The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to add a few more thoughts to the lectures I have given here over the past few days. In earlier lectures, I have often spoken of a “genius of language.” And you already know from my book Theosophy that when we speak of spiritual beings in an anthroposophical context, we mean actual spiritual beings; thus, when we refer to the “genius of language,” we mean an actual spiritual being associated with each individual language into which human beings immerse themselves, and which, in a sense, gives them the power from spiritual worlds to express their thoughts—thoughts that initially exist within them as earthly beings as a “dead inheritance” from the spiritual world. Therefore, it is particularly appropriate in the anthroposophical context to seek a meaning in what appears as forms in language—a meaning that, to a certain degree, even originates independently of human beings from spiritual worlds.

[ 2 ] I have already pointed out the peculiar way in which we designate the very essence of art—the beautiful—and its opposite. We speak of the beautiful and, in the various languages, of its opposite—the ugly. If we were to describe the beautiful in exactly the same way as the ugly, then—since the opposite of hate is love—we would not have to speak of the beautiful, but rather of the lovely. We would then have to say “the lovely” and “the ugly.” But we speak of the beautiful and of the ugly, and—drawing on the genius of language—we make a significant distinction by designating one and its opposite in this way. The beautiful—if we take it first in the German language (for other languages, a similar term would have to be sought)—is, as a word, related to that which shines. That which is beautiful shines; that is, it brings its inner essence to the surface. This is, after all, the essence of the beautiful: that it does not conceal itself, but rather brings its inner nature to the surface, into its outer form, so that what is beautiful is that which reveals its inner nature through its outer form—the shining, that which radiates radiance—so that the radiance reveals the essence that radiates into the world. If we were to speak of the opposite of beauty in this sense, we would have to say: that which conceals itself, that which does not shine, that which withholds its essence and does not reveal what it is through its outer shell. When we speak of beauty, therefore, we are describing something objectively. If we were to speak just as objectively of the opposite of the beautiful, we would have to describe it with a word that would mean “that which conceals itself,” “that which appears outwardly different from what it is.” But here we depart from the objective, approach the subjective, and then describe our relationship to that which conceals itself, and find that we cannot love what conceals itself—we must hate it. Thus, that which presents us with a face different from what it is constitutes the opposite of beauty. But we do not describe it, so to speak, from the same foundation of our being; rather, we describe it from our emotions as that which is hateful to us, because it conceals itself, because it does not reveal itself.

[ 3 ] So when we listen closely to language, it is precisely the genius of language that can reveal itself to us. And we must ask ourselves: What are we actually striving for when, through art, we seek beauty—in the broadest sense, of course? What are we actually striving for? Already in the very fact that, out of the genius of language, we must choose a word for the beautiful that comes from within us—for the opposite, we do not step outside ourselves; we remain within ourselves, with our emotions, with hatred—already in the fact that we must step outside ourselves, we indicate that in the beautiful there is a relationship to the spiritual that lies outside us. For what is it that appears? That which we perceive with our senses need not “appear” to us; it simply is there. That which appears to us—that is, which radiates from the sensible realm and announces its essence within it—is the spiritual. Thus, when we speak objectively of the beautiful as beautiful, we grasp the artistically beautiful from the outset as a spiritual reality that reveals itself in the world through art. It is the task of art to grasp what appears—the radiance, the revelation of that which, as Spirit, interweaves and permeates the world. And all true art seeks the spiritual. Even if art, as may well be the case, seeks to depict the ugly or the repulsive, it does not seek to depict the sensually repulsive, but rather the spiritual that reveals its essence within the sensually repulsive. The ugly can become beautiful when the spiritual reveals itself in the ugly through its appearance. But it must be precisely this way; the connection to the spiritual must always be present if a work of art is to have a beautiful effect.

