has inherited the tendency to a particular form of infinity. The definition of the self—positing conflict we owe to W. v. Scholz:

The conflict must posit itself as soon as one touches on a theme addition illegible without conflict, in the representation imagination formed according to those laws which are experienced and not deducible from anything else... Two moments characterize the antithis antithesis of the self-positing conflict – the inner proximity of their essences and their incompatibility, their indissoluble link in the representation see prior substitution in which they create each other and the close contact of their eternal enmity. In this way the antitheses are tied together it is not an accident that brings them to battle but the proximity of their essences. Hence the self—positing conflict is indissoluble, inexhaustible and eternally terrifying.

For pictorial art this conflict has one condition: it is never a simply linear, two—dimensional conflict, but a spatial (three—dimensional) one, because it is only then that the ultimate, irreducible conflict of pictorial art can come to pass — the compromise of three dimensions with the two—dimensional surface. Only then is it no longer an incompatible construction of opposing motives, but an interpenetration of inseparable contrasts into a unity:

From the self—positing subject we can find another reason for the necessity of duration, namely that all the important moments which condition duration originate from the two basic laws of the self—positing conflict, and must reflect this antithesis. Here it is not a question of real causality that has been transferred from everyday life into the work of art, but of a type of aesthetic causality which is unique to the art work and exercises the strongest feelings of necessity on the observer and also gives rise to the impression (not attainable in real causality) that, without any later additions of new moments, the drama of the original conflict develops exclusively within itself.

Hence the productive force of conflict perfects the whole, and this whole must take on the form of an organism in its origin, with the whole, and the individual parts conditioning each other in such a way that the whole is both the result of and the condition of all the parts. The whole is not the sum of all the parts, but their product, but in the sense that each part can only exist within the whole. Thus a new world, carrying within itself its own life—contradictionscontradictions of life is loosed from reality. Having freed itself from all the materialsmateriality of the real world, it rests in itself, containing its own beginning and end. The first object, on the fringe, must now have no more contact with the other world and its horizon must separate from the diminishing perspective of reality.

Reality as such has been overcome. The return to the functions of consciousness, the basics of object—formation and the demand for totality has dematerialized reality and its graphic sensuous equivalent has been born. Reality has been mathematicized, both in arithmetic rhythms and geometric shapes.

Illustration 2

These rhythms refer back directly to the movement of consciousness and have nothing to do with the norms of proportion that people have tried to discover to create the perfect beautiful figure. These could only ever set up a finite relationship whereas the rhythmic relation is infinite. This rhythmic relation expresses itself not so much in the proportions of the figure but in its whole surface. A particularly nice example is the middle choir window in Chartres, which shows from bottom to top:

1. Bakers carrying bread
2. The Annunciation
3. The Visitation
4. Madonna with child

The rhythm of this division into four can be more closely examined if we first accept that the verticalhorizontal windowframes are parallel and equidistant from one another. The whole window, apart from a small strip at the bottom and the peak at the top (which in their own right make an interesting contribution to the techniques of beginning and ending an artwork) is made up of $17$ pieces lying on top of each other with $3$ pieces across: $\frac {1}{2}$ on the outsides and $2$ in the middle. These $17$ pieces are divided into $4$ different sections by the contents - from bottom to top: $2$ pieces, $4$ pieces, $5$ pieces, $6$ pieces - that is a clear proportion of $1 \propto 2 \propto 2 \frac {1}{2} \propto 3$. If you consider that proportion of height to width is roughly $1 \propto 6$, then it is immediately obvious what simple relations are expressed in the proportion of height to width of the individual pieces. Not only does the middle part of the lowest piece have as many pieces in height as in width, and is therefore a $2 * 2$ square, but also the complete width of the window is roughly half of the uppermost piece. With the significance of this number $2$ in the proportions one can see why the second piece is twice the size of the first, fragment missing and the third piece is $2 \frac {1}{2}$ times as big as the first. And now the number $3$ is involved: $\frac{1}{2}$ is not only the height of the first piece, but at the same time one half the difference between $2$ and $3$. But $3$, which is $2 + 2 \times \frac {1}{2}$, is not only the complete width of the window, but at the same time the relation of growing importance form the lowest panel (the Bakers) to the highest (Madonna.) $2 \times 3 = 6$ and hence a relation with the height/width proportion $1 \propto 6$; but $6 \times 3 = 18$ and this gives the total height of the window. This apparently infinite numerical relation is no secret mysticism of numbers, no accidental discovery nor a prior formalism, but rather the necessary result of the dematerialization of matter on the road to manufacturing of form and necessary creation. It is a constitutive principle which sets up an infinite and organic relation of the parts to the whole. We could call it an arithmetic necessity of surface proportions.

