De Stijl 1917-1931

The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art

[p. 209]

piet mondriaan
art and life

translated by til brugman (m.o.)

[p. 211]

new art - new life
(The Culture of Pure Relationship)

All contemporary art is, as a rule, considered to be ‘new art’.

But first of all, is contemporary art new indeed as long as there is not in its manifestation a definite difference between itself and the art of the past? Moreover, are all of us conscious of the fact that after the elapsing of a long period of culture the plastic expression of art becomes susceptible of a mutation likely to give birth to an art of a quite different aspect?

Art itself proves us that it must needs realize a positive change in the essentials of its manifestation in order to be really new, i.e., a positive alteration in the purely plastic expression, which does not subsist upon a figurative representation, but has to be created by the relations of the line and the colour or of the planes, they compose.

By the fact of its achieving this change, art does not merely show us that such a thing is possible, but it proves too, the exigency of it.

The fine arts themselves reveal to us that their essential plastic means are none

[p. 212]

but line, plane and colour. Though these means inevitably produce some form or otherwise when being composed, these forms are nevertheless anything but the essential plastic means of art. As to art these forms do exist as secondary or auxiliary plastic means only, yet by no means in order to secure a particular form. In following the aspect of nature, which brings forth the various forms, the art of the past established them however, in their particular character and in a more or less natural way, in spite of its intention to represent them merely in their plastic value.

Contrary to this past conception it is New Art that handles these forms in the way of art and not in the way of nature, i.e., New Art deals with them in their quality of plastic value only. It has realized that which the art of the past did not but try to realize. In New Art's manifestations forms are neutral as a consequence, and this the more so in proportion as they succeed in approaching the universal status.

It is in New Art only that line, plane and colour have revealed themselves freely, more or less.so according to its forms being more or less universal. In the art of the past, however, these plastic means were linked up with the particular form.

But just as well from the standpoint of relations New Art differs from the art of the past. Considering that the purely plastic expression is created by ‘the relationships’ of line, plane and colour, these means do not exist but by their relations. As a consequence the latter are as much to be taken into account as the former, the plastic means themselves.

In the art of the past the relations were veiled and confused as a result of the oppression caused by the natural form. Its composition did not exist but by the grace of the varied forms, in which. the composition was effectively lost. In New Art, on the other hand, the composition has manifested itself clearly by fonns that are neutral or universal, each form being strictly separated from the other.

The relations oppose themselves most distinctly to the plastic means, i.e., they are realized by them. In this way New Art has succeeded in that which the art of the past had been endeavouring to attain without being able to establish it.

Though, as a consequence, New Art does not - in general - distinguish itself from the art of the past but for the clear or equivalent expression of the plastic means and relations, none the less this difference has confessed to be of the highest importance to art, because it has been leading up to opening the way to the establishing of the plastic expression in a pure manner. Being no longer veiled in nature's aspect, New Art has been able to achieve the expression of a real equilibrium.

Although this deliverance of the purely plastic expression from nature's forms' oppression determines New Art, all modern art since impressionism has affirmed itself by frankly transforming the natural vision in so emphatic a way, that it would have been entitled to be considered as New Art in spite of all, if the art of the past had not equally transformed the natural vision.

[p. 213]

Notwithstanding the fact that the inmost tenor of art proves to be identical in New Art and in the art of the past, their expressions stand to antipodes. The art of the past, in its state of ripeness grown towards New Art, does not even recognize the latter. And New Art finds itself to be a stranger in face of that from which it has taken its origin. Yet, this phenomenon inheres to all life indeed.

As the plastic expression of art results from the two factors following: from the plastic means (forms, lines and colours) and from the relations, both proper and mutual, we are able to envisage the evolution of art from two points of view, viz.: from the point of view of the plastic means and from that of the relations.

Thanks to these two points of view we are enabled to foresee in the whole of past art's culture a mutation towards New Art. In a way that is getting clearer and clearer in the course of this process of culture we see the new form establishing itself.

From the point of view of the plastic means we discern since the very debut of art's culture:

that art, though cloaked in the natural aspect of reality, has opposed itself against its thus being disguised by slightly transforming nature's aspect;

that art has withdrawn from this aspect, freed itself from it and henceforth is revealing the relations thereof;

that art has done away with the subjective and the natural form, consequently, has given deliverance to the relations;

that art, in manifesting itself by means of purified forms, fragments of them and purely constructive elements, has got rid of the oppression exercised by the particular form, and is now visualizing the relations;

that art, in freeing the line and the colour from the particular form, has expressed itself by neutral forms or by a universal and unparalleled plastic means and is thus steering towards equivalent relations - creating them, in other terms.

From the point of view of relations we see:

that, despite the natural aspect of reality, in which it has been disguised, art has tried to reveal the relations of the line and the colour, so that the natural aspect was getting to be neutralized;

that art has annihilated the natural aspect and the particular form by relations ever growing towards a greater purity;

that art has realized exact and equivalent relations in order to annihilate even the neutral or universal forms as such and, thus, has succeeded in having line and colour manifesting themselves freely.

Considering this evolution of art's plastic expression we are enabled to determine exactly New Art. To begin with, let us fix its first appearanceat the moment of its starting to free itself from the oppressive particularity of the natural form, i.e., at the time that the plastic means do not anywise possess the natural aspect of things and that the relations do not follow the natural composition any longer.

[p. 214]

Owing to the development of the plastic expression, as indicated above, we recognize different degrees of evolution in New Art's progress. The true mutation, the new form of art, may be defined as the pure manifestation of the line and the colour by neutral or universal forms in their pure or equivalent relations.

In new painting we distinguish different tendencies. First of all there is the tendency of decomposing, transforming or dislocating the form - already more or less purified - to such a degree that the composition does no longer render the natural aspect. This tendency employs particular Forms, either as a whole or cut up, curved or straight lines, as well as geometrical forms. On the one side the works of Picasso and Braque, on the other side those of Kandinsky and Malevich are the most striking examples of this conception. Next to it there is the tendency of purified forms and a more or less abstract content. It is represented by the works of Leger, partly by the ones of Ozenfant and Jeanneret (purism), partly by those of Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy and Vordemberge-Gildewart, likewise by the works of the futurists (Prampolini), unless they fall back upon the figurative. Then we distinguish the tendency - chiefly Arp's creation - of neutral forms against a neutral background, in other words, of reduced forms beyond all kind of determination and, consequently, free of any particularity of the form. At the same time there is the tendency that prefers expressing itself by a rhythm of concentrical curved lines, rather than by abstract forms (Delaunay). Finally there is the tendency that seems exclusively to manifest itself by rectangular planes in colour and non-colour, though, in truth, it expresses only equivalent relations by straight lines in rectangular opposition and by primary colours. For, this sole means (the rectangular plane) annihilates itself in so far as it is a form, because of the fact that there is no opposition of other forms (Neo-Plasticism).

In sculpture corresponding tendencies are manifest and so are they in architecture.

Thus, art shows us in its secular culture that in the beginning the plastic expression of the relations of the line, plane and colour manifested itself veiled and confused, gradually evolving however, to a more and more direct way of expression. Though these two ways of expressing evidently got confounded in their transitory epochs, there is a mutation separating them definitely and creating thus, an art of the past and a new art.

As soon as art's culture had succeeded in the separating of them, it changed its own character too.

In all art two developments at the same time - supporting each other mutually - may be traced: the culture of the plastic means and that of the relations. But as to the art of the past these two cultures melted into each other and their actions were obscurely veiled, so that they seemed to be one single action only.

Though their actions are homogeneous at the core, in reality the development of the relations has suffered from that of the form, which obtruded because of

[p. 215]

its being ‘particular’. Yet, from the very moment of art's endeavouring to establish pure relations, the culture of relationships has opposed that of the particular form. Art was in need of pure plastic means. It has found them in the neutral forms, graduaily developed by the culture of the particular form.

By doing so the culture of the particular form itself came to an end.

The culture of art has proceeded on its way. Delivered from the oppression caused by the particular forms, the manifestation of the relations has been more and more prominently brought forward. Though the cultivation of the form, either purified or neutral, continues, we are, therefore, entitled to indicate this new development as the culture of pure relationships.

Opposing the particular form, this culture goes straight against the culture of the past. This explains the fierce struggle between the art of the past and New Art - notwithstanding the fact that the former did engender the latter.

In the same way as New Art manifests itself nowadays in the midst of the art of the past - prolonging up to our time - we now see how in the midst of the culture of the past New Life is springing into existence. Art is able to disclose to us the way in which this New Life is going to be born. By getting rid of all natural oppression it will end in liberating itself from the domination of the particular forms of all sorts and, by then, it will equally effect the realization of pure relationships.

In the same way as concrete life is engaged in extending, science, philosophy and religion are, too. Dogma after dogma has been quitted and ever so strenuously a clear representation of that which is universal has been sought after.

The new conception represents the varied verities as pure relations, - all their adherent limiting impurities being strained out - and, consequently, it is able to secure their position in equivalence, so that the one annihilates the other and the ‘truth’ may be felt directly and without any tricking.

New Life is preparing for the struggle as New Art once did. In life the two cultures have turned out to be as hostile to each other as they ever were in art.

But man's new mentality stands its ground everywhere and in all respects: New Life has begun.

As art has proved to be an expression of life - and ahead of it - we may state that New Life is the culture of pure relationships.

Quite as it is the case in the domain of art, so far as the plastic means are concerned, it is evident that to the benefit of this New Life, our mentality must be more or less purified. Surely this is not meant in the strain of the former puritanism, but in such a way that our mind may become superior to any oppression caused by the limiting particularity of the form. It is by doing so that life will succeed in exactly the same way as art once did: thus attaining - by means of pure relations between the individuals - their gradual freedom, a status of true equilibrium.

It goes without saying that art has to employ the new plastic means in the way

[p. 216]

of art, i.e., it must effect their equivalence. For neither the new plastic means nor the pure relations are the essence of the plastic expression of art. The essential is the equilibrium that can be realized by these means. And this now is the new, ‘open’, culture setting in, not only that of the pure relations, but equally that of the neutral form. And, as the searching for the equivalence of pure relationships necessitates a consistently growing abstraction of the form, universal forms only are apt to be composed in a true equivalence.

It is a consequence of this necessity that Neo-Plasticism has found its universal means of expression: the rectangular plane. When by doing so it has approached the end of the culture of the pure relations, all research, performed by means of neutral forms, has a share in the culture of pure relationships and therefore, all the tendencies, mentioned here previously, are New Art.

Art demonstrates that New Life is not in the least the simple creation of new forms and new relations in the individual, social, political and economical range, - though they will be so much the more just for all that, - but, too, that the status of purification serves only to make them more and more susceptible to the constitution of an entirely new organization, abolishing by its creating of equivalent relations all those particular concerns detrimental to others.

Exploring the province of fine arts' culture we come to detect - though in the different styles of the past the subject was more or less preponderant - that each of these styles has revealed the truth that not the subject does create the essential of the work's expression. Each one of these styles shows us that the purely plastic manifestation, i.e., the manifestation by the line and the colour only and by the planes they create, constitutes the work of art and that the subject and the particular form were none but secondary means with respect to the plastic expression.

At present we do not merely see the subject and the particular form rejected on account of their being primitive means of expression, - though in earlier days the subject and the particular form were of ever so great an importance to the work of art, - but we now see moreover, that for all things they are done away with because they are the limitators of this expression.

Up till now their being displayed has been prolonged by tradition and necessity, as well as by convention and inertia.

The mentality of the past was in need of these means, which were at first closely connected with the plastic expression. The fact that this state of affairs could go on for so long a time, and is still continuing of our days, can only be understood, if we do relate this phenomenon to the whole of human culture, which does not but crawl forward towards the liberation from primitive conceptions. Or, whilst keeping in mind that our intellect often tampers with the truth, so that it is possible for man's intuition to attain its evolution without this being realized for centuries to come.

The effort of New Art to suppress the subject and the particular form proves

[p. 217]

that they are a source of weakness and obscurity to our new mentality. To the spirit of the past, on the other side, the plastic means were, - if not brought forth by them, - at any rate closely connected with those two and fully estimated to be elevated and revived by them. If we decline to consider the new reality to be the poor error of some of us and know it for being an expression of New Life, art shows us that man has changed. In case New Art should be a mere misunderstanding, it is hard to catch how it is so strikingly in keeping with so many a new movement of life. Neither would it be clear that it holds its own here so well nor that it is even extending in an ever broader field of life.