[ 4 ] Well, you see, let us consider, from this point of view, a single art form—let us say, painting. We have been examining it in recent days insofar as painting reveals the spiritual-essential through perceived color—that is, through the radiance within the color. One could say that in those times when people had a genuine inner understanding of color, they also entrusted themselves in the right way to the genius of language in order to place color within its worldly context. If you go back to ancient times, when there was an instinctive clairvoyance regarding these things, you will find, for example, metals that were perceived as revealing their inner essence through their color, yet were not named after earthly things. There is a connection between the names of the metals and the planets, because—if I may put it this way—people would have been ashamed to describe what is expressed through color as merely earthly. Color was regarded, in this sense, as something divine and spiritual that is bestowed upon earthly things only in the sense that I explained here a few days ago. When one perceived gold in its golden color, one saw in the gold not merely something earthly, but one saw in the golden color the sun announcing itself from the cosmos. Thus, even when one perceived color in an earthly object, one foresaw something that transcended the earth. It was only by ascending to living beings that one attributed their own colors to them, because living beings draw closer to the spirit, and thus the spiritual may also shine through them. And in the case of animals, one perceived that they have their own colors because the spiritual-soul aspect appears directly within them.

[ 5 ] But now you can go back to earlier times, when people experienced art not externally but internally. You see, there’s no painting at all in that context. Isn’t it true that painting a tree green, or “painting” a tree—it’s almost silly to say “painting a tree.” Painting a tree and painting it green—that’s not painting at all, because it’s not painting for the very reason that—no matter what one achieves in imitating nature—nature is always more beautiful and more essential. Nature is always more full of life. There’s no reason at all to imitate what’s out there in nature. But the true painter doesn’t do that either. The true painter uses the subject to—let’s say—let the sun shine upon it, or to observe some color reflection from the surroundings, to capture the interweaving and interplay of light and dark across an object. So the subject one paints actually always serves only as the occasion for painting. Of course, one never paints, say, a flower standing in front of the window; rather, one paints the light shining through the window, as seen through the flower. So one is actually painting the colored light of the sun. That is what one captures. And the flower is merely the occasion for capturing this light.

[ 6 ] When approaching the human figure, one can take an even more spiritual approach. To take the human forehead and paint it as a human forehead—as one believes one sees a human forehead—is actually nonsense; it is not painting. But the way a human forehead is exposed to the sun’s rays falling in such and such a way, the way a subdued light appears there in the glare, the way light and shadow play out—in short, everything that the subject inspires one to capture with paint and brush—that is the painter’s task: to capture what passes in an instant, and which one must now relate to something spiritual.

[ 7 ] If one has a painterly sensibility, then—let’s say—when one looks at an interior, one is by no means concerned with looking at the person kneeling before an altar, for example. I once visited an exhibition with someone. There we saw a person kneeling before an altar. We saw him from behind. The painter had set himself the task of capturing the sunlight streaming in through a window exactly as it appeared on the man’s back. Well, the man who was with me looking at the painting said: “I’d prefer it if we could see the person from the front!”—Yes, isn’t that so? That’s just a material interest; there’s no artistic interest there. He wanted the painter to express what kind of person this is and so on. But one is justified in doing so only if one intends to express what can be perceived through color. If I want to depict a person on a sickbed, suffering from a specific illness, and I study the complexion in order to grasp the manifestation of the illness through the sensory, then that can be artistic. If I also want to depict—let’s say, in its totality—the extent to which the entire cosmos is embodied in the human form, revealed through the color of human flesh, that, too, can be artistic. But if I try to imitate Mr. Lehmann as he sits there before me—first of all, I won’t succeed, will I? And secondly, that is not an artistic task; rather, what is artistic is how the sun shines on him, how the light is deflected by his bushy eyebrows. So what matters is how the whole world affects the being I am painting. And the means by which I achieve this is chiaroscuro, is color, is the capturing of a moment that is actually passing, and to fix it, I derive my justification in the manner described yesterday.