That we are in fact dealing with a constitutive principle of art as such we can show by taking a quick look at music or poetry. Formerly, one tended to ignore this basically temporal moment of necessary rhythmic relations in the pictorial arts because one had the prejudice that they were exclusively concerned with space. But it will become progressively obvious that the two — time and space — cannot possibly be separated, if one is talking about any kind of creation. But still we will not have solved the main problem in this respect regarding the pictorial arts until we can show from which elements the basic quantities of this rhythmic duration is formed.

To move forward another step here we must concentrate on the surface, that is on the proportions of height to width and their immanent points — the middle and the golden dividing line, which has long played an important role in aesthetics. Unfortunately my calculations have not yet produced a satisfactory result. However, I‘m convinced that a thorough study of networks in the sketches of the masters would produce some very interesting results. As to the rhythmic duration, I can just briefly refer to what is taught in every Poetics: the different metres, open and closed rhythms, etc. The question of rising and falling coincides with the painter's allocation of mass and also represents a series of occupied and unoccupied surface areas.

There should be some crossing point with particular forms, like symmetry from the dematerialization of the arithmetic rhythms to that of the geometric figures.not clear I don't mean, for example, what is called a triangular composition — that is the forcible arrangement of a given situation into a mathematical figure. This formalism is, essentially, naturalism. I am not referring to any kind of arbitrary construction in the sense of composition, but rather, that in the dematerialization of the material it should be geometicized into an infinite relation. Basically every figure is variable, i.e. the different triangular forms don't all mean the same thing. But even the individual figure has the tendency to go beyond individuality. Any upright triangle also infers one with its apex pointing downwards, i.e. the centrally symmetric figure, and each combinationsubstitution in typescript produces a new one. Every one of these mathematical forms exists in a completely different format, so that some balance must be established, which emphasizes the inner movement of the figure, and is not just an approximation or transition, but an interpenetration of the basic directions in the creation because not even the format is given, but is conditioned by the basic foundations of the conceptionaugments the inner mobility of the figure even more, the more we are dealing with not just approximation and transition, but also an interpenetration of the emergent basic directions: for the format, too, is not given, but is conditioned by the basic foundations of the conception. Hence theevery stability is converted into function, and theirits infinitude becomes richer and fuller when we recognize from the works of the great artists that they never simply satisfied themselves with one figure, but always allowed the most contrasting figures to combine with each other.

Just as the temporal moments of rhythm necessarily combined themselves in the pictorial arts with the two basic dimensions of surface — height and width - as spatial values, so the moments of geometric order are inseparable from those of intensity, i.e. time. In the combination of figures and spatial directions the greatest role is played by the intensity of their respective emphases, so that some are the main voices and the others form the background chores. All the orchestral moments of music as well as the individual modulation of voices from fortissimo to piano, and the parallels or harmonies of voices, all these can be equally taken up by the pictorial arts. To this moment of intensity belongs the die große Fülle [?] der Möglichkeiten in...density of surface occupation, the rhythm of full and empty space, of open and closed occupation — but above all, the building up of moments to a climax, in which the pictorial arts do not even lag behind those of Drama. Thus these temporal moments multiply the combination possibilities and set up an infinite range of relations.

This intermingling of the spatial and temporal moments of creation reaches the point where they both dissolve into each other. As soon as these two moments have completely blended together, they are so distant from the rigidities of mathematical figures and rythmic constraints and so alive and self-generating that we now the a new nature in front of us which has completely undone the appearance of the old, accidental nature, one that has the appearance of the old, accidental, unformed one. And how could it be otherwise, when the starting point of creation was a material?