Yet, not all are to be found fault with who do not suppress the subject and the particular form. All art is necessity, though this necessity is not yet the same for all of us. Moreover, if we speak of an art and of a mentality of the past and, on the other hand, of a new art and of a new mentality, this does not include that all those who love or make figurative art and cherish limitarian forms in life are consequently behind the times. The mentality of the individual may be well ahead of its expression. It is quite possible that one belongs to New Life's era, but has not yet come up with its manifestation so far. Or it may be that one realizes it in some other department of life. Very probably these people will reach the exact expression of New Life even quicker than those who are not convinced of the necessity of exact and neutral means in art and do not but superficially apply them. And, moreover, there are a good many human beings that are not acquainted with the tenor of the new plastics or, may be, not conscious of it. In life every sincere effort aims at human evolution, and so it does in art. Still, whilst observing things thoroughly, we come to learn that after all there is only one way of evolution, absolutely identical as to life and to art.

When we perceive that the plastic expression of art - which is universal - is ridding itself in an ever greater measure of the subjective, in liberating the form from its individual limitations, we get aware of the fact that our mentality is delivering itself from the oppression caused by that which is individualistic and is tending towards that which is universal.

This fact, proved to us by art, is of the utmost importance to life, because it tallies exactly with the basis of progress and indicates the way of it.

When we follow plastic art's culture, it teaches us that - not only so at its first appearance, but even in all figurative art - the purely plastic expression was wedded to a subject. The conscious base of religious art was the belief in the existence of a god or gods. This base created and determined the subject and by means of the latter - for a good deal - the work itself. Profane art, based on concrete life, chose other subjects, bringing about a quite different kind of beauty. But in all cases the subject was determined, established and limited and this the more so in proportion to the subject representing an action more strictly determinated. Thus we come to see that in the course of our plastic culture, which is centuries old, the subject was gradually getting confined to a simple reproduction of things the way they are after their proper nature. Although romanticism stuck for a still longer time to representing the subject in

[p. 218]

movement, realism got rid of this view, whilst representing nothing but heads, figures, landscapes and still-lives. By concentrating on the things themselves, in their universal aspect consequently, realism was the direct base, the debut of New Art.

Nevertheless we should always keep in mind that all art of the past was instrumental to the edification of New Art and that the whole of the different qualities of past art brought forth New Art.

The phenomenon that art at the first was not only closely coupled to the subject, but that it even was its offspring, is fully explained, as soon as we detect how man at the outset was not simply instinctively in need of creating, but equally of establishing, describing and explaining in order to deliver himself from that which he saw, felt and thought. He wanted to create, but his conception of reality was still in a primitive state and by far too much chained up to his natural instinct. Notwithstanding this, even under these conditions true art may be the result - though in a primitive way - because of the plastic expression prevailing in the work. Instances of this we have in the works of art of the ‘savage’ and in those of children. It is the same phenomenon as will be brought about in a period of greater or lesser primitivity by the influence of a superior force. Monarchs, saints and initiates did enhance the intuition of the peoples. In Egyptian and Greek art, as well as in the art of the Primitives, instances abound.

If in a more or less primitive period the intellect intervenes and one starts calculating, thus comparing the work of art to nature, - i.e., the moment man intends to follow nature's aspect, - the pure plastic expression dwarfs and dwindles. In the art of the lunatic too, we detect that the intellect is likely to tamper with this expression.

At the outset of plastic art's culture, when man was conscious of the particular expression, the universal expression of reality (in art: the plastic expression) was not but intuitively felt and manifested: the true creation of art was only realized in spite of the artist.

But, precisely because of this, the work of art might be a masterpiece.

Leading man up to a status of completer consciousness, human progress could not but bring about a degeneration of the plastic expression in itself and a perfection of the natural form. However, developing the intuition of man, this progress produced at the same time an evolution of the plastic expression. In this way it happened that art attained in the end a conscious expression of pure plastics.

Reflecting upon this, we understand that it is only the primitive intelligence that mars the pure plastic expression. The cultivated intelligence, on the contrary, creates a superior art. It is the beautiful object of art's culture to have finally realized the complete union of intuition and intellect in the work.

The moment we recognize the progress of art in the progress of concrete life, we see clearly that the perfectioning of all kinds of particular forms - quite as

[p. 219]

the progress in science en technics - was not but a seeming hindrance to the moral evolution and to that of the intuition. We even come to discover that they attain to a form of new life, on the contrary, a free life, apt, it too, to realize moral life in a true way.

Though in art the creating of that which is the essential of the plastic expression manifests itself always intuitively, it is, however, quite logical that this manifestation has been established and controlled consciously in our epoch. Supported by all technical experience in the line of plastic arts, by all aesthetical analysis as well, man in our days has come to understand the reasons why the manifestation of the plastic expression is either established in a clear or in a confused way. It has been perceived that by his copying nature he inevitably lands in a more or less vague representation of the purely plastic expression, which can only be realized through a rhythm of continuous opposition of lines and colours.

His attention fixed on the subject to begin with, afterwards fully preoccupied by the great variety of forms, the artist of the past neutralized both of them through the relations of values and dimensions he used to borrow from nature. Through the intermediary of these dimensional relations a composition of forms was established. But it did not manifest itself in an independent way, neither as to the subject nor as to the natural aspect of reality. Though the artist did not avail himself of the means adequate to a pure plastic expression, he none the less wanted to establish a perfect harmony as well. This impossible task required a truly exerting endeavour, of which the art of the past acquitted itself most admirably.

When making use of a subject - and even in applying a mere particular form - plastic art always displays a descriptive, literary side, thus veiling the purely plastic expression of the line, the colour and the relationships.

Though it is possible to generalize the particular representation, still it is - in any form whatever - an individual expression, in consequence of its unbalanced relations being opposing the universal expression of art's true tenor. This was the cause of its not being able to live up to a direct manifestation of this very content in the days of the past. But in spite of its figurative representation the art of the past teemed already with the intentions of pure plastics. The realization of this effort to an ever greater degree of veracity was the true tenor of the culture of the art of the past, prolonged unto our own time and giving birth to New Art.

The subjective - i.e., all figurative art springing from the particular form, - is the form that by the very structure of its own character, even after the suppressing of the subject still veils the pure manifestation of the plastic expression. This form, manifesting itself to the cost of the rhythm of the line and the colour, - both of them expressing in a direct way the essential of the work, - has been done away with by New Art. In the course of centuries the art of the past had been on its way towards this annihilation. It had been forerunning the double

[p. 220]

task of New Art: the revelation of pure relationships and the transformation of the particular form by reducing it. The aim of these actions is the liberation of the purely plastic means and the realization of the equivalent relations. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that both the plastic means and the relations, even in a pure state, are in no way the essentials of the work of art. As has been said above, the essential is the purely plastic expression, created ‘through’ these means.

That which art conveys and makes us see and feel by this purely plastic expression is difficult to determine. By it art expresses beauty, truth, goodness, grandeur and richness -the universe, man, nature.

Past aesthetics used to translate the essential expression of art by the term ‘harmony’. But is this word in art's deepest sense implicative of a universal mode, and is it, thus, of a sweeping validity as to any epoch?

New Art is able to disclose to us that in regard to the plastic expression its harmony differs absolutely from the harmony of the past, in other terms: New Art has manifested the same content in a quite different way. Here we have the reason why new aesthetics do speak of ‘equilibrium’ and not of ‘harmony’. ‘Harmony’, indeed, expresses a veiled condition, whereas equilibrium indicates an exact status.

Nevertheless, even in new aesthetics the word ‘equilibrium’ has given rise to a good deal of misunderstanding and to many an error to boot. In order to rectify these false interpretations there will be nothing for it, but to study thoroughly the plastic expression of New Art. Then it will be proved to demonstration that New Art's status of equilibrium is far from being a statical one, a state without movement, but, on the contrary, it will be shown that it is a continuous and interannihilating opposition of equivalent elements, the latter being though, anything but equal. On the other hand, this equilibrium does not manifest itself as a movement known to us in the range of our palpable reality, but it does so as a purely ‘plastic’ movement, created through the means of the oppositions of an equivalent character only.

In our epoch full of movement and action and burdened moreover, with real as well as spurious exigencies, which absorb almost completely the whole of us, the question whether this essential expression of art is one of real momentous benefit and utility to life is likely to rise. We need but turn our attention towards the distress, the discord and the lack of equilibrium of our to-day's existence, but get aware of the ‘emptiness’ of our time, and soon we shall be fully convinced that this essential expression of art is still necessary.

Though the art of the past - considered to be a thing of beauty not even skirting life, but doomed to keep quite aloof - is no longer desirable, yet New Art is, in consequence of its new expression, still indispensable to mankind, because it is liable to be its propelling force towards realizing - in life - a new beauty that will be ‘real’ in both the material and immaterial domains.

The exact expression of the rhythm of equivalent oppositions is able to enhance our sense of the value of the vital rhythm in a most thorough way and,

[p. 221]

through its new representation, to make us somewhat aware of the actual tenor of life.

In our days it does not only rest with the fine arts to reveal to us the rhythm of the equivalent oppositions. Both the new concert music, and the american jazz above all things, as well as the modern dance too, most emphatically tend towards the establishing of it. It is in the trend of our time to be aware of the value of concrete, practical life. Let us therefore try to perfect it by the realizing of that which is the essential of human life.

In order to understand the equilibrium of New Art to the full we are bound to spare no trouble whatever as to a painstaking analysis of that which the new plastic expression draws our attention to. It then, shows us that the neutral or universal forms and their relations do create a rhythm that, owing to the structure itself of these forms, is the rhythm of the line and the colour only and of these two simply and solely in their mutual relationships.

It is merely the rhythm that realizes equilibrium and, thus determines the proper character of it. The way it actually creates this equilibrium is so subtle a process that abstaining from solving this problem is almost the only thing to do. In one way it is the mode and method of executing the application and the use of the plastic means on the other side it is the nature itself of these means and relations, which compose the work of art.

Never in itself was the rhythm of the line and the colour - consequently the rhythm stripped of all particularities of the form - represented in a profound and vivid way by the art of the past. In the few cases, in which the art of the past did establish it because of its leaving alone the subject, the rhythm happened to turn out to be brought about in a superficial manner, viz., in the way of a mere ornamentation. And even then the rhythm used to be linked up with some particular form or otherwise. Nevertheless, as in Byzantine art, there were some rare exceptions, in which the rhythm - in spite of these forms - did express itself to such a high degree of profundity, that the work, rising above any such a thing as ornamentation, reached the level of true art. Therefore, in spite of the centuries separating them from New Art, these works have a most direct point of contact with it.

Through the means of neutral or universal forms and their pure relations New Art has constituted a rhythm free from all oppression by the form. Premising the fact that in all New Art the rhythm dominates, and that the neutral or universal forms do not, New Art's plastic expression is stronger to the new mentality, than art's expression of former times was ever apt to be.

Notwithstanding this, the various tendencies of New Art reveal the rhythm in different ways. All seek for expressing, consciously or unconsciously, the principal opposition of the rhythm, i.e., the two opposing aspects as they are found, e.g., in the two dimensions (the height and width) of a work of art. In approach-

[p. 222]

ing the equivalence of these two oppositions not only an exact equilibrium in the work will be accomplished, but, moreover, its maximum strength can be attained.

Among the divers tendencies of New Art there are two that seem to oppose each other by the different character of their rhythms. They are: the tendency expressing itself through a rhythm established by concentric curved lines, and the tendency manifesting itself through the means of straight lines in a rectangular opposition. The first accomplishes a rhythm of undulations in concentric curves, the second creates a rhythm by cadence. Though concentric curves cannot have the expression of the opposition, these two tendencies are not contradictory, but by their application of different means; because the tendency of the curves introduces neutral forms into the work, by which the same contrarious opposition is effected as is expressed by the other tendency in an exact way. Consequently both tendencies are manifestations of one and the same will at the root, their aims being equally the searching for the equivalent contrarious opposition.

