О духовном в искусстве

"Vasily Kandinsky's seminal treatise, Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), sparked widespread interest in abstraction in the years leading up to World War I. The book, which he claimed had been gestating for nearly a decade, elucidated his artistic theories and his valuing of expression and spirituality over naturalistic representation. It also introduced his new pictorial categories derived from the field of music--impressions, improvisations, and compositions--which further de-emphasized the importance of recognizable subject matter. On the cover and in ten woodcuts, Kandinsky illustrated his ideas by reducing complex scenes of spiritual battle and redemption to simplified designs of lines and shapes. For Kandinsky, abstraction was a weapon for transforming what he perceived to be a corrupt, materialist society"--Museum of Modern Art website (description of original work in German).