The mathematical forms of dematerialization only leave us still on the surface. It is only when the figure and space, i.e. when the third dimension is drawn into the forces of creation that we have the ultimate and most important factor in the form-creation of the pictorial arts. There can be no question here of immersing oneself in physiological and metaphysical theories about how and where we perceive space. Whatever the hypotheses, the process of spatialization has no connection with either functional or qualitative factors, since its whole basis rests on the thesis that space has the three dimensions of height, width and depth, where each one extends infinitely in the perception of our organs. The task comes solely from the essence of absolute creation: that it should create an essence which contains its own foundation and concretization or the determination of three—dimensionality as the insuperabieindispensable [?] area of expression for painting, it follows that the formation of figures and space must be completely different in painting from the way it is in nature. This difference is underlined by the fact that in nature three—dimensionality is actual; height, width and depth are there in front of us, whereas in painting one is tied to the two—dimensionality of surface, which must indirectly summon the third dimension. Surface is then an obstacle, just like eternity, against which the finite creative will flounders and must learn to assume it and reconcile itself with it before any creation is possible. This is the deepest reason why we must reject pure surface. It leaves us completely in nothingness, in anarchy and nihilism, which is what the artist should be leading us away from. And the same is true of appearance with respect to figures.

The formation of space in painting can only be done by balancing the two—dimensionality of the surface against the three—dimensionality of natural space. One took this to imply that the solution of the problem lay in the creation of illusory natural space on the surface. And one was even more prepared to accept this when perspective became subjected to precisely formulated laws and hence regulated constructioncould be unfailingly constructed. As so often in the history of art, one was mixing up the laws of science and the laws of art, in this case the laws of geometry and physiological space with the laws of painting. But,

It must be again pointed out how much our system of perceiving space, physiological space, differs from geometric (Euclidean) space. To distinguish accurately between physiological and geometric space we must remember that our perceptions are conditioned by the dependence of the elements which we have called ABC... (figure) on the elements of our body KLN...check quote, but that geometrical concepts come from the spatial comparisons of bodies, through the mutual ABC relations.

Recently then, even physiologists have been Pointing out that there are considerable differences between the demands of geometry‘s laws of perspective and our own eye‘s perception of perspective. But even more than this, the fact that perspective doesn't draw the surface into the creation but tries to eliminate it by illusion and that perspective deals only with the relations of things with themselves and not with the subject, all this means that the illusory construction of natural space can take no part in true creation. The same is true of the body's anatomy.

TheThis [?] rejection of the results of science does not imply the rejection of knowledge, but rather of the function of the intellectsignifies the intellect as function, not the rejection of knowledge. Knowledge is interest in reasons. Not that these are of any less interest to science than they are to painting, but although their results may be equally numerousvarious the solution in each area bears absolutely no relevance to the other area, because each result is so conditioned by specific media that it is only valid for itself. But apparently both areas have three ways in which they grasp space: sensations, like colour, tone and smell; as an a priori form of consciousness, a synthetic category of the understanding; thirdly, not as Being at all, but as a task to create it. The only question is: How is this achieved?

It is done by a finitization and streamlining Zusammenfassung? into height and width. This sets the standard and thus the effective form of the individual parts, particularly in the translation of the depth dimension onto the flat surface. This is acheivedattained by balance which is felt and which containsis achieved by a unified specific medium — a balance between space and surface. This means that out of the surface the artist organically creates a third dimension and then fixes the three—dimensionality of the object, be it a cube or a space, on a surface. This tension between the dimensions is nothing technical, but is rather a balance acheived by taking a step in the creative act which originates in the intensity of the creative mood. By emphasizing that it has its origin in intensity. I am contradicting Hildebrand, to whom moreover, the honour belongs for first having worked out the central (essential) elements in the formation of form. But whereas Hildebrand only acknowledges, apparently, aone balance only between space and surface asthat is seen in classic Greek sculpture and in the Renaissance - where form is also regarded as an a priori idealand thus so to speak erects one form as a priori ideal — for me form is a posteriori, and there are numerous different types of form. And what is true of a cube is also true of space. Through this balance with surface, space becomes a function, a function that is self—creating and has its own life. This can alsoonly be described as a forwards and backwards, an in and out, and an up and down and byas the continuity of these spatial relations. Subjectively it produces the feeling of self—creation, as if the thrust of the component parts, or, their inner spirit and relation to the whole, was the origin of their being. The foundation for this lies in the self—positing conflict and the demand that the whole durationconsequent development results from itself.

