Art is the expression of what I call faute de mieux metaphysical feeling, or in other words (please pay close attention) the expression of the directly given unity of our individuality in formal constructions of any elements (complex or simple), in such a way that these constructions affect us directly, and not through cognitive understanding.
Because the notion of Form is ambiguous and when used without making prior distinctions gives rise to hopeless misconceptions, I prefer instead the notion of Pure Form, which I define as a certain construction of any given elements, such as sounds, colors, words, or actions combined with utterances. Painting and music have simple elements, i.e., pure qualities, whereas poetry and theater have complex elements.
Every construction is a certain plurality of elements contained in a whole, in a unity. In contrast to utilitarian constructions (bridges, locomotives), whose external From is the result of their practical use, works of Art have an autonomous construction, not dependent on anything else, and it is precisely their constructional aspect that I call Pure Form.
The notion of Pure Form is a boundary concept, i.e., no work can ever be a model of absolutely Pure Form, since it is the work of a particular real individual, and not the creation of some unimaginable, abstract spirit. Metaphysical feeling grows polarized in the psyche of a particular person and creates an individualized Form, with the result that the emotional and imaginative elements play a part in the way the Form arises and render it impure in the completed work . . . .
Artistic creation is not a rational combination of elements in a certain whole but the result of the directly given unity of our "I," which in the creative act, by means of real-life feelings and perceptions, directly produces a formal construction, likewise directly acting as such on the viewer or listener, evoking within him a heightened feeling of the unity of his individuality.
However, the essence of a completed work of art is to be found not in those "emotional elements," or in other words, those real-life feelings and perceptions that render impure Pure Form (which in a given work can be isolated in the abstract only), but rather in the formal construction that directly arouses metaphysical feeling, which by the way can likewise be awakened by powerful tensions in real-life feelings, philosophical reflections, views of nature, dreams, or any kind of phenomena that transcends everyday experience . . .
What alone matters is the proper division between real life and the purely artistic elements, which in each work of art must exist in different proportions . . . .
In my opinion, beyond certain limits set by aesthetic considerations, the material used should be of no concern at all to us, since for the immediate "betterment" of mankind we have special institutions: the churches and the schools. I think that the social significance of the theater could be infinitely enhanced if it ceased being a place for taking a fresh look at life, for teaching and for expounding "views," and instead became a true temple for experiencing pure metaphysical feelings . . . .
The concept of Pure Form is a boundary concept and no work of Art can be created without real-life elements. Some sort of beings will always act and speak on the stage, parts of the compositions in paintings will always be more or less analogous to actual objects in the visible world, and the reason is the impossibility of dispensing with dynamic and directional tensions. I must stress that the Theory of Art as formulated above in its general outlines can in no way be used to impose rules on creative artists . . . .
There is no theoretical necessity that would prescribe deformation and deviation from sense. If we disregard the inessential period of realism and look at the works of the old masters in painting and theater, we see that they were able to unite to perfection Pure Form and a total absence of glaring deformation and absurdity.
Theoretically we too could create in the same way. In practice, however, it turns out to be impossible. Because Art acts as a kind of narcotic whose effect is to evoke what I have called metaphysical feeling through a grasp of formal constructions, and because the effect of every narcotic weakens with time, necessitating increased doses, we have reached the point where the works of the old masters have stopped making an impression on us, and Art, given the waning of metaphysical feelings in the course of social evolution, starting with the Greeks and continuing through the Renaissance, has degenerated to an imitation of life and the world. Art's inessential elements assumed the first place, and the formal aspect became reduced to the role of intensifying qualitatively different elements: real-life feelings and the sphere of intellectual concepts.
The revival of Pure Form, which in a final desperate effort opposes the tide of grayness and mechanization flooding the world, cannot in our present circumstances dispense with the use of non-sense and of deformation of the world.
But this is not because of the impossibility of expressing in preexisting forms feelings unknown to our predecessors, but because it has become necessary to expand the compositional, purely formal possibilities and to intensify and render more complex the means of formal creation and of producing an effect on those receiving the impressions.
Just as artists cannot fully express themselves formally in preexisting forms, so likewise spectators and listeners cannot through contemplation of these forms be roused to true aesthetic satisfaction. . . .
We must keep in mind that the expansion of compositional possibilities can be achieved only by means of certain deviations from now-hackneyed forms that realism caused to degenerate.
Reared in realistic ideology, we always ask of each work of art, "Well all right, but what is it trying to say? What is it supposed to represent? What is the 'idea' behind this work?" As soon as we fail to get satisfactory answers to these questions, we turn away in disgust from the work under discussion, swearing more or less politely and repeating triumphantly, "I don't understand." We do not want to grasp the simple truth that a work of Art does not express anything in the sense in which we have grown accustomed to use the word in real life. Thus it always has been and always will be until Art comes to an end, which probably (and fortunately) will not happen in the form of naturalistic stagnation, as our stormy and anguished times prove. We do not understand that a work of Art is what it is and nothing else, since we have grown accustomed to think that Art is the expression of some kind of real-life content, the representation of some real or fantastic worlds, something that has value only when compared to something else of which it is the reflection. Even if we actually experience something else, which was and is the deepest essence of our individuality -- its directly given, irreducible unity -- we pay no attention to this impression under the impact of an ideology falsified by realism . . . .