[ 8 ] Such things were certainly felt in those times, which are not so far removed from our own, in that one could not even create a mental image of a Mary, a Mother of God, without a transfigured face—that is, without a face overwhelmed by light and lifted out of the ordinary human condition by that overwhelming light. One could not form a mental image of her otherwise than in a red robe and a blue cloak, because only in this way is the Mother of God properly placed within earthly life: in the red robe with all the emotional aspects of the earthly realm, in the blue cloak the soulful aspect that she interweaves with the spiritual, and in the transfigured face, the spiritualized aspect, which is overwhelmed by the light as the revelation of the Spirit. But one cannot grasp this properly from an artistic standpoint as long as one merely feels it as I have just described it. I have now, so to speak, translated it into non-artistic terms. One feels it artistically only at the moment when, emerging from the red, from the blue, and from the light—by experiencing the light in its relationship to the colors and to the darkness as a world unto itself—one creates in such a way that one actually has nothing left but the color, and the color speaks to one so deeply that one can bring forth the Virgin Mary from the color and the interplay of light and darkness.

[ 9 ] But then, of course, one must know how to live with color; color must be something with which one lives. Color must be something that has emancipated itself from the heavy material. For the heavy material actually resists color when one wishes to use it artistically. That is why the entire art of painting resists painting with palette colors. They always retain a heaviness even after they have been applied to the surface. Nor can one live with palette colors. One can only live with liquid paint. And in the life that develops between the human being and the color when the color is liquid, and in that unique relationship that arises when one applies the liquid paint to the surface—there a life of color develops; there one truly grasps [life] from within the color itself; there the world emerges from color. Only then does the painterly emerge—when one perceives in the color the shining, the self-revelation, the radiance as something living, and from this radiant living essence actually brings forth what is to take shape on the surface. A world arises from it all by itself. For if you understand color, you understand an ingredient of the entire world.

[ 10 ] You see, Kant once said: Give me matter, and I will create a world out of it. - Well, you could have given him that matter a long time ago; you can be absolutely certain he wouldn’t have created a world out of it, because a world cannot be created from matter. But a world can certainly be created from the surging medium of colors. A world can indeed be created there, because every color has its immediate—I would say personally kinship-like—relationship to some spiritual aspect of the world. And today, with the exception of the primitive beginnings found in Impressionism and so on—and especially in Expressionism—which are, after all, just beginnings, the very concept of painting, the act of painting itself, has more or less been lost to us amid the general materialism of the age. For today, for the most part, people do not paint; rather, they imitate forms through a kind of drawing and then apply paint to the surface. But these are simply painted surfaces; this is not painting; it is not born out of color and the interplay of light and dark.

[ 11 ] However, one must not misunderstand things. If someone goes wild and simply slaps colors next to one another, believing that he is achieving what I have called “overcoming the drawing,” then he is completely missing the point of what I meant. For by “overcoming the drawing,” I do not mean having no drawing at all, but rather drawing the drawing out of the color, giving birth to it from the color. And the color already provides the drawing; one must simply know how to live within the color. This life within the realm of color then leads the true artist to be able to detach himself entirely from the rest of the world and to give birth to his works of art from within the realm of color.