But this type of space formation does not seem to me to answer that other problem, which the mathematical constructions of perspective were unable to solve: what laws do objects obey in reducing their size for this artistic space? The reduction in size of objects in the distance is obviously a basic principle of all space-formations, and the painter who refers to the basics of object-formation will have to take this into account. It is true that his solution will always stem from the intensity of the creative [...], but it is the very meaning, the very taste of science to [...] regularity here. Here we must go to the grandiose attempts of Leonardo to offer somea solutions. He found that when he divided up the space of the surface of the picture between the ground—line and the horizon into five equal perspective distances, and took as his measurement unit the distance of his eye from the canvas, the proportional numbers in these five spacings were exactly the same as the number proportions that govern the main intervals in music:

It is presumed that the distance of the eye from the canvas is four ells. The first figure in the picture is $20$ ells away from the eye, hence in distance $20$; $4=5$, i.e. $5$ degrees of measurement units: therefore it loses $\frac{4}{5}$ of its natural size. The second figure, which is the same size as the first is $40$ ells, i.e. $10$ degrees away from the eye; it loses half the size of the first figure, which is only $\frac{1}{5}$ of man‘s height, i.e. it loses $\frac{9}{10}$ and retains $\frac{1}{10}$ of its natural size. The third figure loses $\frac{19}{20}$ of its natural size and has now only $\frac{1}{20}$ of its actual height, because it is at a distance of $80$ ells or $20$ man—lengths, hence $20$ degrees of measurement distant from the eye. The degree of distance from the eye, here the relation of distance is $20 \propto 40 \propto 80$ with $4$ ells spacing, and the proportion of the height is $\frac{1}{5} \propto \frac{1}{10} \propto \frac{1}{20}$.

This is based on the principle that Leonardo called double proportionality. This proportion allows, as Ludwig says, the painter to strike the most effective of accords octave to octave; effective since it is very easily and clearly recognized in its relative tones.

In its absolute form space can only be a continuous unity. The possibility of having severedal centres is only of secondary importance. Discontinuity splits space up into a fore—, middle— and background, and makes space into a composite whole. But this composite space has a less than perfect form. And in creating space another difference that applies is whether depth is achieved by planes of parallel to or diagonal to the ground plane. The former is called constructive space Raumbildung and the latter destructive creation of space. Although this opposition has nothing to do with the form of space, it is the most fundamental characteristic of modelling and the creation of space.

However, spatialization does not exhaust the process of form creation. It may be true that the world of objects has no temporal movement and the temporal duration of mental events may have no specialization. But as soon as the creative drive gets hold of space and time it is forced to combine them, or rather to allow each one to interpenetrate the functions of the other. At every progressive step of creation, time and space belong together, but the only level that can be ultimately aimed at is the one where each entity existsruns its course independently and free of all natural ties. Therefore we must reject natural time — both as an infinity and as something than can be fixed at a certain point - and also the scientific time of the physicist, and seek a time that is analogical to the artistic creation of space.

The same is true for causal connections, both with regard to their relations with space and time and with regard to their formation. Only when these three parts have been unified into one new entity is the world of fromform born as such. It possess within itself its own skeleton and circulatory system — the only question now is how it completes its growth. For we have already seen that the organism is in principle an infinite number of relations. but that the necessity of creating a finite work cannot be circumvented. The compromise is achieved by the continuity of formal relations, which give the illusion of infinity by theirits seamless connectionscoherence. All originalindividual motifs originate, as we have already seen, from the self-positing conflict, and its completion as an organism means the elaboration of its immanent possibilities. To bring these into constant relation such that each and every one follows on and from the other — just as the extension of the arm and the punch follow the raising of the arm - this alone is the meaning of the continuity of motifs. This ensures that the work has an inner life not directly dependent on its origins, and- an indirect one, because of its origins - which is made up of the coming together Should one express the growth metaphor of 'verwachsend'? of all its constituent motifs, into the organism of the work that gives the appearance of having created itself. There is also a second kind of direct liveliness which results from the spiritualization of the material by a coherent and finely balanced lighting effect. As a direct bearer of light the material comes alive and acquires a vibrancy that gives the illusion of the movement of light in nature. Here one is giving the impression that nature itself is at work, whereas in the first case it is as if a law of nature is being created. The creative drive which aims at absolute creation and hence is focused on the latter can only achieve absolutely naturalistic appearance to the degree to which it realizes itself. The meaning of this realization is an inner one. Every creator would be conscious that his creation has two sides to itsomething of a double edged sword. Hence he walls up his truths behind all the material aspects of his art. Has one not heard of the fears and responsibilities, the sense of answerableness of creative people:

Art only addresses itself to an exceedingly small number of individuals.