For those able to understand, Pure Form on the stage means that like the significance of concepts in poetry, actions themselves in conjunction with utterances are the very elements of theatrical construction, as sounds and colors are in music and painting. This is not the "musicalization" of painting and theater, it is the "paintification" of the former and the "theatricalization" of the latter -- a reminder to artists and spectators of the true value of these Arts, due to which the works of the great masters speak to us down the ages, regardless of different "ways of looking at life and at things" -- in other words, a reminder of their formal value . . . .
With regard to Art we must distinguish two forces: (1) the primal formal instinct of man, arising from the most profound principle of existence: unity in plurality, a principle of which we ourselves are the expression; and (2) the herd instinct, which finds expression in snobbery with regard both to the great works of the past and also to all kinds of novelty. Because of the first, what we call the great works of Art go down in history. Although the standard is relative, we can assert that it is the formal and not the real-life aspect of a work that determines its enduring quality. Of course, to this should be added the following determinants: the strength of his talent, or in other words the strength of his purely sensuous skills (sense of color, imaginative power, sense of stage effect and of tempo and rhythm), plus what determines the value of Art and is no longer a matter of talent, but rather what we call artistic creativity in the strict sense of the term: the ability to compose, to construct certain formal wholes, the realization of which depends on the strength of talent. . . .
A work of Art does not consist of a single pleasing sensuous element -- rather it is a composition or construction, which is made up of both pleasing and displeasing sensuous elements; it is directly perceived unity in plurality, giving a heightened feeling of the unity of one's individuality to the spectator and listener as well as to the artist at the moment of creation. The value of a work of Art does not depend on how faithfully it copies any reality, but on its constructional unity, which cannot be reduced to anything else. From this perspective the material used is of no importance, provided of course that is does not come to the fore in its own right and force the author to experience a variety of real-life emotions, whether uplifting or downright nasty.
A theatrical work in Pure Form is self-contained, autonomous, and in this sense absolute, despite the fact that there is not and cannot be any objective criterion for judging its value. The actors and actresses appearing in such a play, created by the director as a creative artist on a par with the author, do not impersonate more or less skillfully any sort of hypothetical people, but they create their roles within the overall totality of happenings on stage, consisting of formally joined actions, utterances, and images, capable of being put together, depending on compositional requirements, in the most fantastic way from the point of view of life and common sense.
In my opinion, the author is not at all the dominant figure, nor are the director and actors the renderers of his conception. He provides the kind of libretto that a writer gives a composer. Comparing musical performers to directors and actors is unfair to the latter.
Working together, the director and actors create the play on stage for the first time, naturally provided that they do not interpret it realistically, which can be done with any play. . . .
It is impossible to say whether we shall be able to attain the ideal of metaphysical beauty in the theater without perversity, "insatiable craving for form," and formal riotousness. Life is moving too fast and thus the rebirth of Pure Form is taking place in a way that may rather frighten the realistic ideologues who wish at least to doze undisturbed in the theater. But I think that even this is preferable to the senile torpor, spiritual tabes, and that mild feeblemindedness which is peering out at us from the gray, soulless atmosphere of a future full of socially disciplined automatons, unless we decide to blaze up and burn ourselves out in a splendid and menacing artistic cataclysm. . . .
What I am concerned with in a work of Art is formal ordering and composition, so that on stage a human being, or some other creature, could commit suicide because of the spilling of a glass of water, after having five minutes before danced with joy on account of his dearly beloved mother's death; so that a little five-year-old girl could give a lecture on Gauss's coordinates for apelike monsters beating gongs and constantly chanting the word kalafar, and then becoming a court of justice trying the case of the disappearance of a copper bell belonging to the director of private amusements for the Princess Chalatri, who after affectionately clapping her fiancé on the shoulder for tickling her favorite Doberman to death, then killed him with a cold smile for having accidentally brushed the dust off a withered geranium, the result being that the accused was sentenced to fifteen years of compulsory drinking of five liters daily of pineapple liqueur. Am I concerned with these or other similar facts as such? I have already said this many times -- I will once again say no -- three times over NO. (This is the concern at least in the theory of the futurists, some of whom, as true artists, despite their monstrous theory of realistic nonsense and childish dreams of "the futurization of life," are creating significant works in the sphere of Pure Form), but it is of no concern to me, either theoretically or practically. . . .
To pile up absurdities is one thing, and to create formal constructions, which have not been contrived in cold blood, is quite another. There is no specified degree of real-life truth or of fantastic psychology. Everything depends on in what formal construction a given effect is used and what is the formal relations of a given utterance or action to what went before and what comes after, quite independent of all relative truths and real-life experiences. What matters is that a play on stage should not be a copy of some "cosy little corner" or of a diabolical house of assignation; watching the action and listening to the dialogue, we should not need to be moved by the feelings per se, which we have more than enough of in life; we should not learn anything or resolve problems with the author, but watching the interwoven constructional stream of happenings, composed of actions, words, images, and musical impressions, we should find ourselves in the world of Formal Beauty, which has its own sense, its own logic, and its own TRUTH. Not the same truth as that of a realistic painting or of a "cosy little corner" on stage in relation to a real scene or a real events in life, but absolute Truth. Realistic art is always a more or less effective imitation of something, and the actors are better or worse imitators of beings assumed to be real. Art having a tendency toward Pure Form is something absolute, autonomous, something in which the acting creatures and their utterances exist only as parts of the whole, which occupies a given segment of time. Their past experiences can in no way concern us, unless they are formally linked with the present, and the same is even more true for their future.