Inner Necessity
The artist must be blind to distinctions between "recognized" or "unrecognized" conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and hearken to its words alone. Then he will with safety employ means both sanctioned and forbidden by his contemporaries.
, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911)
What does it mean to be “blind” to distinctions and “deaf” to the demands of one’s age? Kandinsky isn’t counseling ignorance. He’s describing a particular discipline of attention. The artist perceives the conventions clearly, hears the demands loudly, but doesn’t let these impressions reach the place where real decisions are made. There’s a deeper listening happening underneath.
Notice the verbs: the artist must “watch” the inner need and “hearken to its words.” Inner necessity, for Kandinsky, isn’t a vague feeling. It speaks. It has direction. The work is learning to hear it beneath the noise of what everyone else is saying.
The passage arrives at a strange permission: “Then he will with safety employ means both sanctioned and forbidden by his contemporaries.” We live in a moment when certain tools carry enormous charge—some celebrated as revolutionary, others dismissed as shortcuts. The debates about what’s acceptable are loud and everywhere. Kandinsky suggests these debates, however heated, are beside the point. Tools derive their meaning from what they serve.
But this is harder than it sounds. Inner necessity isn’t a voice that speaks clearly at first. It’s quiet, uncertain, easily drowned out by the more confident pronouncements of what everyone thinks or fears. Learning to “hearken to its words alone” might be the work of a lifetime. No tool, however powerful, can do this work for us.