Or one can read Descarte‘s Introduction to his Observations on the Foundations of Philosophy. Poussin surrounded his truths so cleverly with stories and historical references that for nearly three hundred years he was regarded solely as a historical narrator. But this walling up of truth is not intentional, rather the ultimate consequence of the full exploitation of all possibilities latent in the act of creation. Simultaneously, it increases the immanent effectiveness of the work. As the creation takes on the appearance of nature. a world is created which, because of its familiarity, satisfies everyone. Everyone can romp about in it like in a sunny meadow full of flowers and only very few realize that it is just a pretty covering over abysses. This is the real meaning of the Kantian principle of universal communicability.

Here we must determine the exact relationship of nature and art. According toFollowing our theorizing we do notno longer need to categoricallyexpressively reject the identity of the natural and the artistic object. Our whole investigation was an attempt to follow the process by which art is created out of the materials of nature. It revealed itself to us as a withdrawal from the simply given to the functions of consciousness and the laws of the creation of objects, as an experience of the totality of the world, as a dematerialization of reality into the intuitable and organic world of art — briefly as a process leading from the individual and simply given into a total and intended world. When this begins to realize (or to individualize) itself and approaches the appearances and arbitrariness of the real world, then the object of realization can only be a created one — born only from the previous up to now? process in terms both of form and of quality. But according to the laws of the creation of objects we can conclude that this object must be concrete, i.e. three—dimensional. So we can formulate the relationship in the following theses: since art aims teleologically at an absolute — the picture, the object must obey certain pictorial laws, and only those forms of objects which can be found themselves in these laws can be allowed to stand. These are the only true achievements: all the rest are merely the result of imitative or expressive attemptsabilitiesFähigkeiten. Since art must make use of (interior or exterior) reality and since, without this, the creative drive is inconceivable, so its experiences can only be expressed organically through the knowledge of its objects. And even if we take away everything pertaining to matter we are still left with the three—dimensional, the concrete, the “thing—ness.“ This three—dimensionality illumined by knowledge can be unfamiliar, but never unclear. If the essence of painting is to allow its experiences to become an object, then perhaps it becomes stronger to the degree that it lets its experiences become qualities, that is material aspects of the object, i.e. insofar as it can posit reality as a way of freeing the experiences from the force of laws. In this regard we encounter the problem of psychology as a means of realization — that is as a means and not as an end in itself.

So, the epistemological problem of the relation of being to the domain of moral obligation, and in particular the relation of artistic reality to that of nature, is resolved. Especially in recent times some people have identified subject and art together and, in florid variety, set upin dogmas which are no less meaninglesstrite than the imitation theoriestheory of art, whichthey maintain that the subject matter is irrelevant and that there is no intrinsic difference between a Madonna and a head of a cabbage — indeed that art can forbear all forms and express itself directly through its materials. Kandinski hashad? always wanted to be a latter day d'Alembert. This dogmatization of the absence of subject matter points necessarily to a defect in the subject since, epistemologically speaking, there can be no subject without a tendency towards an object. One has confused psychic individuality and the psyche physical subject with consciousness as such — and in setting up these dogmas one is only trying to conceal the fact that the link withbetweenunter the actual creative functions has been brokeninterrupted and obstructed: in short, that no creative process has taken place at all. But for the true creative process the relation between art and the object is clear, both in its significance as a starting point and as a means towards realization. The only remaining question is under what conditions this takes place.

The degrees of realization resides in the form and the subject matter. The form is rigidunumgänglich and every genre of art seems to have its own. Just as for sculpture the individual human body is especially suitable, so for painting it is the spatial relation between bodies. Every form has its own significance, through its outer extension. its inner content and it qualitatively organic and inorganic characteristics, and these should not only not be ignored by the artist, but should actually be used as a means towards realization. If the realization extends as far as the subject matter, then the most important thing is to choose the most suitable sense—register for the subject matter. We cannot go through the various conditions for this choice here. MoreoverHowever a few words must be devoted to the subject matter itself, or rather some of our previous premises must be expanded upon a little further. It has been acknowledged for a long time that not everything can be subject matter for art, but apart form the useless separation into beautiful and ugly (which are equally themselves subject matter or media for creation) there has been as yet no satisfactory distinctionsetting of boundaries [?]. One condition is that the particularly suitable senseregister should contain a dialectial moment. Hence it is contradicted by the once-off being or becoming, the object that is wholly real or purely psychic experience: by whatever is completed or universal, that possesses no creative possibilities; and the simple infinite, that above all contradicts the will to realization. In other words, all panvitalism, panpscychism, panaestheticism and pantheism. This suitableadäquat sense—register needs the most fertile of motifs, ones that contain both the most universal and the most particular, the most eternal and the most individual. And these motifs must then be constantly combined with each other. In this constancy in the durationcourseAblauf of sensual appearances the contintuity of forms, which we mentioned above, is transferred to the plane of realization and creates here a new and greater degree of naturalness. The inner infinity of form becomes an infinite source of life for both form and subject matter, which constantly increases, since the realization of absolute creation is not direct but indirect, even where it extends to the individual body. Art has found a ‘quasi corpus.‘

