SUMMARY OF PHYSICAL ART MANIFESTO
Good and bad, black and white are alternating manifestations of a single
principle, and these opposites are always and forever inherent in one another. By
motion they endure as points of force, generating basic rhythm that sustains the
appearance of forms. This is an inevitable part of the functioning of God’s creative
process.
The basic points of my manifestoes of 1945-46 are:
1. Liberation from the limitation of the traditional definition of the work of art,
particularly the idea of paintings as a rectangular, two-dimensional flat canvas.
2. Unification of painting and sculpture: rejection of the idea of painting and
sculpture as two separate forms of modern art.
3. Use of Negative Space- Energy together with Positive Space- Energy, as the
organically structural and ultimate component of the work of art.
4. Insistence that the work of art is an independent and active reality in itself,
that is a fully invented physical organism, and not a description, imitation or
deformation of anything.
Since the late 1950s, the implications of these principles of my Physical
Art have been widely visible in modern art. We see a variety of physical art
objects totally different from two-dimensional rectangular flat paintings or more
traditional abstract sculpture.
In my art, the concept of “Construction OF Space and Matter,” one
within the other, is different from the traditional “Construction IN Space” (where
everything is simply in space and thus it does not represent a creative, dynamic
relation between positive and negative forces). In Physical Art the interaction
between these complementary forms of energy is vital, physical and metaphysical.
The negative element is structurally and fundamentally vital to the positive
element, as well as being naturally vital to their reciprocal perception.
Physical Art is a concrete visual reflection of an original THOUGHT,
inspired by a mystical as well as a scientific philosophy of the world and the artist’s
vision of its working principles. The concept is not an expression limited to a
single mood of an artist and is not inspired by fashion, perversions, or machine,
but is a logical and independently inevitable creative development of modern
art, modern philosophical thinking and scientific knowledge in general. It reflects
a free and deeper human understanding of art and the working law of the visible
and invisible world. It is an intellectual and spiritual force expressed in a strong
physical force. It is an original creative effort to parallel the fundamental character
of cosmic organization, the unitary nature of divine reality. It is an effort to organize
an essential and dynamic esthetic existence through the interplay of the basic
forms of universal energy in its originality and purity. It is an effort to see, to know
and to manifest the invisible; to learn to contemplate the world until the language
and familiarity of it recede and it is seen with a free inner eye in its primal unity and
creative immediacy.
The concept of this art controls the organized esthetic system from its
own original ground. Its outward appearance is a visual realization of its founding
principles. Thus both a scientific mind and an intuitive mind should experience
in this art an intellectual and spiritual attraction. The mind should feel a sense of
timeless primeval play, the silent sound of essential activity.
The spirit is a divine creative energy, and this energy is the source of
all material and non-material manifestations. For this reason, the rational and
physical qualities contain spiritual qualities. A work of Physical Art reflects
such physical, rational and spiritual qualities expressed in an open and highly
organized esthetic unity. As I wrote in 1945-46, they are neither paintings nor
sculptures in the traditional sense but rather a unification of both. They are based
on the construction of positive and negative forces, one within the other on equal
terms, that is, solid matter painted in primary colors, activated three-dimensional
negative space, mechanical movement, electric light, shadows, silence, and
nothingness.
Finally, my works can be divided into three groups. The first is based on
straight lines, angular geometric forms of space and matter, and, in principle,
on irregular/multidirectional shapes, and the dynamism of action produced by
the sharp polarization of forces. The second is based on geometric circular and/
or square forms (of material and non-material elements). These works are of
pronounced “cosmic” character, and usually represent the “One,” i.e., the Source,
or the multiplication of this symbol of essentiality; they are of great simplicity,
purity, and monumental timelessness, both in the physical and spiritual sense. In
many of these works, a dynamic of inaction has been reached, and a sense of the
silence of ultimate reality can be experienced.
The third group encompasses many non-constructive paintings and
drawings, and a number of experimental constructions based on the integration
of order and disorder, including all forms of positive and negative forces. As
already indicated, the “integration of order and disorder” represents an attempt
to create an esthetic event by the use of two diametrically different and hostile
forces.
Nikolai Kasak