There are whole epochs when men seem blind to the spiritual truths that are behind material manifestations; generally speaking, the nineteenth century was a century of materialism.
It is as if a black hand were placed over the eyes of men so they should not see the spiritual forces behind the material, and the production of new spiritual values is fought by mockery and calumny. The man who produces the new value is held up to ridicule and called a charlatan.
The joy of living is the perpetual victory of the new, the spiritual value. But even as men learn to appreciate the new of yesterday and today they establish it as a barrier against the new of tomorrow. Spiritual development and evolution are a constant throwing down of these bars that are as constantly re-erected by the materialism and blindness of mankind.
Therefore the important thing is not only the impulse to create new spiritual values, but liberty to do so.
The spiritual is the absolute, the outward form is relative, it is born of the place and the hour. Therefore one should not fall into the worship of a particular form, but should use whatever form best serves to express the spiritual content.
And, naturally, each artist must use his own form to express his own ideas, and form should have the stamp of personality.
Each nation, each epoch will develop its own forms, or peculiarities of forms, and it is the reflection of the nation, the epoch, the individual in the particular form that is known as, or makes the style.
When a group of artists is animated by the same spirit the forms they use will be so alike the result will be a “movement” or “school” in art; but a “school” should not be permitted to dominate the freedom of others. Every individual must be at liberty to choose the form that best expresses the spiritual message he wishes to utter.
The form—picture—may be agreeable or disagreeable, beautiful or ugly, harmonious or disharmonious, but it must not be judged on its outward appearance; it must be judged by the idea, the spiritual value behind it. We must look through the form to the spiritual, as we would look through the deformed body of the cripple to the soul of the man.
In practical life we never meet a man who, if he wishes