Yet there are aestheticians who deny the value of the expression of rhythm by means of the cadence of straight lines. They are not willing to acknowledge any rhythm, but that of undulation. The fact is that they are not aware of the value of the exact expression of the contrarious opposition. Or, maybe, their attitude is only due to the still lasting influence of the past, which followed but nature and, as a consequence, expressed a more or less natural rhythm. In any case they use to give countenance ta their standpoint by alleging to the fact that also in certain masterpieces of the past this rhythm of curves can be traced. If we take the ground of a purely aesthetical analysis and neglect heeding the fact that the artist is able to create art with any means after all, we are entitled to state that the rhythm of the cadence of straight lines in rectangular opposition is a purely plastic expression and that the rhythm of the undulation of curves is more ‘natural’. For, in nature these undulations manifest themselves; e.g., we detect them after having thrown a stone in a pond, in the transverse section of a tree-runk, etc. etc. The cadence of straight lines in rectangular opposition, however, has to be created by man. There is no reason whatever to believe this cadence to be any more monotonous than the rhythm of undulations: both expressions, indeed, have one and the same exigency, viz., a variable measure. But that of the straight lines is able to express itself in an exactly equivalent way.

Art has shown us in the course of its culture that precisely for the sake of this sticking to the natural aspect the equilibrium did not manifest itself in a clear way because of the simple fact that in such a case the rhythm was not realized by pure plastic means, but through the intermediary of the particular form.

It is evident that primitive man, living in harmony with nature, was in tune with this natural rhythm, resulting in his trying to express it in art. Nevertheless, primitive man must logically bear within himself the germ of mankind at its

[p. 223]

apogee and, consequently, its rhythm at this summit too, though be it more or less hidden as long as the human rhythm is dominated by the physical feature. In course of this evolution towards the status of ‘man’, he himself, thus, is opposing the natural rhythm to an ever higher degree. This is the cause of his lack of equilibrium, inward and outward. The more man is progressing, the more the rhythm in his innermost self will assert its influence and equally the more his strength to bring it into equivalence with his physical rhythm-likewise transformed meanwhile-will be increased. In this way a ‘rhythm of man’ is going to be created, being material and immaterial at the same time. The more these two oppositions of his rhythm will be counterpoised, the more man will attain to a state of equilibration and become integrally human.

It is evident that during the whole of its evolution the human rhythm will oppose the outward natural rhythm, and this the more so according to man's own progressing. Therefore it is logical that man has transformed-as far as he was able to do so-the natural aspect and the natural life in order to create a rhythm, outside of himself.

This effort can be retraced in art, and to some extent it accounts for the imperious necessity of the transformation it has been submitting the natural aspect and the particular form to, though be it in an abstract and free domain. But it is even of a much greater importance that man should transform the rhythm of life, of which he participates. Though it is, therefore, logical that man-whilst evolving-has tried to reduce nature's aspect as well as the physically dominating feature of life, he is not continuously conscious of this necessity.

There are even lots of people opposing a palpable reality and a non-natural life. On the other side it is man that evolves. Often people do not detect the progress of man in the immaterial range. They lack the sense of the ‘real’ and, evidently because of this, they do not attain the status of man, being integrally human, in other terms: they do not reach the status of complete evolution. But life itself advances in spite of all, and the culture of the material aspect accomplishes its line of evolution as well as the immaterial aspect does.

The material aspect is diminishing in contrast to the immaterial aspect which is gradually intensifying.

By its interiorization of the natural aspect and its exteriorization of the aspect ‘man’ in the work of art, art acquaints us with this phenomenon. In spite of all its shortcomings during the course of the culture of the particular form, art discloses to us that the progress of civilization has been fulfilling its task of reducing the oppression from the side of the physical aspect-which is ‘natural’ precisely because of its cultivating the material feature of life. In this train of thought the problems of alcohol and tobacco present themselves, too, as being absolutely different from the way they used to be envisaged. It is by our transforming the physical aspect (in the sense of a reduction) that the latter recreates itself into a superior aspect. Only then it is that its rhythm, thus accelerated, is going to tend towards being in full equivalence with the immaterial rhythm of man, having equally evolved.

[p. 224]

Consequently, there is no reason whatever to rebel against the accelerated rhythm of our epoch. Its tempo, quicker than that of the natural rhythm, is explained by the fact, - as we have been taught by science - that any ‘life’ more inward or more refined possesses an increasingly accelerated vibration.

As a consequence, we ought, on the contrary, even to revolt against all those limitations, occasioned by the oppressive forms, of which life is composed, because - exactly as it is the case in art - these limitations cause the disequilibrium of life. Moreover, equally on the same footing as in art, the forms liberated, i.e., purified, will have to be raised to the status of mutual equivalence by means of pure relations. The double action of art may be traced anywhere in life.

Therefore it is of considerable importance to mankind that art has manifested the rhythm of constant, though variable, opposition of the two principal aspects of all life in an absolute exact way. The rhythm of the straight lines in rectangular opposition indicates the necessity of the equivalence of these two aspects in life: the equal value of the material and immaterial aspect, of the masculine and feminine, the collective and the individual, etc., etc. Quite as the vertical line possesses another character than the horizontal one, the two aspects in life have their proper and opposite characters. But not lesser the same as in art, these lines have their different dimensions: the individuals and their collectives are of a different vigour or grandeur. Art proves us that life is approachable to a real equilibrium through the means of an equivalence of its opposite aspects even in spite of their different features.

Just as the rhythm of the cadence of the straight lines in rectangular opposition communicates to us the tenor of the rhythm of art, this simple rhythm clearly discloses to us the content of the profound rhythm of all that exists. To some extent it unveils to us the real life - which is at the core of man and the essential of our practical life. Simple though this rhythm may be, it nevertheless cannot achieve its complete realization in man as long as he has not attained the status of integral humanity, i.e., the equivalence of his two aspects.

This real life bears no supernatural feature whatever, nothing metaphysical is at the root, but it maintains itself by the oppressing of the physical aspect and the particular forms, by limiting the material and the immaterial as well. This real life is the base of our practical life and, consequently, of both the life of the past and New Life. By the latter no other life is meant, but that which we virtually know for its having been delivered from the natural and primitive oppression and for its constituting the pure relations: conclusively, a superior status of actual life.

Equally as art is drawing nearer and nearer to the pure expression of its true rhythm, life is getting closer and closer towards realizing the true rhythm of life. Thus, this real life will not always remain on the imaginary plane. Though its very fulfilment transposes us into the obscurity of a rather far future, it, nevertheless, does realize itself. Because of this it is of the utmost importance that in

[p. 225]

the midst of our practical life - through and in which it comes to its realization - we never should lose sight of this real life.

Art proves us that the true realization of real life requires: individual freedom. New Life is going to attain this liberty in the material and immaterial range of life. In the status to come, thus, joining his fellowmen by means of equivalent mutual relations, the individual will not in the least suffer from lack of freedom, exactly because of these very relations.

New Art grants an independent existence to the line and the colour in the sense of their being neither oppressed nor disfigured by the particular form, but of their shaping their own limitations by themselves and this in the exactest appropriation to their proper nature. Thus, society will equally grant an independent existence, homogeneous to its proper character, to every individual in future New Life.

In its end art shows us that the individual freedom - an ‘ideal’ until now - will be once realized in the far future. This freedom, however, requires that status of evolution of man, in which he does no longer abuse of his liberty. Is this abusing, perhaps, the reason why actual life does not impart us freedom? And, could not it be the ground, too, for tyranny being still tolerated?

Due to man's present inequality the one of us suffers from the other. Nothing but the developing, educating and cultivating of mankind can free us from this affliction. They are the only mediums for our attaining individual freedom, because they push us forward towards mutual equality.

As the independence of cultivated individuals is susceptible of creating a superior life, the lack of independence in the past - and in our days as well - accounts for the retarding of human evolution. If we only look unbiasedly for the cause of nearly all stains on our social and private life, we soon detect that the state of dependency - in which we virtually lose ourselves - is at the bottom of each of these deviations. It is not always human cowardice, weakness or wickedness that leads man to dishonest deeds or forces him into disastrous situations. On the contrary, as a rule it is the necessity of securing his own livelihood that evokes all these calamities.

Especially the material or immaterial dependency brings about the decadence of life, the degeneration of man and the delay of human progress.

One of the worst vices of man is the exploitation of his fellowmen. From lack of energy or from incapacity of building up his proper existence by his own strength, he is after the assistance of the others. If, when exchanging equivalent values or virtues, one makes up for the values or virtues accepted, there is no fault to find with. But, commonly, the others are abused of, they are taken advantage of, whilst they are being exposed to suffering from this mean attitude. In our to-day's society the exploitation of the others is practised in so cunning a way that this vileness almost manages to remain unpunished. It is not even

[p. 226]

possible to defend oneself against such machinations. Still, they are felonies, no lesser than those which are ever so severely punished. The exploiting of others is most indeed a theft.

But no protesting is likely to change for the better this detestable social situation, which is guilty of allowing our mutual exploitation. Nothing but life itself will do away with this abuse. The progress of civilization - though often effecting it - will render it impossible in the end.

Warranting man an independent existence in the material as well as in the immaterial domain of life is the most urgent task, to which we have, thus, to apply ourselves first of all.

New Life will never liberate man, but for his continuously cultivating of the individual and his mutual relations. By this culture the real life, existent in man's inmost being, is realized to an ever higher degree in our concrete life. Because of this real life being universal, man is entitled to tend to it, and it is equally his duty to work towards its future realization.

As it has been symbolished by the Adam of the biblical paradise in so marvelous a way, perfect man has a right to live without worry, even without work. It is under these conditions only that man will ever reach the state of really free breathing, i.e., of his getting aware of his rhythm being homogeneous with the vital rhythm and, thus alike everywhere and in all. The contrarious, constant and cadenced opposition of this rhythm once being balanced, man will live in a perfect equilibrium.

In fact, life is simple in its essence. Though it is growing more and more complicated, still simplicity need not be lost.

Complexity requires perfection, simplicity being the perfect state of man.

In following the rhythm of the two contrasting oppositions of the straight line, we may say that real life in man's inmost being is but an action of balanced opposition, being - just as the double movement of respiration, e.g., - contrasting and complementing at the same time. In truth, it is the pure expression of the vital rhythm, determined by Dr. Jaworsky as the double movement of interiorization and exteriorization, and which was indicated by the wisdom of the ancient world as the actions of expansion and compression or limitation. It is interesting to follow Dr. Jaworsky with respect to this phenomenon, when he says:

‘These two movements of interiorization and exteriorization are combined and they counterbalance without their ever confounding. And this perpetual rhythm, this complexity without confusion of the two contrasting currents can be retraced everywhere in life.’

It is only in man integrally human, i.e., in man on the pinnacle of human culture, that this balanced rhythm will be realized in the material and immaterial domain. Because of its being freer than life, art has already been able to manifest it.

Man integrally human is the perfect primitive human being having come to consciousness. Adam, the perfect primitive man, was not conscious of life.

[p. 227]

Therefore, how could he have contrived to realize it without this consciousness? In order to arrive at consciousness man wants culture, experience and knowledge. Such is the tenor of every man's life from the cradle to the grave.

In order to gain experience and knowledge man is in want of a total opposition. As it has been shown by the creation of Eve in the biblical version, primitive man was not only in need of an opposition outside of himself - contrasting and at the same time homogeneous - but equally he was in want of an overturning of his balanced status. In this way he was getting conscious of his own duality, i.e., of the opposition peculiar to his own rhythm.

After having become unbalanced in the course of its evolution, the reciprocal action of the two oppositions of the human rhythm will again attain to the equivalence of its oppositions and, by doing so, regain the equilibrium of this rhythm.

The rhythm of the contrasting opposition of the straight line, thus demonstrates the necessity of separating that which seems to be a unity, for the sake of attaining a ‘real’ status. The fact that art has disclosed this to us is of the highest significance, because this real status is the only one that is truly vivid to us.

To our benefit art has abstracted the rhythm of the contrasting oppositions of the straight line from the particular forms. For, being a universal representation of these forms, art makes us conceive that a more or less natural reality, after its having been transformed into a more universal aspect, still remains a ‘reality’.

Yet, the real life within our inmost being has not yet been brought to concreteness. Though being balanced, it is realized unbalanced inside and outside of us. Notwithstanding this, it does exist, as is clearly shown to us by the equilibrated rhythm of the contrasting oppositions of art. And it is not only the culmination of human life, but also the profound content of the life of everyone of us.

Full comprehension of the equivalence of the contrasting oppositions of the rhythm of art is able to support us in our working more consciously towards the edification of a truly human life. For, it is exactly this establishing of the equilibrium by means of the equivalence of the two fundamental oppositions, which man takes the least trouble of.