[ 12 ] You can, for example, go back to, say, Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin.” There you have a work of art that, I would say, consists in an overstepping of the old artistic principle. That vibrant experience of color found in Raphael—and especially in Leonardo—is no longer present there, yet a certain tradition remains that prevents one from straying too far from this vitality of color. Take a moment to experience Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin.” When you look at it, you might say, “The green is screaming here, the red is screaming there, the blue too.” Yes, but then look at the individual elements. If you consider the interplay—I would say—of the individual colors even in Titian’s work, you still get a sense of how he lived within the colors and how, in this case, he truly brings all three worlds to life through them. Just look at the wonderful sequence of the three worlds. Below, the apostles witnessing the mystery of the Assumption of Mary. Look at how he brings them forth from the color. You can see in the colors how they are bound to the earth, but you do not sense any heaviness in the colors; rather, you sense only the darkness of the colors in the lower part of Titian’s painting, and in that darkness you experience the apostles’ being bound to the earth. In the entire treatment of color in the figure of Mary, you experience the intermediate realm. She is still connected to the earth below. Take a look at the painting sometime, if you have the opportunity, and see how the dull darkness from below permeates Mary’s coloring as a hue, and how the light then prevails—how the uppermost, the third realm, is already bathed in full light; I would say, Mary’s head, shining with full light, lifting her head upward, while her feet and legs are still bound downward by the color. Observe how the lower realm, the intermediate realm, and the heavenly realm—this reception of Mary by God the Father—are truly gradated in the inner experience of color. You might say that to understand this painting, one must actually forget everything else and view the whole thing solely through the lens of color, for it is from the color itself that the three-tiered structure of the world is drawn here—not conceptually, not intellectualistically, but entirely artistically. And one can say: It is truly the case that, for the painter, it is necessary to grasp this world of radiant light, of radiant self-revelation in light and shadow and in color, in order, on the one hand, to set apart that which is earthly and material—to distinguish the artistic from this earthly and material—and yet, at the same time, not to allow it to rise to the spiritual. For if one were to allow it to rise to the spiritual, it would no longer be appearance; then it would be wisdom. But wisdom is no longer artistic; wisdom already elevates it into the formless realm of the divine.

[ 13 ] One might therefore say: In the case of a true artist—such as Titian in his Assumption of the Virgin—when one looks at the scene above, specifically at God the Father receiving Mary, or rather, the head of Mary, one gets the feeling that one should not go any further in depicting the light. That is precisely where the line is drawn. The moment one begins to go further, one falls into intellectualism—that is, into the inartistic. One must not, so to speak, add even a single stroke beyond what is merely suggested by the light, not by the outline. For the moment one delves too deeply into the outline, it becomes intellectualistic—that is, unartistic. Toward the top, the painting indeed reaches a point where it hovers on the brink of being unartistic. The painters following Titian also fell prey to this very danger. Take a look at the angels right up to Titian. Isn’t it true that when we ascend into the heavenly realm, we encounter the angels? Notice how carefully they avoid stepping outside the paint. Even in the pre-Titian period—and in a certain sense, even with Titian, if you will—you can still look at the angels and ask: Couldn’t these also be clouds?—For if you cannot do that—if you cannot at least remain in a state of ambiguity between this “being” and “appearance,” if you have already fully entered into “being,” into the “being” of the spiritual—then it ceases to be artistic.

[ 14 ] If you look at the 17th century, things are immediately different. Here, materialism itself is already influencing the depiction of the spiritual. Here you see all those angels—painted, I would say, with a certain verve that is not artistic but rather routine, in all sorts of simplified forms—about which you can no longer say: Couldn’t these also be clouds? — Yes, here reflection is already at work; here the artistic aspect already comes to an end.

[ 15 ] And again, if you look at the apostles below, you get the feeling that, artistically speaking, the only figure in the “Assumption of Mary” is actually Mary herself. Above, the danger arises that it will slip into the purely wisdom-filled, the formless. If one truly achieves this—that one still holds onto the formless, recognizing that it is indeed formless—then that is precisely, I would say, on the one hand, at one pole, the culmination of the artistic—because it is a bold artistic endeavor, because one ventures to the very edge of the abyss where art ends, where one allows the colors to blur into the light, where, if one were to go further, one could only begin to draw. But drawing is not painting. So, moving upward from there, one approaches the realm of wisdom. And one is all the greater an artist the more one is able to incorporate this wisdom into the sensual realm; the more—if I may once again express myself concretely—one has the ability to ensure that the angels one paints can nevertheless also be perceived as dense clouds shimmering in the light in such and such a way, and the like.

