Sources of Creativity

Today we are often confronted with deceptive imitations of reality; it is frequently maintained that it is possible to create a work of art without an artist being involved. This challenges us to develop criteria with which we can recognise genuine achievements arising out of individual creative activities. Art as the language in which hearts can speak to each other is a higher means of communication that connects all human beings: it does not allow itself to be distracted by lies and by artificiality. This is not the expression of a noble ideal, rather, the ideal can become lived and living reality. Let us go in search of the sources of the living powers of creation, which are at the foundations of genuine art! 

The annual Ascension conference organised by the Section for the Visual Arts will be taking place this year in Vienna, the city of music. Music will be sounding throughout the conference even if the visual arts will be at its centre. 2025 is the hundredth anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death. Meeting in Vienna seems an obvious choice as this was the city in which Steiner was a student, received vital impulses for his work and had significant meetings..He also held his first lecture on art in Vienna. Between 1860 and 1918 Vienna was in many ways a major centre of European culture. This was the place where standards were set for the further development of modern art not only in music but only in architecture, painting and sculpture. 

The central position of this year’s annual conference in the Haus der Anthroposophie (House of Anthroposophy) means that it will be possible to explore and discover the city and its museums and architecture in the long lunch breaks. Excursions to the places where Rudolf Steiner spent his childhood and adolescence (Neudörfl, Brunn am Gebirge and Kraljevec) offer a complement to the main programme to those participants who wish to join them, both before and after. 

We wish to create a festival of encounter for this year’s Ascension conference, both in the artistic activities in the working groups, in conversations, in the common experiences of the lectures and other presentations and in the study of the works of art exhibited in the conference venue especially those by Austrian artists. 

All the lectures will be translated into English. 

On behalf of the Visual Arts Section in Austria 
Arnulf Bastin, Stefan Kagermeier und Willi Grass 

For the Visual Arts Section: 
Christiane Haid and Pieter van der Ree