Yet it is this equivalence that creates individual freedom, delivers us from suffering and liberates us from the delimiting material and immaterial forms.

A general purification of the forms and relations has already been taken up to a rather considerable extent. But a thorough consciousness about the necessity of our searching towards the edification of their mutual and real equivalence is still insufficiently acquired. This is evidenced both by life and by our material environment, i.e., in a most preponderant way by modern architecture. None the less, the aspect of our palpable surroundings, is of the utmost influence on our mentality and, therefore, our applying ourselves sincerely to them is neither

[p. 228]

superfluous nor extravagant. It is only through their equivalent relations that the oppression by the particular form is annihilated and that life's tragical feature is no longer reflected in our palpable ambiance.

In architecture as well as everywhere in the whole of our surroundings we of our days come already across purified forms, straight or running lines and pure colours. However, as a rule, they still happen to turn out to be but particular forms after all.

On the other side we see some researching going on into the more or less equilibrated relations, but this again is done by means of the particular forms. In spite of their new appearance these works, too, stand confessed of belonging to the past: they are not ‘open’ because of their lack of purified forms. Or, in case they are purified at all, these forms are not annihilated by their equivalent oppositions. In spite of all their qualities as to technics, construction and new materials, the impression these works offer has a depressing effect on the new mentality, because again it is carried back to the past.

The same things happen in actual life. A new mentality has been striking root and the researching into a stable equilibrium has set in. But it is no use trying to approach this equilibrium by a status of non-equivalence, either personal or mutual. Exactly because of this non-equivalence man's mentality remains ‘closed’ either so far as it is a limiting form in itself or within the limiting forms of all kinds, within all sorts of fugitive interests, that is. Virtually it is not only a question of the conventional forms being obstructive as to New Life, even the greater part of the ‘new’ forms, which have been established in the political, social and economical domains, are no less in its way. In this connection let us but quote that, e.g., aristocratic limitations will be seen resuscitated under the mask of democratic forms, or that most ‘socialism’ reveals itself to be synonymous of ‘bourgeoisie’.

Even, in spite of all his immaterial perfection, modern man, though cultivated and refined, does not participate of the real new mentality, unless he is in search of this equivalence.

Nevertheless New Life has been announced in our material surroundings, as well as in our private and collective life. The purification of the form and the researching into the pure relations are not only demonstrated by our buildings, but by all that modern man creates: utensils, furniture, means of communication and of transport, window-dressing, lighting for advertising purposes and for daily use, etc., etc. All these acquirements are ever so many proofs of a new culture, parallel to that of New Art. And life itself shows us an identical way: the culture of the pure relations is going to annihilate all that which opposes the equivalent relations we have to create.

To-day already we are enabled to retrace art's effort in life. More and more a stable equilibrium is searched after in the right way. Only the old particular forms, cultivated by tradition and cherished by man's self-interest, individual as

[p. 229]

well as collective, oppose this equilibrium. For some smaller space of time it has been possible to constitute an apparent harmony thus far, dissimulating the sufferings of the greater part of human beings, but it has not even been feasible to recreate this harmony of the art of the past in life. The fact that, notwithstanding this, a real equilibrium is gradually established, is of so overwhelming a complexity in life that it is even more difficult to illustrate it here than it is in art. But we begin to see things in an ever better light. Art, too, has not shown its true tenor, but for this very time, consequently, not before the end of its culture of the particular form, i.e., at the opening of its culture of the pure relations only. Art is ahead of life: that which we are able to detect in present life is but the preludium of New Life.

Therefore, let us observe the course of human culture in the free domain of art, to wit: its progressing towards the real liberation from any forms and towards the equivalence of their mutual relationships - towards a life of true equilibrium.

As in art this progress is based on the freedom from the oppression by any form, we at once understand that the way of progress never can tend towards the reconstruction of primitive and oppressive forms in life either.

Still, though, progress shows to be our liberator, there is nowadays a strong leaning towards a regression to primitive life. This, however, does not always brand the person in question to be of a backward state of mind and more or less primitive in his views. There are a good deal of human beings of great sincerity, cultivated, even learned, seeking -because of their rightly being disgusted at the actual state of civilized life - to orientate their minds towards a life of greater health and greater purity. They suppose it to be found in a ‘natural’ life. On the other hand, a good many ‘modern’ people, lost in ecstacy in front of the progress of civilization, are not conscious of its true content, and - unwittingly - they are ‘that fond of progress’ exclusively because of the advantages and the commodities it offers them. But are not those belonging to the first category somewhat in too great a haste concerning the result of progress, because they are impatient for its immediate effect? Is not the good created by the evil as well? It seems that they do not quite see that which progress really embraces. They lack full reliance upon life the way it manifests itself. And, indeed, if we do not see the deformations of life as ever so many transformations, it certainly is difficult to declare: all is well the way it is.

If we expect to live and see the realization of New Life already at present, it is evident that we are on the wrong track. It rests with us to exclude all speculative ideas and ideals and to try to observe clearly the virtual state of affairs: we ought to explore reality. If by doing so we detect that which is symptomatic of future New Life, we then shall muster up strength enough for preparing this life to come. May those who are able to discern these things give all their powers to the cultivating of a new mentality, apt to realize equivalent relations; and devote their best endeavours to the constitution of such relations as are liable to grow, individually and mutually, more and more pure.

[p. 230]

To the majority of us war has become an object of repugnance. On the other side a life of true equilibration seems to many a human being akin to ‘death’. for similar reasons New Art, too, uses to be condemned by our conservative aestheticians. But the fact that New Art does not seem to be vivid to those who love figurative art is the consequence of their not perceiving the essential expression of new plastics. On the other hand the phenomenon, that the abstract means do not in the least obstruct its yet being manifested is fully explained by the fact that this essential expression has always been evoked by the rhythm of the relations of the line and the colour only. As soon as this rhythm is represented by the ‘artist’, the work of art cannot be ‘empty’. The same holds good as to life: as New Life is expressing the vital rhythm, it cannot resemble death.

In spite of all the deviations of our civilization - and sometimes precisely because of them - the liberating phenomenon of art is as well awakening in life. Though it is still oppressed by forms of all sorts, New Life is on its way of getting itself freed from these obstacles. In case some of us should cast doubt upon these facts or shrink from admitting that this evolution is going to continue - that it is even attaining to a superior state - the only thing for them to do is to follow the course of the plastic evolution to its very end. When doing so, they will better understand the actual, somehow disconcerting aspect of progress, by which we rise gradually above all traditional forms and, thus above the physical and psychical oppression of life. In this connection let us trace the phenomenon of the individual and mutual separation of the various forms. It teaches us that the loss of past life in all its aspects-social, economical and psychical as well - and equally the decline of the advantages of the life of old - as the intimacy of the native country and the love characteristic of those times - are no real losses at all, because they lead us up to a superior life.

How beautiful actual life could be indeed, if it were possible to realize the high ideals of all times, such as disinterested love, true friendship, real goodness and the like.

It is not for disdaining these ideals, but because of their being degenerated into delimiting and false forms, that the new mentality rejects them.

The mutual separation of the particular forms has been the debut of the independent existence of the line and the colour, because by being thus freed, they have been enabled to attain to forms above the delimiting particularities. It is exactly this separation, which discloses the narrowness of any form and pushes towards its actual deliverance. Freedom is obtained by the form through the means of a composition in equivalence with other forms and by its own decomposition: equally an act of separation.

In the same way the different qualifies, which melt into each other in the primitive human being, ought to be purified in man and be co-ordinated by an action of separation. In doing so man attains to their mutually equivalent opposition: the equilibrium of man integrally human. Art has shown us that the mutual separation of human beings, too, is necessary.

[p. 231]

We are all liable to the inclination of leaning the one against the other. It is this propensity, which brings about man's false friendships. But man is born alone, and alone he faces death: his destiny is an independent existence. And, by its perpetual constraint, it is life itself, which does not only inspire us with the craving after, but grants us, moreover, the strength of being independent in the end.

Yet, social life is based on mutual assistance. But let us not forget that this assistance ought to be mutually equivalent and thus secure the independence of the individual.

Though this mutual separation is vital to human evolution, neither in life nor in art man should give up the delimiting forms, until he has reached the state of maturity conditional to his devoting himself to the pure relations. Then the moment of quitting them has arrived, because they do oppose the actions imperative of the individual and collective progress.

Exactly as the traditional aesthetic verities can be retraced in New Art, though expressed in a different way, New Life reveals the traditional philosophic ideas and conceptions, but otherwise practised.

After its having started with the abolition of the particular form and proceeded with that of the purified and the neutral forms, New Art has set at liberty the line and the colour: the essentials of the plastic expression. During a culture of many centuries standing the true content of man and life has been on its way of liberating itself by the abolishing of all sorts of delimiting forms. This abolition is bound to involve suffering, but, being necessary, it is inevitable. Yet, this suffering is ever twined to joy. For, abolition brings forth creation: a New Life.

Whether we conceive life as a joy or as suffering depends upon its most important feature to us: its abolishing or its creative aspect.

The beauty and the misery of our concrete life rest exactly on the fact that we cannot avoid abolition nor creation either, consequently, we cannot escape joy nor suffering either. This beauty embraces equally our yearning for freeing ourselves from all suffering. For, precisely this is our stimulus to our creating and aiming at happiness. The fact that the latter engenders suffering anew is of no importance. We ‘live’ this repetition in an eternal thirsting after happiness.

Abolition and creation are partners in constituting any transformation whatever. The latter therefore, is an action both of joy and of suffering. But exactly as in our concrete life the actions of abolishing and creating are severed, happiness and suffering here, too, are felt as things apart. This fact clouds life, but only so because of our suffering and rejoicing - creation and abolition - still being in unbalanced relations in concrete life.

In consequence of its complete unity real life of equilibrated opposition actually is neither abolition nor creation. Consequently, it does not express joy

[p. 232]

or suffering either. For, as it obtains with any equivalent opposition, the one annihilates the other.

Though the evil is synonymous of abolition - thus, of suffering - and the good a synonym of creation - consequently, of happiness - in real life, the good and the evil abolish each other.

But in our concrete life the good and the evil are opposites. Now it is another feature of its beauty and its misery that we cannot possibly escape the one or the other either. In case we succeed in acquiring what is for our good and in conserving it too, it soon will transform into something that is bad for us. On the other hand, if we consider something as being bad, it later on may turn out to be instrumental to our welfare. In a mere race after the good however, there would not be any action: no evolution, no ‘life’.

By its two aspects - the material and the immaterial features of life - our concrete life even considerably complicates the opposition of the good and the evil. Yet, it is by means of the non-equivalent oppositions that we do not only gather knowledge and insight, but feel at the same time induced to use our best endeavours in order to bring these oppositions to their mutual equivalence and to transform ourselves.

In figurative art the delimiting effects of the particular form were cloaked in the beauty of the whole piece of work. New Art has disclosed that by doing so the equilibrium was not realized in an exact way. Equally in life there still is no end of dissimulating the evil. The good, too, is veiled just as well. Thus, the happiness of life is not felt, and yet man strives at excluding all suffering. As a consequence he does not try to remedy the misery there is. Exactly because of our efforts to banish the evil existing from our minds, it overtakes us. It is almost a general feature of our mentality that we refuse to acknowledge the dangerous situations of life, e.g., our illnesses, the germs of war, etc. etc. This is one of our human weaknesses. If, on the contrary, one takes to would-be adversities and to causing distress, since happiness reigns, we have to deal with a malady. To see reality clearly as it is and not the way we like to conceive it that is what New Art teaches us. In its marvelous progress as to science and technics life gradually advances towards the acquisition of this capacity.

But equally New Art has revealed to us - and this is of the utmost importance - that we ought to abstain from passing for anything we are not. It has disclosed that frankness and sincerity are the primordial conditions of New Life.

In its end New Art (Neo-Plasticism) shows us that man will not succeed in its pure manifestation, as long as he continues to dissimulate the exact expression of the principal oppositions of the rhythm. In absolutely the same way New Life requires knowledge and insight as well as the creating of that which is its real tenor.