[ 16 ] But if one moves from the bottom of the painting through what is truly beautiful—Mary herself, who is now truly soaring upward into the realm of wisdom—Titian is able to depict her as beautiful precisely because she has not yet arrived, but is only just beginning to soar upward. It all appears in such a way that one has the feeling: if she swings upward just a little more, she must enter into Wisdom. There, art has nothing more to say. But if we move down a little further, we come to the Apostles, and regarding the Apostles I told you: The artist seeks to depict the Apostles’ earthly bondage through the use of color. - But there he runs into another danger. If he were to place his Mary even further down, he could not depict her in her self-sustaining inner beauty. For if Mary were down there—one would not understand the purpose—sitting among the Apostles, well, she could not look the way she does in the middle between heaven and earth. She simply could not look that way. For you see, down below the Apostles stand in their brownish hues; Mary does not fit in there. For we cannot really stop at the idea that the Apostles down below carry the weight of the earth within themselves. Something else must come into play. This is where the element of drawing begins to play a major role. You can see this clearly in Titian’s distinctive painting; the drawing begins to play a major role. Why is that?

[ 17 ] Yes, in the brown—which, after all, already emerges from the color itself—one can no longer depict beauty in the same way as in the image of Mary; rather, something that does not quite fall within the realm of beauty must be depicted. And it must be beautiful precisely because something other than what is actually beautiful is revealed. You see, if Mary were sitting down there or standing among these apostles in the same color scheme, that would actually be offensive. That would be terribly offensive. I’m only talking about this particular painting now; I’m not saying that Mary, whenever she’s depicted on earth, must be artistically offensive, but in this painting, it would be a slap in the face to anyone viewing it artistically if Mary were standing down there. Why? You see, if she were standing down there in the same color scheme as the apostles, one would have to say that the artist depicted Mary as virtuous. That is, in fact, how he depicts the apostles. We cannot conceive of any other mental image than the apostles looking up in their virtue. But we cannot say that of Mary. With her, it is so self-evident that we must not express her virtue. It would be just as if we wanted to depict God as virtuous. Where something is self-evident, where it becomes something that is Being itself, it must not be depicted merely in outward appearance. That is why Mary must rise above, must be in a realm where she is transcendent of “virtue,” where, in what appears there in color, one cannot say of her that she is virtuous, just as one ought not to say of God Himself that He is virtuous. At most, He Himself can be virtue. But that is already an abstract statement; it ventures into the realm of philosophy. It has nothing to do with art. But in the case of the apostles below, we must say: Here the artist succeeds, through his treatment of color, in depicting the apostles themselves as virtuous people. They are virtuous.

[ 18 ] Let us once again try to approach the matter through linguistic insight. Virtue—what does it actually mean to be virtuous? To be virtuous means to be capable; for virtue is connected with being capable. To be fit, capable, or suitable for something means to be up to the task, to be able to accomplish something, to be capable of doing something—that is, to be virtuous. But of course, it ultimately depends on what one means by “virtuous” in context, as Goethe, for example, has also described, speaking of a triad: wisdom, appearance, and Powers—that is, virtue in this sense. Appearance = beauty, art. Wisdom = that which becomes knowledge, formless knowledge. Virtue, power = that which is truly capable, which is capable of something, whose Powers have significance.