So we have made the long and typical journey from nature through the descriptive word and the abstract concept to form, from opinion through judgement to the principle, and from essay through constructed order to the system, and we now arrive at our conclusion that in this respectin this system/that through this systematisation art can appear like nature.

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After we have completed the journey of the creative drive it is now just a logical consequence of our thoughts if we uphold the universalizability of the creative result. It comes from the completely objective principles of this very creation, which we identified in the withdrawal offrom the psychic subject to the basic functionsconstituent circumstances [?] of consciousness itself and the movement from the physical object to its own laws of becoming; in the demand for harmony and totality for all functions of consciousness and in the demand for concreteness and totality of the object, in the principle of complete and mutual interpenetration and dissolution [?] of consciousness in the laws and finally, in the appearance of the world of objectsin the laws and appearance, finally, of the world of objects; and above all in the unified and lawful durationregular [?] sequence of action of the creative drive, in the lawfulness of its function which led from the real world to the 'quasi corpus' of art. Even in the foundation of the scientific world one cannot find principles that are more objective, basically because they, insofar as they arewere valid, mustwould also have to contribute to the founding of the world of art. We also saw how this new world possesses its own laws and logic which complete it and bring it closer to its ultimate aim. The creative drive objectivizes itself as completely as possible by creating a world which, containing its own life, lives according to its own functions. It is from this objectivity that the universalizability of the work stems; since how could a world possessing its own life and constantly fulfilling its own functions be negated? How and by whom? Against this world all scepticism is powerless, evenunless it be scepticism directed at the creative drive itself; we saw that, logically, this can only lead towards religious quietism, which lies completely outside the creative world. Nor is it an objection against the universalizability of absolute creation that it is rarely achieved by the creative drive. Here we can refer back to the levels of creation. And thus we believe we have shown that art is not a matter of taste, indeed has nothing to do with taste at all, but is rather the creation of a real, organic and necessary totality as the creative activity of a collection of experience, using special media and materials. From the universalizability of the absolute creation there now follows necessarily the demand for universalizable evaluation of the art work. And if what we have said is right, then Kant must have been wrong in maintaining the following:

Although critics, as Hume observes, sound more plausible in their speculation than cooks, they still end up sharing the same fate. For the justifications for their judgements do not lie in the strength of their proofs, but are just reflections of the subject on his own situation (of wellbeing or ill—being) disregarding all principles and rules.

In fact such proofs can be found in the principles of creation: the degree of creation and the extent of experience taken as two sides of the same drive, can be used as completely objective scales of measurement. Obviously we are going to find them in the work itself and we will be able to say that the most valuable work is the one which combines the largest extent and the greatest depth of experience with the most absolute degree of creation. Hence to evaluate a work, one will have to answer three questions: the position of the work in relation to absolute creation, that is absolute evaluation; the position of the work within its own level of creation, that is the relative evaluation; the position of the work to art as such, that is the evaluation of the thresholdthe question of whether the work has crossed the line into art.

Even this most important methodic evaluation for every type of art is now becoming the most difficult thing to accomplish. Have not the most renowned aestheticians managed to see some artistic value in photography?

From a psychological point of view, the process of making an evaluation will not be exhausted by these objective principles. On the contrary, the conscious evaluation of quality will be preceded by a suban unconscious evaluation of intensity. We call something good or bad long before we become conscious of our reasons for saying so. Nor is this by any means a contradiction, rather it corresponds most convenientlyaddition in typescript to the pure intensity of the creative mood. But this judgement does require a solid foundation and we saw the only way that this can be found.