There is nothing so disastrous to life as the dissimulating of reality, i.e., of the truth. For, when doing so, man dissimulates life, life being the truth. Dissimulating the true content of life - even of our practical life - is up to the level

[p. 233]

of shrinking back into a particular form, consequently, it is no better than severing oneself from life. It comes to secluding oneself. Oscillating between life and death in the obscurity of his existence, it is quite natural, however, that man confines himself into groups, into small circles of people more or less akin and of the same social standing. It is logical that man tries - be it from sensibility by nature, be it from egoism- to avoid the shocks of opposition, of which life is full. It is understandable, too, that he wants to frequent no other people, than his ‘friends’, that he does not associate, but with his comrades and that he is inclined to have as little as possible to do with humanity outside of his small self-chosen set. It seems as if man is only after amusing himself as much as he can, as if he eats, drinks, feels and thinks simply after his own fashion and his own nature. Equally he is fond of the heat and shirks the cold. He does not read anything, but that which is ‘agreeable’ to him and cropping from a sympathetic conception or a congenial sentiment. Finally, it goes without saying that this kind of mentality is anything but keen on dealing with problems and situations of an alarming political and economical character. All this is very ‘human’, if it is spontaneously springing from man's nature, from his instincts and from his intuition to ‘live’. But, if this attitude is dictated by a calculating mind and if it is meant to serve as a mask in order to hide the true state of affairs, man is no better than any of your pot-house politicians.

We should not lose sight of the fact that this kind of narrow-minded selfishness has nothing whatever to do with the egoism that furthers our evolution. For, when locking ourselves up within the small circle of that which pleases us, we separate ourselves in an unjust way from our fellow men, from universal life and from all that is beautiful, which, then, will for ever remain hidden to us.

As it is, danger draws nearer in every domain of reality and if it will not be fought against, it will be our doom.

But, quite in the same way as any other particular form, these small circles of our life, too, abolish themselves. And again we are driven from the shelter we sought for into the unprotected.

Disorientated and out of countenance as soon as we are faced with the opposition we once dissimulated, we then, feel unhappy. But we do ‘learn’ and we are bound to fight. From this struggle only the victory will come forth in the end: a new form of life, a life that is more ‘open’.

Together with its good and its evil the progress of civilization, part of our concrete life, thus entails abolition and creation, happiness and suffering. And just as in course of time these oppositions have been drawing nearer to their equivalence - meanwhile slowly annihilating themselves - progress, too, is slowly approaching a state of equivalence of the good and the evil, in other terms, it is gradually approaching a human equilibrium.

More and more the actions of creation and abolition will unite, so that, whilst abolishing, we shall be able to create more and more.

More and more the long periods of abolition and of creation will shrink; more and more peace and war will focus, so that they, too, will annihilate each

[p. 234]

other. In our own drawing nearer towards an equivalence of the two contrarious aspects within ourselves and outside of us, we shall gradually be less ‘lived’ by life and become more capable of ‘living’.

Art's culture clearly demonstrates that life is a continuous transformation, in the sense of a growth from the cradle to the grave. Thus, there is nothing whatever that returns in the same way, nor does it ever remain alike to its proper state. It is from this phenomenon that life itself opposes all conservatism, for, any new forms do not resemble each other, but for a certain space of time. And yet, do they even then possess a real resemblance? The fact that they often use to seem identical nourishes the conservative mind or, may be, causes its very error.

Decidedly the conservative action is present in life, but there it is always opposed to the creative action, so that the former annihilates itself and human progress - growth -continues.

Perceiving that the artist has been pursuing a pitiless transformation by reducing the natural aspect and the particular form to the equivalent oppositions of the line and the colour during the course of a secular culture, we come to see that life is an artist, a deity, transforming - pitiless too - man to an ever superior status and, in the end, setting him free from all his proper limitations.

Yet the artist does not but follow the trend of life, quite in the way any human being does. In following this trend man does not - no more than the artist ever does - reproduce the natural appearance, which never we do see transform itself, but we see him transform his material and immaterial environment... pretty often whilst protesting against it himself.

Man follows the course of life, though he is, on an average, devoid of a clear insight. Indeed, it is not before the end of a culture that - by the continuous deliverance of successive forms - the content of that culture will come to light.

The culture of life has been anything but finished. In a very few works of art however, plastic art's culture has come to a terminus. This is the reason why this art is able to enlighten us.

When considering the plastic evolution, we detect that it is a grave error to believe - as a good many people are wont to do - that the progress of occidental civilization is pushing mankind to the verge of ruin. In art the perfectioning of the various forms never has caused the destruction of its very essence. Nor has the perfectioning of the various forms of life in the material and immaterial domain caused the ruin of life either: simply and solely its primitive expression has been ruined.

The perfectioning of its technical feature was not only a necessity to art's evolution, it even was the very means to it. Equally the perfectioning of all technics is an exigency of life. Everything thrives by it: hygienics, science, etc., etc.

The perfectioning of science is one of the principal ways to human progress, enabling us to attain to a more equilibrated status. Who would deny the enormous influence, exercised by science and technology as to the international

[p. 235]

relations of the peoples, by consequence of their developing the appliances of gas and electricity? And, though some of their evolutions do fill us with horror and leave us aghast - e.g., that of the asphyxial gases - even they are aiming at human evolution. As recently demonstrated by others, all this is going to suppress war, as war will become an impossibility because of the development of the arms themselves. By concrete facts thus, a real equilibrium will be created.

Day by day we are so fortunate as to witness the most marvelous discoveries and the constantly growing thoroughness of medical science. It is in this province, indeed, that we may state that knowledge brings forth happiness! The progress of medical science has already contributed a good deal towards the assuaging of the tragic side of life, towards re-establishing man in a status of equilibrium, he was bound to lose in gaining other qualities.

The progress of medicine thus, is of the highest importance to mankind. But it is evident that this progress coincides with the evolution of man, in other terms: it is time we are in need of.

Hence it follows that it is not the perfectioning of science and technics, which precludes life from being integrally human. Quite the contrary! Exactly the fact that science and technology are not yet sufficiently brought to perfection - and for all things that their organization or application is not yet perfect enough, often most terrible even -is the cause of life being at a disadvantage.

It is this wrong application of science and technics, which renders life actually unbalanced. The use of all those wonderful things, as machines, means of conveyance, etc., by a mentality inclined to self-interest at the cost of others, that is exactly what blackens life.

The only thing to do in order to liberate life - and we could not do any better - is to create situations worthy of mankind by breaking or discarding the wrong organization through the means of just relations.

In all domains of life, social and economical as well, it is no good building up new organizations in the old style, dominated by another organization. On the contrary - as it has been envisaged by true socialism - we ought to found such organizations as will be composed of producers and consumers, based on their mutual, equivalent relations, and governed by themselves.

The machine above all is a means necessary to human progress. It is able to replace man's brutal and primitive force, which, too, is bound to being transformed by itself in the course of human evolution.

The invention of the machine proves by itself that man had already lost a good deal of his natural force and, thus, was trying to replace it. The machine, indeed, is able to set him free from his thraldom.

Yet, this cannot be settled in a short space of time. But in the long run the machine is able to render man to himself. For, man does not live in order to toil, but he toils in order to ‘live’.

Evidently - as it is, generally speaking, actually the case nowadays - by consequence of a bad organization of the work the machine is turning man again into a slave. Though it is quite impossible that we ever should use ‘too’

[p. 236]

much of our best endeavours with respect to our attaining a just organization, it cannot be denied that, whenever life is falling behind, this is due to man in the main, who is retardative as to evolution. And who could tell at what point of time he is in a condition to be freed? But exactly because we do not know this, we ought to take care of procuring him ample time to his own instruction, in case he is equal to it.

It is highly probable that in future - after man having evolved to a greater degree - the machine will be well used and the work will be well organized.

By the invention of the machine man has now descried his brutal force as being a feature separated from himself, and so he has come to understand it more thoroughly. So this primitive aspect of man, now opposed to him and outside of him, is going to transform him.

It is not only for the machine, but any reality created by man himself is liable to transform him.

In order to transform man integrally, i.e., both physically and psychically, in other terms, in order to create a new mentality, all that life brings forth and contributes towards it is a necessity to this aim. For the sake of their being ‘real’, the immaterial qualities - preciseness, exactitude, cleanness, etc. as well as all psychical exercise - concentration, thinking, reflecting, etc. - have to be most physically realized in us as it were.

The same, indeed, holds good as to becoming a proper dancer, e.g., he, too, has to apply himself to dancing heart and mind.

The field of the progress of western civilization lies exactly in a concrete realization. If occidental culture has been more intent on the development of the material side of life than oriental culture ever was, the opposition necessary to the whole of human culture is in this contrast. So human culture is gradually on its way towards attaining the equivalence of both the immaterial and material features of man's development.

Whereas occidental culture - in developing not only the intellect, but also the sense of reality - has been cultivating the exterior aspect of life as it were, the Orient has always preconized the cult of the domination of this aspect by means of the interior strength of man. Evidently, yet the exterior aspect of life has been evolving, but is the result ‘real’ enough for enabling the two aspects of human nature to oppose the one the other in equivalence? Is not the exterior aspect of all existence more or less ‘discarded’ in this way?

In any case this beautiful theory demands a good deal of interior strength and psychical practice, the collecting of which is - within the limits of our civilization - absolutely, or anyway almost, beyond the ability of the majority of us.

In the occidental regions only a few strong minds have realized these grand psychical qualities and, thus, been able to aid and further civilization.

Though the oriental conception - dictated by the sublimest wisdom of the whole world and containing the occidental evolution in the inverse ratio - is good so far as its principle is concerned, it has not succeeded in realizing concrete life. This has been proved to us by art. Never did the art of the Orient

[p. 237]

realize the things achieved by occidental art, to wit: the liberation from the oppression by the particular form, the creation of neutral forms and of pure relations. Conclusively: it never did bring about the equivalent expression of the two aspects of all that exists.

The great truth of the absolute and constant opposition of these two aspects, plastically expressed, remained at first hidden, after that it was merely vulgarized and limited, as if it were a poor doctrine of symbols!

The principal object of occidental culture is to render man conscious.

Originally man is not conscious of his imnost life - previously indicated here as the real life (the essential of man). Man, though, is more or less conscious of the concrete side of life, of its physical, sensual and intellectual features. Therefore, concrete life actually is our everyman's life to-day, and so it is logical that it compels us to take care of it first of all.

We should not forget that it is this life, indeed, which - by a reciprocal action in co-operation with our most essential being - makes us conscious of this very being and, thus, of the real life in our inmost self. And it is exactly the progress of our civilization, which - because of its perpetual changing-makes the concrete life, outside of ourselves, vivid to us, whilst putting us up to a real opposition and to a rule of conduct at the same time. Contrarious to this progress, the natural and primitive life does not constitute this indispensable opposition in the course of our evolution, precisely because of its remaining invariably the same to us.

Whereas concrete life is a continuous action, natural life lulls man into inactivity.

Because concrete life is ‘real’ to us, it is logical that the expression of plastic art is getting more and more ‘real’, too. At the very least, however, we ought to conceive this reality in art as a reproduction of the aspect of the reality surrounding us: we ought to see it as a reality created by man.

Thence we understand that the expression of art, whilst getting more and more abstract from the point of view of nature, is growing more and more concrete from the standpoint of art. Art will neither meddle nor make with the natural appearance any longer, no more than with the vague sentiments, on the cultivating of which man uses to be so extremely keen.

Art constructs, composes, realizes. The expression of art follows the trend of life and not that of nature.

Whereas man by his nature is inclined to adventurously running after fanciful conceptions, life pushes him more and more towards full concentration on a reality it creates and whch it is continuously bringing to a greater profundity.

New Art proves us that true life, real life - ‘our life’ - will not for ever be disfigured and obscured by the worries of practical life. It demonstrates that the joy of living, which it engenders, is anything but dependent on a primitive nature, and that, on the contrary, it just then unfolds its glory to the full, when

[p. 238]

man succeeds in gaining a larger distance from this state. All means are already at hand for the realization of this true joy of living by New Life.

As the sun is by far too often clouded, we are now in possession of artificial means of all kinds to supply its rays. Nature's forces have already been adapted by man to his proper benefit. Health has been acquiring an ever greater stability thanks to the efforts of medical science. Technology is making the earth more and more fit for habitation - the whole of the progress of civilization is at our disposal: man need not but develop its results and apply them in the right way.

