On Intelligible Art without Violence

Not everything essential to the many watershed events of our time can be perceived. Important decisions are often made without a comprehensive understanding. Truth frequently remains unrecognised and misinterpreted. The unrest and chaos of our times release emotions that are difficult to control. The process of globalisation subordinates and enslaves the individual, rendering them powerless. Orders and laws are dictated by the governing authority, to which everyone is subjected absolutely and without recourse. Misjudgements multiply and provoke reflections not immediately apprehended by consciousness, because literature, art and music, as well as sport, technology, knowledge and science, are all potential causes of violence. The desire for material gain produces mechanistic thinking that hinders our understanding of reality. Speculative and manipulated, contemporary humanity loses its way with no means of finding itself. Searching for culprits does not solve the problem, because every person bears responsibility for their own life. Acknowledging one’s own guilt requires self-knowledge, and the surrounding world does nothing to encourage it. Fear and hope, too, may become sources of violence and causes of slander, cruelty, hypocrisy and cowardice. Ideas refer to experiences subjectively undergone by each person during their brief life. They constrain activity because they do not admit the presence of unimaginable beings in the present. Irresponsibility and ruthlessness intensify violence. Media reports inadvertently release violence. Religious disputes have a similar effect. The struggle for freedom produces victims of violence.

Early thinkers pointed to these causes without success, restricting themselves to phenomena and events while overlooking the spiritual aspect. Writing about spirituality and being at the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Parmenides used the term intelligibility to mean apprehension exclusively through the mind. Plato and Plotinus subsequently employed the concept, and Newton and Kant did so later. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kazimir Malevich, who did not know the term, succeeded in realising it in art and reminding us of the essence of spirituality. Through his work, he sought to make visible the symbiosis of spirit and body without using recognisable associations. The unity of spirit and body distinguishes the human being from the rest of nature. To translate this idea into a visual language, Malevich drew a cross. It seemed to him, however, too obvious a symbol, pointing towards religion rather than liberated spirituality. Reducing the four-armed cross, he subtracted its arms one by one until only a square remained at the centre. By connecting the square’s corners outside the drawing, he obtained the essence of the cross. Filling the square with black and placing it on a white ground, he realised a material form verifiable in the manner of natural science. Through this symbiosis of body and spirit, the intentionality of his endeavour became visible.

In the sixteenth century, an elaborately ornamented icon symbolising Russia was created. It was stolen and has never been recovered. After making the black square, Malevich is said to have exclaimed: “I have created something to replace the stolen icon, because it symbolises spiritual energy directed away from matter and towards spirituality.” This creative act remains unrecognised to this day and therefore requires recapitulation. Devoting oneself exclusively to entertainment and pleasure does not foster creative activity. A life of dignity requires independent decisions and responsibility for oneself. A path that avoids violence does not give rise to violence.

The exhibition Art without Violence does not concern stories, grievances, criticism, injunctions or illusions; it is an attempt to perceive forms of existence unknown to us. It constitutes a transformation between form and word, liberating us from familiar meanings and admitting unimaginable beings. It serves to penetrate deceptive truths, while creator and recipient occupy the same level. Intelligibility assumes that thought is the goal and the work merely a means of reaching that thought. Such art reveals beings that affect our lives yet are more than what we have learned to name. Our body marks the boundaries of our world and establishes contact with the microcosm surrounding our form. What we call imagination does not originate in the brain, but in what lies outside it. The evidence is clear and readily recognisable: we undress when it is warm and put on warm clothing when it is cold. This is merely one example among many existing realities that have not yet been scientifically understood but to which we submit, including radiation, radio waves, quantum energy, gravity, electrical charges, atoms and many others. We should not forget, however, that progress in the general sense cannot be achieved at the cost of spiritual impoverishment. These arguments constitute the motives behind the exhibition. It offers no solutions; it is not the end but the beginning of a path on which unimaginable beings may be intuited. The exhibition points to certain achievements consistent with the premises of intelligible art.

Gerhard Jürgen Blum-Kwiatkowski, born in 1930 in Faulen (now Ulanowo), was a German visual artist and art theorist. He created installations, artistic actions and several art collections. He lived and worked in Poland until 1974. He founded and became the first director of Galeria EL in Elbląg and created and organised the International Biennale of Spatial Forms, inaugurated in 1963 and continued until 1973. From 1974, the artist lived and worked in Germany, where he established several art stations in eastern Hesse. The last was the Museum Modern Art in Hünfeld, where he assembled an international art collection comprising more than three thousand objects.