[ 19 ] You see, this trinity has been revered since time immemorial. I could understand when, quite a number of years ago, a man told me he was sick and tired of people talking about the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, because anyone who wants to utter a phrase—an idealistic phrase—anywhere speaks of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. But one can look back to earlier times when these things were experienced with all human feeling, with all the interest of the human soul. And then, I would say, one sees—but in the manner of the Beautiful, of the Artistic—Wisdom in the Titian painting above, but not merely Wisdom; rather, as it still appears, so that it is still artistic, that it is painted. In the center is beauty, and below is virtue, that which is worthy. Now, however, one may inquire a little into the inner essence and significance of “that which is worthy.” If one explores these things, one arrives, through the genius of language, at the depth of the linguistic soul that creates among human beings. If one approaches the matter only superficially, one might recall, for example, how a deformed man once went to church and listened to a sermon in which the preacher explained to his congregation, in a superficial, formulaic manner, how everything in the world is good, beautiful, and purposeful. The overgrown man waited at the church door, and when the preacher came out, he asked him: “You said that everything in the world is good according to its own idea—have I also grown well?” Then the pastor said: “For an overgrown man, you’ve grown very well!” Well, isn’t it true that if one views things in this superficial way, one will not penetrate to the depths? Our current way of looking at things, in fact, proceeds in such a superficial manner in countless areas. People today fill themselves entirely with such superficial characteristics—namely, with such superficial definitions—and have no idea how they’re going around in circles with their ideas.

[ 20 ] Virtue is not about whether we are good for anything at all, but about whether we are suited for something spiritual—that is, whether we position ourselves within the spiritual world as human beings. The truly virtuous person is one who is a complete human being by bringing the spiritual within themselves to realization—not merely to revelation, but to realization through the will. But then one enters a realm that, while lying within the human sphere and extending into the religious, no longer lies within the realm of the artistic, least of all within the realm of the beautiful. Everything in the world is structured in polar opposites. That is why one can say, specifically regarding Titian’s painting: Toward the top, he readily exposes himself to the danger of moving beyond the beautiful, where he goes beyond the figure of Mary. There he stands at the abyss of wisdom. Toward the bottom, he stands at the other abyss. For as soon as we depict virtue—that which human beings are meant to realize through their own essence, drawn from the spiritual—we once again move beyond the beautiful, beyond the artistic. If we attempt to paint the truly virtuous human being, we may do so only by somehow characterizing virtue in the outward appearance—for my part, through contrast with vice. But the artistic depiction of virtue no longer truly reveals art; in our time, it is already a departure from the artistic.

[ 21 ] But isn’t there a departure from the artistic everywhere in our time when, I would say, living conditions are simply depicted in a crude, naturalistic way, without any real connection to the spiritual? Without this connection to the spiritual, there is no art. That is why, in our time, there is this striving in Impressionism and Expressionism to return once again to the spiritual. Even if this is often clumsy, even if it is often merely a beginning, it is nevertheless more than that which works with the model in a crude, naturalistic way—without any artistic sensibility. And if you understand the concept of artistic beauty in this way, then you will also be able, for example, to accommodate the tragic—to grasp the tragic in general in its artistic intervention in the world.

[ 22 ] A person who is guided by their thoughts, who leads an intellectualistic life, can never become tragic. And a person who lives a completely virtuous life can, in fact, never become tragic either. “A person can become tragic only if they are in some way inclined toward the demonic—that is, toward the spiritual.” A personality, a human being, only begins to become tragic when the demonic—for better or for worse—is present within them in some way. Today, we are in the age of the human being becoming free, where the “demonic human” is, in fact, an anachronism. That is the very essence of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch: that human beings grow out of the demonic to become free human beings. But as human beings become free, the possibility of the tragic ceases, so to speak. If you take the ancient tragic figures—even most of Shakespeare’s tragic figures—you find the inner demonic quality that leads to the tragic. Where human beings are manifestations of the demonic-spiritual, where the demonic-spiritual radiates through them and reveals itself, where human beings become, so to speak, the medium of the demonic—there the tragic has been possible. In this sense, the tragic will have to cease more or less, for humanity, having become free, must break away from the demonic. Today, humanity is not yet doing this. On the contrary, it is falling even deeper into the demonic.

