Kunst und Kunsterkenntnis: Grundlagen einer neuen Ästhetik (1985) Rudolf Steiner
Starting from Goethe’s views, Steiner points a way to the sources of human imagination, to the psychological reasons for the need for art in general. He describes the background of artistic work and the importance that artistic activities have for society. How do we as human beings come to form art in the first place? Why do we go beyond nature in the arts, beyond the naturally given that we grasp with our physical senses? This central question ignites at the boundary between physical sensory experience and the supersensory experience that is experienced spiritually.
According to Steiner’s conception, when art is formed out of true artistic feeling, a testimony is created to man’s connection with supersensible worlds. For artistic creation is the bringing in of spiritual-supersensible worlds into the physical-sensual everyday life. For this purpose architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry have developed by humans. However, if we grasp what man puts into life as art only with our physical senses, then we deprive artistic creation of all meaning. In a materialistic age it is so that the supersensible origin of the artistic fades away and we are forced to live only in the outer appearances. Steiner sees the reason why people do not want to know anything about supersensible worlds in the fact that they also do not understand the sensual world anymore and therefore pleads for a training of the senses which, however, includes the supersensible.
Justus Theinart
Hochschule Darmstadt
Steiner, Rudolf. Kunst und Kunsterkenntnis: Grundlagen einer neuen Ästhetik. Dornach:Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1985 (engl. Art as Spiritual Activity. Translated by Catherine E.Creegerand Michael Howard. Hudson: Anthroposophic Press, 1998)