The primitive and ‘natural’ manifestation of beauty - this marvellous and direct expression of the joy of living, of true life - has been already replaced by the consequences of the culture of art. Plastic arts are by now apt to be realized in our palpable environment, e.g., in the american jazz the singing of birds has been ‘humanized’ in a real way.

Is it logical, then, than man goes on toiling like a machine, that he creates without the joy of living and only for the sake of his bare existence? Is it in vain that New Art has shown us that it is possible to get rid of the delimiting forms and of the natural instinct?

Let us wait for that which the exclusive concentration on utility and on practical life is going to produce. Future will afford true beauty and true life, both of them in a new form.

Whereas life and art prove to us that all evolution results from the actions both of creating and abolishing, all the disadvantages as well the advantages involved by the progress of civilization are ever so many necessities as to the development of man. But in general man does but see the one or the other of these actions. This is the ground that he looks upon life as being on the decline or as being immutable. For, creation only would be nothing less than a status without any change whatever, and abolition only would come up to ruin. But those who see these two actions at the same time for their being reciprocal, know life for being an eternal growth.

Nevertheless it is difficult to conceive live in a universal way as long as one is limited by some form or otherwise, either interiorly or exteriorly. In this state of mind man looks upon reality onesidedly. And, moreover, as everyone sees another side and sees it in an different way, too, everyone is relativeiy right. Things, therefore, are in that way no better than in the fable of the white and the black cow by Zola.

Yet, as in course of time human evolution has manifested itself in two ways despite of all - in other terms: both in the way of an evolution towards the integrally human status and in the way of a decay of the primitive physical status - it is possible to speak of a decline or of an evolution of life.

Indeed, both in man and in life we see the natural force opposing the human strength. Still, New Art has evidenced that the reciprocal action of this opposition produces a superior status in the end. By means of the reciprocal action of the pure relations and the pure forms the reduction of the natural aspect to a ‘human’ one realizes a superior state in art.

[p. 239]

The firmer the human progress gets footing in our concrete life, the more frantic the natural instinct storms against it. For, progress means a diminuation of the privileges of the natural status.

Hence the hatred borne by all reactionists towards the new manifestations in art and life! And their efforts to undermine them, thus, are equally explained.

This hatred and these counter-efforts are the offspring of a narrow-minded conception: such people suffer from lack of insight. They do not perceive the amelioration progress has effected. Neither are they conscious of the fact that in spite of all deviations - which are but remnants of the primitive status of man - the true content of life does not only remain intact, but even rids itself from all noxious ballast, moreover.

Is it to be imagined that the progress of civilization does not count in the world? Is it conceivable that life should err?

Man, indeed, is liable to labour under transient mistakes, to deform even progress for some time, life, however, is representative to us, of the truth.

Yet, in the eyes of a good many people progress involves some serious sequels. Consequently, they thwart it in every possible respect and go in search of a natural life, which they do not longer recognize as a primitive form of life from that moment on, but esteem to be the ‘ideal’.

As soon as the progress of occidental civilization involves any unfavourable human situations, they look upon them as if they were everlasting and would bring mankind to destruction. The fact that those situations are merely of a passing nature never does occur to them.

The saying is, e.g., that the corn is harvested more efficiently, if this is done in a primitive way and not by the means of combines. But is not it posssible that the machines in question are not yet sufficiently brought to perfection?

Is not a good deal of that which we witness being created on all sides just a trial, an experiment only? We cannot command all things at a time and still less at once understand the whole of them. If, e.g., for the time being men and animals living on corn should be less or differently fed, is it even then a certainty that this is detrimental to the progress of ‘man’? Life will induce man to find that which is instrumental to his real existence.

Because it is man, by whom human life has to be realized, we ought to exert ourselves to the utmost in order that all that is necessary to ‘man’ may be created. In life it is the same thing as in art, with respect to which the artist, too, could never take too much trouble as to establishing the purely plastic expression.

Though actually the progress of civilization professes to be badly organized, art has disclosed to us by its harmony of forms of so different a character that even the inequality of men does not impede the constituting of a more or less harmonic organization, by which mankind will gradually attain to a more real equilibrium.

If all men were just and honest, everything would be for the best and the equilibrium could be established by virtue of itself. If all monarchs were just, a re-

[p. 240]

public would not be preferable to a kingdom. Matters would correspond to that which is implied in the appearance of nature or of art, in both of which a spontaneous harmony is created by the means of perfect forms. Yet, in this way - exactly as it has been the case in art, with regard to which precisely because of this harmony once acquired man did not think of transforming these forms - in life man would no less remain stationary as to his status because of this natural equilibrium.

No less than in art we have to take reality into consideration in life. Not all human beings are just. For this reason those who are obliged to try to cultivate that which is true and just in man, strive after the creation of situations favourable to this development, and ought to attempt the establishing of a mutual organization preventing the disequilibrium and compelling man to be just in his social relations.

In transforming our social organization, we transform the individual. For the rest, those who try to rebel against the new order will, nevertheless, be forced to follow its course. This constraint will not have anything to do with a despotic power whatever. Even in a probably very remote future no order at all will be imposed, unless it is dictated by mutual necessity.

Mankind is going to see the day that the individual will be capable of governing himself. This, too, has been proved by New Art. In contradistinction to the art of the past, the particular forms of which dominated the one the other, the neutral, i.e., the universal forms of New Art do not exercise their rights the one at the cost of the other.

But it is evident that this status of mutual equivalence cannot be reached until a sufficient number of people will have acquired a mentality corresponding to this new order.

Though we are still far from this level of life, the era of crowned tyrants, however, belongs to the past. We are now living in a period of republics, of syndicates and of federations - in a period of research into the pure relations. The fact that so much tyranny and so many a wrong situation are yet prevailing in life is due to the lack of mutual equivalence and to the oppressive particular forms.

A general concentration upon the proper and mutual relations will solve all social difficulties.

Those among mankind who have been most rightly disgusted at the misery of man's concrete life, have never stopped taking refuge with the action of creating or of contemplating the mutual relations of the planes, the lines and the colours, which, because of their neutralizing the descriptive properties of the forms, establish beauty, independent from concrete life. This is the reason why the painting of landscape, still-life and town-views without any descriptive tenor - being in co-ordination with the particular life of man and society - are sought after, as man wants to free himself of this life and loves to rejoice in the manifestation of the pure relations.

If these representations in art are able to touch mankind to so extreme a

[p. 241]

degree, why are they so utterly uncared for in life? Fugitive interests, though being yet useful to human evolution for a small space of time, are the cause of this neglect- fugitive interests, inherent in concrete life, which we are only too glad not to meet in art.

Full concentration upon the mutual relations of social life will alter the conception and, consequently, the efforts of man. Thus, instead of complaining of the fact that most people have no other worries in our epoch, but those of piling up money by all sorts of tricks, man will try to create economical and social circumstances that will not merely barr people from their having recourse to unjust means, but that will, moreover, impose just means and allow mankind to apply them, too. By those wrong and false situations, indeed, man is now often pushed, even driven, to his exclusive pursuing after money. Money, this precious expedient in civilization, should not be anything else, but ‘a means of exchange’, and, thus, it may not be allowed to take a delimiting form, oppressing and soiling the other forms of life.

In the sense it has been cultivated up till now, capitalism is a delimiting form abolishing itself and bound to be fully annihilated in the culture of the pure relationships. Already at present the disequilibrated social and economical situations indicate that this form has come to maturity and is on the way of being transformed. The fact that the form now in shape - instead of being ‘opened’ in order that an equivalence in the distribution of values may become possible - will probably settle down to another ‘form’ again, is clearly demonstrated by art, because art, too, transformed the particular form into a purified one to start with. Though an equilibrium of greater stability all over the world will be the result, this new form will still ‘enclose’ the feature money to far too great an extent as for its mundial spreading in an equivalent way getting already into the range of possibilites. As to the future, Neo-Plasticism indicates an organization of the equivalent relations for every domain of life, and by no means a new ‘form’.

Another of those non-equivalent forms, being the upshot of the culture of the particular form, is all sorts of trade. Nowadays considered as one of the causes of the economical disaster, in the culture of the pure relations it will become an equivalent means of exchange. Moreover, in this culture the equivalent exchange of material values for immaterial ones and vice versa will be beneficial to an equivalent life above all.

Any work of art sets an example of this, as it is steadfast an exchange of various values of a more or less mutually equivalent character. Life, too, is but an eternal exchange. It is an exchange of material or of material for immaterial values. But actually it has degenerated into a mere lot of ‘business’. Let us be decent merchants at least and no bulls and bears nor exploiters either.

Thus, as society is but an exchange, our social equilibrium depends upon the mutual equivalence of this very exchange.

[p. 242]

Till now all things in life have been confounded. Consequently, the material and immaterial or spiritual values in life, too, have been mixed up. To make things worse, man uses to attach some fictitious merit or otherwise to a certain value given in exchange for an other one in order to magnify its qualities or to disguise its insufficiency.

Love and friendship are prominent figures in the mutual non-equivalent exchange. New Art has shown us that in order to attain a real equivalence oppositions ought to be pure. To be pure they first ought to be separated, i.e., detached from the environment, in which they got confounded.

When mixing up the two aspects of life, hypocrisy obtains the mastery and dominates life.

This is why it is of so great an importance that New Art has established purified forms and pure relations. They do not dissemble nor hide either, for they are real and true, because they represent themselves for what they are without ever palming themselves off on us. They enable us to secure a more or less equivalent exchange, an equilibrium more or less stable. But in order to constitute a real equilibrium an exchange of strict equivalence and a mutual equality are required. Exactly as the neutral forms of curved circumference had to be dislocated and reconstructed into a universal form in art, in life, too, the different aspects of the values have to be reduced to a constant value. In this way an equivalent exchange of immaterial for material values and vice versa may be effected.

Ever and anon in community life the question will be raised whether - in case of lack of physical or psychical strength - everybody will be able to give an equivalent value in exchange. In the physical domain, e.g., this will decidedly not be the case as to the old and the young, and still less as to the sick. Consequently, we are obliged to find a just solution, for, as in fact all human beings are equals to each other, all have a right to an equivalent existence. Nevertheless, we never shall succeed in reaching this point by the way of charity, nor by love or friendship either, because these qualities do not create pure relations. In case someone is not in a condition to do so by himself, and as the essential value of each individual entitles him to an existence equivalent to that of the others, he ought to be provided for in proportion to his value, which he is unable to realize as such: he, therefore, must be suppomed by the community. This is not only of importance to those who are incapable of exchanging equivalent values themselves, but also to the others, thence at ease as to their being able to ‘exist’ during the whole of their lives and under all circumstances that may ever occur. Then they will have sufficient strength to cultivate their own value, to live their own lives, in other terms, they will be strong enough to renounce leaning any longer on delimiting forms. Community, indeed, will but thrive by it.

Skipping patriotism - besides, the very germ of the feature following now - let us finally mention a particular form of a most inhuman character and extremely dangerous to New Life, viz., militarism. In the culture of the past man was in

[p. 243]

need of militarism in order to maintain an apparent equilibrium and to defend or to reinforce the particular forms in their growing years. But as soon as New Life will have created new and neutral forms, they will have to maintain themselves by pure mutual relations, and from this time forward any constraint will become superfluous, even noxious.

Though our international relations are anything but balanced or pure, and the various forms - the ‘fatherlands’ - equally far from approaching somehow the ‘neutral’ status, yet the question of the possibility of disarmament is now turning up. It goes without saying that, if there were no armament, man's mutual aggression and oppression would not be possible. Be that as it may, any success as to an integral disarmament will depend upon the equivalence of the different states that intend to unify themselves. But to a still higher degree this success will depend upon the opposition offered by the old particular forms and by the personal and collective interests. Though the well-meant intention and all the endeavours of the League of Nations to this effect are proof of the culture of the pure relations having begun, there is no end to fear.

It is logical, indeed, that our epoch strives towards the perfecting, both materially and immaterially, of the particular forms, once created by the culture of the past. But let us lay stress upon the fact that, first of all, the essential object of our time is in our concentrating on the mutual relations of those various forms. It was the tenor of the culture of the past - the culture of the particular form that is-to create this form and to concentrate upon it without taking too keen an interest in its mutual relations. But the erroneous part of this conception was hidden in the opinion that it would be possible to come to an equilibrated life merely by the perfectioning of the form. This fact, disclosed to us by life, was equally demonstrated by the art of the past. Permanently all concentration had been focussed in the particular form, and by means of the perfection of this form man was sure to create the masterpiece. Still, the artist had already got aware of the value of the relations and in spite of all - as it has been pointed out here before-the expression of the relations unconsciously evolved in art as it did in life.