[ 23 ] But this is, after all, the great task of our time, the mission of our age: for human beings to outgrow the demonic and grow into freedom. But if we rid ourselves of the inner demons—those forces that turn us into tragic personalities—we will find it all the more difficult to rid ourselves of the outer demonic. For the moment a person enters into a relationship with the outside world, something demonic begins to take hold even in the modern human being. Our thoughts must become freer and freer. And when, as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom, thoughts become the impulses for the will, the will, too, becomes free. These are also the polar opposites that can become free: free thoughts and free will. But in between lies the rest of what it means to be human, which is connected to karma. And just as the demonic once led to tragedy, so too, especially for modern human beings, the experience of karma can lead to a profound, innermost tragedy. But tragedy will only be able to flourish once people experience karma. As long as we remain with our thoughts, we can be free. When we clothe our thoughts in words, the words no longer belong to us. Just think of all that can come of a word I have spoken! It is taken up by another person. That person surrounds it with different emotions, with different feelings. The word lives on. As the word flies through the people of the present, it becomes a Power—one that originated in the human being, however. This is his karma, through which he is connected to the world, and which in turn can be unleashed back upon him. Tragedy can arise simply from the word, which leads a life of its own—because it no longer belongs to us, but to the genius of language. We see humanity today—I would say everywhere—prone to tragic situations due to an overestimation of language, an overestimation of the word. Nations are organized according to languages; they wish to organize themselves according to languages. This lays the foundation for a colossal tragedy that will befall the earth even in this century. This is the tragedy of karma. If we can speak of the tragedy of the past as a tragedy of demonology, we must speak of the tragedy of the future as the tragedy of karma.

[ 24 ] Art is eternal; its forms change. And if you accept that there is a connection between the spiritual and the artistic everywhere, you will understand that art is, after all, something through which one enters the spiritual world—both as a creator and as an appreciator. A true artist can create his work even in a desolate wilderness. It matters not to him which of the earthly people views the work—or whether anyone views it at all—for he has created within a different community; he has created within the spiritual-divine community. Gods have looked over his shoulder. He has created in the company of gods. What does it matter to the true artist whether any human being admires his work or not? That is why one can be an artist in complete solitude. But on the other hand, one cannot be an artist without truly placing one’s own creation into the world—which one then also views in terms of its spirituality—so that it lives within it. The creation that one places into the world must live within the world’s spirituality. If one forgets this spiritual connection, then art also changes, but it changes more or less into non-art.

[ 25 ] You see, artistic creation is really only possible if the artwork is situated within the context of the world. The artists of old were aware of this—those who, for example, painted their pictures on church walls—because there these images served as guides for the faithful, for those who professed their faith; the artists knew that this is part of earthly life, insofar as this earthly life is permeated by the spiritual.

[ 26 ] It’s hard to imagine anything worse than creating art for exhibitions instead of for something like that. Basically, the most dreadful thing is to walk through an art exhibition, for example, or a sculpture exhibition, where all sorts of things are hung haphazardly or placed side by side—things that don’t belong together at all—where it actually makes no sense for one thing to be next to another. The moment painting made the transition from painting for the church to painting for the home—even at that point, I would say—it lost its true meaning. When you paint something inside a frame, you can at least still have a mental image of looking out through a window, and what you see is out there, but it’s already nothing anymore. But now to actually paint for exhibitions! There’s no point in talking about it any further. Isn’t it true that an age which sees anything at all in exhibitions—which sees something possible there—has precisely lost its connection to art? And you can simply see from all that needs to happen in spiritual culture in order to find the way back to the spiritual-artistic. The exhibition, for example, must definitely be overcome. Certainly, among individual artists there is a distaste for the exhibition, but we live today in an age where the individual can do little unless the individual’s judgment is immersed in a worldview—one that, in turn, permeates people in their freedom, in full freedom, just as worldviews once permeated people in less free times and led to the emergence of true cultures, whereas today we have no true cultures.

[ 27 ] However, the development of true cultures—and thus also the development of true art—must be driven by an intellectual worldview that takes the highest interest in these matters.