Wassily Kandinsky does not offer a precise definition of materialism—nor for many of the abstract terms in the book—as he assumes a common conceptual background in his readers. For Kandinsky, materialism is associated with scientific positivism, a philosophy that rejects metaphysics and religion, holding that only that which can be verified by the senses is true. Kandinsky blames materialism for robbing art of its moral and spiritual dimensions, leading to an overemphasis on representational skill and a devaluing of the inner states, emotions, and spiritual ideas that, in Kandinsky’s view, give art its meaning.

The theosophy that Kandinsky subscribed to was just one branch of the broader stream of “Spiritualism” that swept intellectual circles in Europe around the turn of the century, largely as a reaction against the dominance of scientific positivism or, for Kandinsky, “materialism.” Accordingly, Kandinsky uses the word “spiritual” to mean everything that is not material or visible, including emotions, ideas, ideals, and spiritual states and experiences. For Kandinsky, art at its fullest development is dedicated to expressing spiritual reality.

Abstract art aims to embody emotions and ideas directly through form and color, rather than representing tangible objects found in the material world. Kandinsky considers the turn to abstraction in painting and other visual arts as emblematic of the modern sensibility.