In this way the exclusive concentration on the particular form - which does expose us to the danger of our sticking in the individual domain - has had no other effect in art, but that of ‘opening’ the form in order that it may be united with the whole of the work, and in life with the whole of the world.

In order to get conscious of the necessity of another social organization, we can hardly ever follow assiduously enough that which the culture of art has shown us. Let us repeat in this connection that the essential content of art consists in the annihilation of the individual oppression by the form, as well as in the creation of a rhythm of universal expression.

Let us repeat that New Art, thus, does not disclose itself as an art of the past cloaked in a new disguise. Exactly the reverse is the case, for by such disguise the art of the past has succeeded in prolonging its existence from century to

[p. 244]

century, even up to our new epoch. Both in art and in life it is only too poorly conceived that the new era contains a new culture and that the culture of the particular form is expiring. Though the new mentality has not yet become the essence, but to a very few human beings, the culture of the pure relations is revealing itself in order to attain its end: the creation of the equivalent relations.

In life the reorganization therefore, ought not to be limited to the particular forms themselves, nor to each of them separately either. On the contrary, it will have to be extended all over universal life.

In politics it is not sufficient to aspire to equivalent relations as to the interior, for, the realization of equivalent relations of an international standard, above all, ought to be brought about.

In art it has been for Neo-Plasticism to demonstrate this necessity in the exactest way. By intersecting lines the mutual relations annihilate each separate plane, in order that they unite completely among themselves.

The rectangular planes of different dimensions and different colours demonstrate to satisfaction that internationalism involves no chaos at all, in which monotony is going to be the dominant feature, but that it will lead us up to a unity that is well-ordered and sharply divided. There are even very pronounced limits in Neo-Plasticism. But these limits are not really closed: the straight lines in their rectangular opposition intersect constantly, in order that their rhythm may continue in the whole of the work. Equally in the future international order the various countries because of their being mutually equivalent, then, will own their proper and different values. There will be just frontiers, exactly in proportion to the value of each country in relation to the general federation. These frontiers will be clearly limited, but not ‘closed’: no customs, no passports. Foreigners will not any longer be looked down on as on people deprived of their civic rights.

Notwithstanding all its divergences with respect to the dimensional proportions, Neo-Plasticism is based on the rectangular relation - which is constant and one of the lines of which is parallel to the horizon as to its position. This implies that everywhere in future order there will be - in spite of all diverging as to quantity - constancy of quality, which is the base of complete unity.

Though Neo-Plasticism expresses the end of human culture as an accomplished fact, this end indicates us at the same time the next way we are going to take. And though the mutual equality, which has been manifested by Neo-Plasticism, cannot be realized in the life now prevailing, yet New Art has shown us that even in our days it is possible to constitute pure forms as well as pure relations and establish a new organization by means of them, allowing a life of greater liberty already in our time, a life, which, as a consequence, will be at any rate more unified indeed.

In conformance with the annihilation of the particular form in art, we see a good deal of the delimiting conceptions of the past being already done away with in life, too.

[p. 245]

After its having become disfigured to a delimiting form in the course of human culture, religion - in its form as a church - has been seen to liberate itself more and more from its ballast and to show its true content. As art has demonstrated to the full that the mutual separation of the forms enhances their intrinsic value and brings forth a more perfect union, we may look back on the disestablishment and on the separating of religion from erudition or philosophy with equal satisfaction.

Once being delivered and rendered to itself, everything will be more easily fathomed.

All those old, delimiting forms, as the family, the native country, etc., which have been cultivated and protected by the state and the church for so long a time - and which are still necessary - have been recognized by the new mentality in their conventional sense for being mere obstacles to a real human life. Such as they are like nowadays, they do oppose the constitution of the pure social relations and of the individual freedom as well.

It is obviously difficult to the new mentality to quit the particular forms, by which it was engendered. But the moment it knows them for their being its oppressors, their abolition is no longer a sacrifice. Besides, life drives us forward and our free arbiter is not always considered.

Exactly as art itself has gradually created a new plastic expression of an ever more real equilibrium, life itself, too, will gradually establish the same equilibrium within a new social and economical organization.

The way life is going to take will not merely depend upon the efforts of the new mentality, but equally upon the character of the resistance offered by the mind of the past. But in its course life is constrained by necessity, and its new exigencies push it more and more in the direction of the equilibrium. It is necessity only that creates progress and the latter carries mankind along. In case the progress in science, in technics, etc., is too much ahead for man in general to keep pace with, he applies it in the wrong way and mankind often falls a victim to this process. This is the reason why both experience and education are utterly imperative.

The fact that man is more and more compelled to concentrate upon his own self in order to maintain himself, and that life is getting more and more hard to boot, is liable to make us lose all faith in civilization. But, if we see this fact as something imposed by necessity and caused by the culmination of the dying particular form, consequently, as a temporary constraint outside of ourselves, it is clear that liberation is drawing near.

Though his immediate individual and collective existence ranks above all other things to man, nothing would be more childish than insisting upon the impossible. Exactly because of his obstinately pushing his way towards its realization, man misses the mark. In order to create a truly human existence, we stand in need of courage, of exertion, of patience. Is this time lost then? Let us not

[p. 246]

forget that the essential thing to man is the cultivation of his true human being: temporary existence will hasten to his assistance and support him. By cultivating his truly human being due strength will come forth and bring along a temporary existence conformable to this very being.

Would we muster up strength enough for not only submitting to, but even - if necessary -for occasioning the destruction of our apparent existence of our own choice, for sacrificing the interests and situations gratifying it, in order to create a truly human existence both for ourselves and for the others?

In destroying the particular form, thus, in sacrificing the beauty of this form to the purely plastic expression, art has already done so.

Even when cultivating his true being - in other terms: the real life - man raust needs be egoistic. This fact was disguised by the past. New mentality, however, acknowledges it. It considers egoism to be justified and necessary to the creation of both our proper life and that of the others.

Yet the conventional ethics are not the pure expression of the sublime universal morality. Exactly as in the works of all figurative art the purely plastic expression has not only been confused, but disfigured as well, the same in life, these morals have been troubled and deformed by their own limitations within the different forms.

And exactly as the culture of the particular form and that of the relations has been mixed up until now, two opposite actions have been intermingled in the conventional ethics: that of the concentrating on the particular forms and that of the uniting of these forms with the whole. Thus, both the egoistic and the altruistic actions are equally imposed, but they do keep up appearances of altruism only. Made by the church and the state and aiming at the elevation of humanity above its own limitations, in fact, these morals yet did impose the latter. It has been overlooked that evolution is eternal - to put it this way - and that it is not limited so some period or otherwise.

That which the sublime universal morality - being an expression of human evolution -imposes is the same as that which life decrees - equally an expression of this evolution. But the conventional ethics have forthwith dictated such qualities as are only to be acquired in future. This has been the rank error of the greater number of spiritual movements, besides, though springing forth from the very loftiest principles.

Owing to the limited conception of man, who by his nature is bound to oppose it, the sublime universal morality has failed in its purpose. This is quite logical, for this morality has never been the essential expression of the culture of the past, characterized as that of the particular form. As, therefore, the sublime universal morality has not been and could not be realized, the institutions in question did not abstain from imposing it under the form of some conventional morals. This is the source of all the hypocritical and crooked situations, of which life is the scene up to now. But, as everything is necessary - even those efforts, which cannot be realized - and because all things attain to human evolution, there is nothing whatever to be criticized.

[p. 247]

The sublime universal morality will meet its full expression at the highest pitch of perfection of the culture of the equivalent relations. In its end art has demonstrated that only the line and the colour, after their having been delivered from all oppression by the form, are apt to constitute the equivalent relations. Equally in life only the free individual and its collective bodies are able to form a mutually equivalent organization and, thus, capable of realizing the content of the sublime universal morality, which orders us to live for the whole and for all.

But art equally discloses to us that before this end - consequently, pending the culture of the pure relations - the sublime universal morality, nevertheless, will be able to express itself in a more real way in life than it ever could do in the past. For, exactly as the neutral forms, once delivered from their particularities, were able to do so in art, the individuals, when freed from their noxious egoism, will be capable of establishing just relations, and, thus, will live the one for the other.

As the culture of the pure relations has already been heralded, the sublime universal morality is nearing its realization. This is the beautiful content of New Life, the advent of which we do already perceive.

In the beginning of the culture of the pure relationships the sublime universal morality will not yet be able to express itself in a complete way. For, because of the oppression being still too generally exercised by the particular forms, its task, first of all, will be in the annihilation of this oppression in order to constitute these pure relations. Whereas till now the old ethics have preconized the cult of the particular form, from that moment onward they will start preconizing the abolition of this form for the sake of its real content being, thus, enabled to setting itself free and becoming apt to constituting pure relations. Therefore, in the new era their action will be to preconize and to reinforce the culture of the pure relations. It is in this way that in the end they will attain the realization of the tenor of the sublime universal morality, which is the true content of love, of friendship, of fraternity and of all their noble synonyms.

As the culture of the particular form did not only create and cultivate the latter, but destroyed it, too, morality ought to be in keeping with this double action. With the same readiness, therefore, it will have to make acceptable the evil as the good.

But the confused and disfigured ethics of the past did not accept the evil, as they gave out that is was something abnormal, an illness, a defect of life.

Notwithstanding the fact that so far as we ourselves are concerned, we are restricted in the acceptance of the evil within the limits of our own physical endurance and sensibility, the distinguishing of the morality in its two opposi tions is of the greatest support to us in our not exacting from the others anything that is not possible. In other terms: this destinction helps us not to claim the good, when the evil has its moment of predominance. And, moreover, it makes us understand that the good and the evil annihilate each other, exactly because of their being oppositions.

[p. 248]

Art has shown us that in the beginning of the culture of the particular form the actions of creation and cultivation prevailed, whereas towards the end of it the action of abolition is apparently getting all the importance. As the same applies to life, the two oppositions of morality, too, ought to have the stress in the same sense. Whereas in the beginning of human culture especially the good will prevail, on the other side the evil must be accepted towards the end of it. Towards the end of the culture of the particular form the sublime universal morality - virtually containing but the good - seems as if to dictate that those forms should be harmed. But in fact it only envisages the constitution of the pure and equivalent relations and, therefore, requires purified forms. Though the delimiting particular forms are bound to abolish themselves, it is by the constitution of these relations that this abolition is going to be realized - to such a degree as will be possible.

New morality, thus, imposes the acceptance of the abolition of the oppressive particular forms. In this sense it is the morality of the evil for some space of time. But it opposes the mutual abolition of the particular forms in the sense of a total destruction, as it itself is in want of the essence of these forms for its new creation.

Thus, New Morality prescribes that man acknowledges the fact that the evil is at the bottom but the good. For, the sublime universal morality is above the limitations of time.

Towards the close of the culture of the particular form the morality of the evil - though always existing - will overrule that of the good. Because the particular form is in a state of dissolution at the end of its culture, evidently, the evil cannot but prevail. For, our concrete reality does not allow of both creation and abolition at the same moment. Exactly as the sublime universal morality does not reckon with time, this double action does not either. As in this period the evil will dominate, this fact accounts for the terrible time and the distressing conditions we are in just now. Yet the other of the two oppositions of human culture - that of creation - is simultaneously active. The opposition of the morality corresponding to this creative action, therefore, imposes the act of creation at the same time. This is the reason why it seems as if this action were in wait for the result of the abolition of the oppressive particular form, a result culminating in a new form, which is apt to realize the new action, centering in the constitution of the mutually just relations.

In proportion to the abolishing of the delimiting particular forms, the creative action of the new culture will be realized, being reinforced by a new morality of the good. For, then the true morality will be able to bring about its own realization, because the mutually equivalent relations are only by themselves capable of realizing the good for all of us. Gradually it now becomes the morality of the good, but in a sense absolutely different from that of the past. Whereas till now the good for all of us was but imaginary, it will become real in the new culture.

Though we are at present in both an individual and collective obscurity, we

[p. 249]

still may rejoice at a beautiful perspective for mankind and at a lofty task for ourselves. By contributing to the abolition of the obstructive particular forms and in constituting mutually pure relations we are able to attain to their future equivalence and, consequently, to the future happiness of all of us. By conforming themselves to progressive life, the temporary ethics are nearing towards the status of being the expression of their true content: the sublime universal morality.

