Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

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internal standpoint alone can one judge whether it is a good work of art or bad.”8

Kandinsky adopted the imagery of an acute angled triangle to graphically represent his vision of the evolutionary process leading towards the new epoch. The triangle was divided into horizontal sections, with the narrowest segment uppermost. The whole pyramid, he believed, could be portrayed as moving almost imperceptibly forward and upward—where the apex Is one day, the second segment will be tomorrow, and so on: “what today can be understood only by the apex, is tomorrow the thought and feeling of the second segment.”?

Kandinsky also included the Theosophists as “movers” of humanity, as well as those “professional men of learning who test matter again and again, who tremble before no problem, and who finally cast doubt on that very matter which was yesterday the foundation of everything, so that the whole universe rocks.”!° In this Kandinsky was reflecting the reaction of theosophists in general to the emergence of nuclear physics at the turn of the century. If matter was not matter after all, then could not everything be regarded as condensed and shaped spirit? Rudolf Steiner observed that matter was “dissolved into vapour and mist” in the face of such research.!! It also provided Kandinsky with an important justification for non-representational art: since matter was disappearing, the time was right for pure abstraction and concentration upon the internal life within objects.

Naturally, Kandinsky believed that artists constituted a significant section of the motor force behind this spiritual movement. In each ‘segment’ there exist artists who can see beyond the limited world of their fellows, and who therefore, as prophets, help the advance of the whole; despite the fact that they may be scorned and misunderstood in the short term. Their role as “torchbearers of truth” would eventually be recognised:

Every segment hungers, consciously or unconsciously, for adequate spiritual satisfactions. These are offered by artists, and for such satisfactions the segment below will tomorrow stretch out eager hands.!2

Art, for Kandinsky, was “a power which must be directed to the development and refinement of the human soul, to raising the triangle of the spirit.”!3 Many of these themes had been echoed by Mitrinovié in “Aesthetic Contemplations.” Like Kandinsky he had drawn a distinction between the vast majority of people and that small minority whose direction was forward and whose aim was “to embrace, to review, to be aware of and comprehend the entire horizon of truths, no matter how many.” Like Kandinsky he emphasised the role of the artist amongst this advance guard; those who,