Ranging further afield in the world of actual being we have no reason to ignore the fact that the real relation between the work of art and the observer has also created a new scale of evaluation, namely that of usefulness. Here I do not just mean external usefulness such as its value as a wall decoration or as a saleable object, etc, but also its inner usefulness as a means for evoking a certain mood, as a harmonious way of creating pleasure or as an educative medium, etc. Here the evaluative scale is no longer immanent, but relative to the world of being for which it is used. This scale of usefulness has no connection with that of absolute evaluation. In this latter case there is a fully trans—subjective universalizability that is quite independent of the individual judgement maker, whereas in the former case there is a completely subjective arbitrariness, which can at the most, be ordered by a process of addition or sorted according to some external principle whose methods of orderingthe methods of which process and principle, however, can never rise above the level of arbitrariness. For this reason we can only conceive of one single evaluative scale that is universalizable, whereas there are hundreds of possibilities for overcoming the arbitrary on the level of the subjective. And since one can never completely rid art of this need to be evaluated, we now have in modern psychological aesthetics a whole range of such suggestions.

Nor is it any moreless difficult to go in the opposite direction orand to make the degree of universality of the judgement into an evaluative scale than it is to arrive at one through subjective art. We have already seen that the universal, the essence, the concept is not the meaning of absolute creation, and correspondingly the judgement that seeks the universal mean is not a universalizable value judgement. Here belong all external principles of biology, pragmatism, metaphysics and mysticism. All these are still dealing with the evaluation of usefulness, even if they have been transferredverrückt = express negative coloration; perhaps 'wrenched'? from the real world to that of transcendental being. For art as art there can be no evaluative scale apart from creation itself.

But where is this subject who can make this pure, universalizable value judgement? Is it the observer, who in looking at the picture and forgetting everything else around him takes pleasure only in himself? Or is it he who seeks the content, the anecdote, the analogy with nature or a symbol of the unseen? Is it the gourmand who slurpssipsadditional comment in typescript the beauty of a colour like an old wine, or the formalist who admires the relations? Which one of all these observers does the artist presupposeplace naturally - as we have seen he does — in the act of creation itself? Epistemologically speaking none of them but rather a created, and thoughtfulposited subject who, in observing the work, keeps in mind all the relevant aspects of its creation — someone who forces himself from all materiality in order to sympathize with the totalitydoes so at the level of all those abilities which were engaged in its production - so that he can free himself from all materiality and sympathise with the totality. This observer, in experiencing the genesis of the work, inquires about its own inner aims. Thus the enjoyment of art varies at every level of creation and is strongest for each observer at his own particular level.

If such an observer doesn't actually exist, this in no way invalidates our deduction, since it did not attempt to posit or order a particular existing being, but rather wanted to show the necessary significance of such an observer; and for art and the artist — since where else does this activity and the actor belong so closely together? - this is merely discrepancy or rather dualism, of which we have already met many examples along the progress of the creative drive. The artist takes on all the odium of society, is useless as a person for all social life, the complete stranger for whom the world is like a piece of theatre or a parody of unreality. Having taken on his shoulders the burden of the absolute like no other [?], he ends up ostracized as a godless person on the cross or at the stake. Having created the world in its totality he is forced to see all the little things that his heart hoped for slipping out of his hands. He is simultaneously the most roughneckedobstinate worker and a king, a priest and a martyr, a fanatic seeker of truth and a comedian. And yet this grotesque bundle of contrasts, this creative man is the only person who can force us from the desperation of scepticism and the quietism of religion and hence makes possible our truly human existance.

They would have you believe that beautiful art is a product of the tendency that we are supposed to have to make the things that surround us more beautiful. That is not true! For the words that would make this true are used by commoners and artisans and not by philosophers. Art creates far more than the merely beautiful, and is just as true and great, sometimes more so, than Beauty itself. For man has a creative nature, which becomes active as soon as he ensures his existence. This characteristic art is the only art. If it takes effect out of an inner, unified, independent feeling, untroubled and even ignorant of anything foreign to it, then, whether it is born out of brute savagery or cultivated sensibility, it is whole and alive. You can observe in countries or individual persons innumerable degrees. The higher soul raises itself to the feeling for relations that solely are beautiful and eternal, whose main tenets one can prove while merely sensing their secrets and in which alone the life of godly genius is active, the more this beauty penetrates the essence of a spirit so that the two seem to have been created together and nothing else satisfies this spirit, then this spirit is correspondingly happier, and we stand more even deeply bowed in admiration of him who is anointed by God.