It is a most beautiful feature of our epoch that the two oppositions of this morality have been thrown light upon and that, thus, we are capable of discerning two structures of morality as being the two expressions of two cultures. For, in this way we are enabled to understand and to apply the sublime universal morality.

Because of the necessity of cultivating himself, man is egoistic by nature and even obliged to be so. It is logical, thus, that the conventional ethics failed in opposing this human trait. In fact, they did cultivate - when not the sacrificing of the temporary or the real existence - at any rate hypocrisy.

The past could only entail the sort of egoism that is detrimental to the others. This kind of selfishness resulted from the development of the particular form, which is by its nature in an unbalanced relation to the other forms of the same order.

And still at present, as the culture of the particular form has not yet been terminated for all of us and the mutual relations have no more been balanced either, even the justified egoism is bound to harm the others.

Unless some degree of equality of our minds will have been reached, the justified egoism cannot be - directly nor actually either - in the interest of the others. In Neo-Plasticism, which expresses this equality, we see the highest amount of strength and value meted out to each colour and non-colour, and precisely in this way the other colours and non-colours attain their proper strength and value, so that the whole of the composition benefits by the care given to each plane separately. Though this holds good as to morpho-plasticism as well, yet - exactly because of its lack of mutual equality - here the care spent on one form is often to the detriment of the other forms.

In the past man was relatively right in being egoistic to the damage of the others. Rightly he cultivated ‘his own self’ and, inevitably, he often harmed his fellowmen. As a defence for the good of the others the old ethics, therefore, were apparently superfluous. But, in fact, they were necessary as all is necessary that is engendered by life. They were an indispensable counterweight in order to be thrown into the scale at any time, when it proved to be useful to the real life of man. Let us not forget that it is this real life, which evolution is developing above all - both by the good and by the evil.

If pending the culture of the particular form we understand by the object of the ethics then prevailing the creating, the maintaining and the cultivating of this

[p. 250]

particular form, they did not fail, but were the just expression of that culture.

But if, on the other hand, we should imagine that their real tenor was in the edification of the others, we are mistaken. And even at present, as the culture of the particular form has not yet come to its terminus, in case the ethics will malce us believe that we live for the good of the others, they are a falsehood. Virtually we do live to the benefit of ourselves and exactly by our proper edification we live in the interest of the others.

Because of the necessity of securing his personal existence, man, selfish by nature, will always, even during the whole of his evolution, remain egoistic. But in the course of this evolution the egoism to the detriment of the others will be transformed into an egoism to the immediate profit of all of us.

Of course, the ethics, they too, will be transformed in the process of human evolution. More and more the true sense of morality is opposing the conventional ethics and this so in absolute conformity with human progress. The more the moment of the maturity of the particular form will be approaching, the more this form will be destroyed and the lesser, thus, suffering will be avoidable. By acknowledging this fact to-day's hard life is not only becoming acceptable to us, but it even procures us the certitude of a new life drawing near, notwithstanding all the difficulties life exposes us to.

In a society of people of unequal mentality everything is, forcibly, non-equivalent. In this case the individual qualities or values bear a distorded relation to each other, the factors of which are hostile or represent disproportional contrarities. Here is the realm of injustice, for the values available are contrarious and non-reciprocal. So hatred is returned for love.

As long as hatred is ruling supremely no true love is feasible. This is the reason why there is a general lack of true love, fraternity, friendship. It is, therefore, logical that in a society of this stamp all those beautiful things could not but inevitably annihilate themselves.

In its abolishing the natural aspect of the form art has demonstrated that life will produce that which man tries in vain or refuses to do in life. When abolishing seeming love, life is on its way to realize love's true content in an exact way.

From the point of view of New Morality - which orders justice - none of our human qualities is fit to survive, unless they are reciprocal. Considering the inequality of humanity, New Morality, therefore, cannot impose these qualities unless this mutual equality will be acquired to some extent. As for the time being, it can only induce us to the constitution of pure relations and to an education to the purpose in order to further this equality, from which the realization of all the qualities mentioned previously will logically result. The actual state of mind is not susceptible of realizing them, but it is capable of observing the logic of justice.

For all things because of the harshness of to-day's life, there is scarcely

[p. 251]

anybody left that bears well-feeling towards his fellowmen. Would it be the right thing to try to revive this affection, whilst the intellect and the circumstances are plainly discarding it? Would it do to rebel against the progress of civilization by our opposing the consequences it is leading up to? Let us leave to life the task of affording a greater profundity to the intellect and of transforming the social conditions, so that man may draw nearer to a true disposition, in order that the ‘heart’ might be won back. In any case let us incessantly try to be homogenous to life evolving.

Every day anew we cannot be but startled at the total lack of true love, fraternity or friendship or goodness. Centuries have passed since the lofty message of the universal love was imposed. Without denying its influence, it is a fact that man has not changed.

Let us, therefore, not insist upon that which has proved unfit for realization. Art has demonstrated that life is pushing mankind towards the status of equivalence of his two aspects and, thus, towards the annihilation of the individual lmitations. It is in this way that life will arrive at the realization of the grand ideals, once imposed.

Although in the midst of the delimiting forms of all kinds, now dying and decomposing, very little of the new era is obvious to be noticed, it still becomes perceptible by an action that does not yet attain its full realization - exclusively because of the momentary oppression of these forms.

As soon as New Life will be advancing, it is evident that a new morality will be founded. It is clear that it will be rooted in the new culture, which has been revealed both by life and by art. During the culture of the pure relations it will be based on the status of culmination of this culture, i.e., on the mutual equivalent relations, to which New Life is gradually attaining.

The New Morality is that of the social life, contrarious to the ethics of the past, which tended towards this aim, but actually did not protect anything, but the particular life, either individual or collective. Whereas the ethics of the past were supported by the church and the state, the New Morality will be sustained by human society itself. In abstracto its object is international, universal justice. for, whereas in spite of their essential content the old ethics actually supported the different particular forms - even the one at the cost of the other - the New Morality is apt to realize the equivalent relation of the civiuzed world.

That a New Life is springing forth is confirmed by the fact that the actual life offers this opposition-often in a most dreadful way - against the old culture and its ethics. Because man is still harbouring his brutal and ‘natural’ status, excesses and even felonies are witnessed. Far from defending them, let us insist upon the constitution of the pure relations and the purified forms, by which all those remainders of the primitive human status wil be restricted to a minimum, so that New Life is able to develop without terrible shocks. But, too, on

[p. 252]

account of the exigencies of the actual life and the quite different situations it brings about, the ethics of the past are going to be more and more annihilated. In our actual life all moral qualities as goodnes, disinterested love, friendship, charity, etc, are less and less put into practice because of the Virtual impossibility of doing so. For, being under an ever heavier strain as to the material order of things, the individual has no strength to lose. The fact that in consequence of the inequality of men the one is profiting by the loss of the other is no longer to be defended.

In case in our eyes the phenomenon that man is more and more compelled to maintain himself and to defend his life should seem to be contradictory to evolution or telling against the progress of civilization, we ought not to overlook that we have reached the end of the culture of the particular form and that we, therefore, have to suffer from the effects of the dissolution of the forms of the past. Formerly supported by these forms -which were themselves an object of caring and worrying at the time - they are no longer capable of doing so at present, which is the reason why the individual himself is equally in peril now. But in this way man is regaining ‘himself’, and it will entirely depend upon his own strength whether one day or the other he will succeed in attaining his own liberty by the constitution of free forms. With respect to this the most urgent necessity has been imposed: man must create.

Although New Morality and reason are able to guide us and art capable of going ahead, we have to insist on the fact that the ‘realization’ itself is the first thing of all and that New Life is created by those very qualities, which are apparently but simple and insignificant factors, though virtually being of the utmost importance. Let us mention, e.g., the value of the exactitude and of the neatness of execution as they are shown to us by New Art, proving, thus, the possibility of their being extant in life.

Notwithstanding the fact the exactitude and the neatness of execution always realize the work in all art, in New Art these qualities do not only reach their pitch of perfection, but, moreover, here they are conceived in quite a different way as they were in the past. In spite of all precision everything was confounded in past art. In New Art, however, everything shows itself in a clear way: neutral forms, planes, lines, colours, relations. It has been by its exactitude and its neatness of execution that New Art has established in a real way the mutal equivalence of the composition: the equilibrium.

As to life this fact shows us the great truth: that the new forms and the mutual relations have no real value, but for their being realized in an exact and precise way.

Exactitude is one of the most urgently needed instruments as to the realization of New Life. In a good deal of the manifestations of our actual life we see already precision and exactitude being more and more sought after, imposed as they are by necessity. In this connection let us but mention the circulation of traffic in our metropoles. The Place de l'Opéra in Paris gives us a better demonstration of what New Life is like, than many a theory dealing with it. The

[p. 253]

rhythm of the oppositions of the two directions, twice repeated, realizes a vivid equilibrium by its exactness of execution. We cannot but stress the fact that in life the moral qualities are not sufficient, the realizing of them is the thing that counts.

The entire progress of civilization (actual life) unconsciously goes - though plenty of times via the wrong track - in the direction of New Life. But, for his still lingering within the bounds of the spirit of the past and because of his ever concentrating on the various forms, man has omitted to account for the fact that he, inevitably, was going to create unjust relations by doing so. An unbalanced status has been the result. But just as well we are able to state - and most gladly we do - that even in the range of politics there is a sincerely meant cropping up of concentration on the mutual relations. This effort is apt to annihilate the noxious delimiting forms and their misshapen consequences.

After their having been supported by tradition, the state and the church up till now, the familial, social and religious conditions - primitive forms as they are - are gradually seen to come to perfection and to change their aspect for the greater part. To say the contrary and to believe - as often is the case - that the new conditions of to-day are nothing but the degenerated forms of the past, comes up to subverting the course of progress. It comes up to not conceiving the content of life, which has, nevertheless, disclosed itself both in art and in concrete life as the liberation of that which is particular and as the unification of that which is universal.

Yet, having freed itself from the oppression by the particular form and, thus, being enabled to tend towards the realization of the equivalent relations, New Mentality actually is the state of mind of a small minority only. As it has been mentioned previously, it is, however, sustained by the unconscious action of a rather great collectivity. Together we march towards the foundation of the pure relations, leading the way to the realization of the equivalent relations. And even all of us accomplish the abolishing of the delimiting forms, the progress of mankind.

All are running counter to the culture of the past, the culture of the particular form, and all are living already within the culture of the new era, the culture of the pure relations.

This truth, which art has shown us plastically, in a visible way that is, is of the highest importance in order to have us ever so little understand the complicated march of the progress of civilization. It helps us to accept, too, both the evil and the good in life, and, first of all, not to lose ourselves in a pessimistic criticism as to life, which causes us to suffer so much.

Let us state, however, that art, though be it in an abstract domain - has not limited itself to an ‘idea’, but that it has always been a ‘realized’ expression of the equilibrium.

Notwithstanding that the ideas are the origin of that which is living in us, and

[p. 254]

apart from the fact that the humanitarian principles represent an enormous power, the realization of a happy life is the capital thing.

Whereas in the beginning of all culture the ideas are strong, towards the end of it they do not only get threadbare, but in this period their realization is demanded thereat. At the debut of the culture of art its equilibrium was still more or less veiled by individual conceptions. Towards the end of its culture art has established this equilibrium - in all its relativity - in a real way. Why, then, in view of this possibility should we despair in life?

A good deal of that which is concerning the new organization, shown to us by art, seems to be on the verge of being realized in Russia in a more direct way than it has been done in other countries. But every country has its own particularities and its proper exigencies. Consequently, that which is desirable for one country, is not irrefutably so for the other ones at all events.

Yet, the great line of evolution is a general one and quite the same for any country. In general terms we may say that in case the new organization of one country is too much ahead for the individual to live up to it, or if the inequality of the individuals should oppose it for some time, life will provide for the right solution, it will indicate us the way to be taken.

When thoroughly observing that which is going on, we detect that in all civilized countries analogous phenomena do occur. But, as a rule, evolution is slow in advancing over here and its manifestations, being cloaked in the traditional forms, are more complicated than they are in Russia. Is, therefore, this evolution less advanced? Life will show:

Life is truth

Paris, December 1931