De Stijl 1921

Hans Richter

Principles of the Art of Motion

Explanatory note. The drawings reproduced show the principal stages of processes which are conceived to be in motion. The complete works will be realized on film. The process itself: creative evolutions and revolutioni in the realm of the purely artistic (abstract forms); roughly analogous to the sounds of music in our ears. As in music the action (in a totally theoretical sense) is presented by pure material, and because all the material compari.. sons and associations have fallen away, it finds tensions and resolutions in the material, in an elemental, magical sense.
I

Genealogy (super-historical) (a) Cezanne, Derain and Picasso attempted, by scientific, intuitive methods, an analysis of natural objects, which resulted in the objective isolation of certain elementary relationships in form (and in the use of them in a single rhythm throughout the whole picture). (b) While these artists experimented with the natural object and related their findings to it, the advances did not proceed from the object itself but from the pure relationships of the forms to each other .. . This gives rise to the possibility not only of regarding painting as an art of planes, but of projecting it in time also. (c) Cezanne, Derain and Picasso did not, however, arrive at the concept of real motion as the impetus of the visual arts. This was because, in spite of the principle of polar construction on which all their work is based. Derain and Cezanne emphasize verisimilitude and thus (although this emphasis is synthetic) tie themselves down to something which prohibits a clear recognition of the relationships of the forms (which would lead to motion). For his part Picasso dissolves the natural object in the light of the pure formal relationships and thereby achieves new freedoms, but not of such consequence and rhythmic unity (synthesis) as Cezanne and Derain. (d) For reasons of this kind these painters were unable to recognize the problem of time. Only through the synthetic resolution of formal relation-

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ships which are based, not on nature, but on a polar, rhythmic principle of vision (where rhythm includes all its sub-divisions); only so did Viking Eggeling recognize the possibility of extending rhythmic actions in time and thus discover a new art form.

Continuo The 'language' (language of form) 'spoken' here is based on an 'alphabet' which arises from an elementary principle of observation: polarity. Polarity as a general principle = compositional method of every expression of form. Proportion, rhythm, number, intensity, position, sound, tempo, etc. Empirically it is the contrasting relationship of counterparts, large and small; spiritually, the analogy relationship of things which differ from each other in other spheres. Creative exchange and logical similarity and dissimilarity in the concept of the work in question. The great will and the visible goal of these works is not confined in them. The aesthetic principles of the alphabet point the way to the total work of art because these principles, which the artist uses synthetically, undogmatically, apply riot only to painting but equally to music, speech, dance, architecture, drama. The concept of a culture as the totality of all creative forces growing from a common root to an endless, multifarious form (not addition, but synthesis).
II

Definition ofart (a) Transcendental definition: Art = human urge to create. As such, the individual's means of giving himself a significance in the transcendental world. (Super-individual = striving towards the transcendental.) Art serves the realization of a higher unity: the idea of man in humanity: the bringing to perfection of the individual in a higher form of organization. The 'whole', humanity = synthesis of the individual (constructive principle). The will to reach this goal is an ethical requirement. Ethics are based on the belief that we are capable of a more perfect existence, and postulate that we behave in accordance with this belief: a total ethic (as opposed to a religious or phiJosophical ethic) requires that we act 'toward totality'. The creative relationship between the individual and the unity which contains him is synthetic; a logical relationship, creative, non-mathematical in kind. Singularity of the multifarious, meaningful relationship of the contrasts in analogies (polar synthesis).
III

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If human creat1v1ty (insofar as it is capable of synthesis) obtains significance from the idea of a total 'existence' then 'synthesis' is the distinguishing mark of transcendental purpose. The result of recognizing this = the fostering of this creativity which leads to the unity of all creative expressions of mankind-culture. (b) Practical definition: utmost economy of means. Only a true distipline of the elements and the most elemental application of them, allows for further construction on that foundation. One thing must be stressed again and again: art is not the subjective explosion of one individual, but an organic language of humanity with the most serious meaning, and must therefore, in its basic elements, be so free of error and so lapidary that it can really be used as such, as the language of mankind. It is a mistake to believe that t_ he significance of art lies in individual achievement; rather, art itself imposes upon the individual the general obligation to devote that part of his work which is subject to the will to the construction and enrichment of this very thought. The imposition of this scientific problem is not so much a restriction of the intuition (from which, ultimately, artistic activity springs) as its most basic material. Inspiration is indeed the first essential of a work of art, but the power to control the components is the necessary condition of completing one. (c) Critical relationship. As the language of the psyche= (art) has a more penetrating effect on people because it is less hedged about with conditions than the world of concepts, to which the misuse of the word has made us almost completely deaf, in the same way, a realistic- not a sentimentalkind of investigation and sifting of all the fundamentals of the language of art is of decisive importance for critical judgment. Appendix. There can be no doubt that the cinema, as the new sphere of operation for creative artists, will quickly be in great demand for the production of works of art. It is therefore all the more important to point out that a simple string of forms one after another is meaningless in itself, and that it can only be given meaning by art (as defined above). It is absolutely essential for this new art to be composed of clear, unambig uous elements. Without them it might well develop as a game-even a highly seductive game- but never as a language.
[Vol. IV, No. 7,pp.109-112]

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