Artistic expression

« standard way.

As a result of realizing that a character in a work is dying unloved one feels sadness for and pitytowards that character.

Or, believing that the dramatic potential of the last act was botched by the playwright,one feels disappointed by the play.

Or one is delighted by the felicity of a turn in the melody.

In the second case,one tends to respond with sadness to works called sad, or with happiness to works said to express happiness.Something in the work calls forth the reaction that mirrors the work's expressive character.

One does not then feelsad or happy about the work; indeed, the response seems to lack an emotional object, though the work is itsperceptual object and cause.

Arousalism refers to this second kind of response in analysing artistic expressiveness:an art work expresses an emotion if and only if it has the power to arouse or tends to arouse that emotion withoutan object in an appropriate audience.

In this view the sadness of the art work is like the greenness of grass; someproperty of the thing in question disposes it to affect the experience of those perceiving it.

The sadness isattributable to the art work, not to the person in whom the feeling is aroused, because the work has the power toawaken the same feelings in a variety of suitably qualified perceivers.

Similarly, we say it is the grass that is green,not the perceiving of it, just because its effect on perceivers is largely indifferent to their individuality andidiosyncrasies.

The arousal theory faces two main lines of objection.

The first, pursued by Peter Kivy ( 1989 ), denies that there are any objectless responses of the kind described - sad music, for instance, never leads listeners to feelsad.

A more plausible objection denies the match (postulated by arousalism) between artistic expressiveness andthe audience's tendency to respond.

The audience might be unmoved, or might not feel what the work expresses,despite their correctly recognizing its expressive character.

In reply to this, the arousalist points out that atendency to respond can be blocked or inhibited - for example, where one is distracted from or overexposed to thegiven piece, and so on.

In some cases contemporary values and sentiments might permanently block the tendencythat would have triggered a response at the time of the work's creation.

Though it might deal with somecounterexamples, I am doubtful that arousalism successfully accounts for all the mismatches between artisticexpressiveness and audience's reactive tendencies, where these threaten its plausibility.

One can reject thearousalist account of artistic expressiveness while accepting that sad works sometimes evoke sad reactions.

Onemight explain the echoing response as occasioned by the work's expressiveness.

Whereas arousalism holds that artworks are sad because they make us feel sad, one might instead maintain that it is because they are sad that werespond as we do.

We find the emotional moods of others contagious, even if we are not aware of having anythingto be happy or sad about; perhaps we react to art works similarly.

And perhaps we are open to this mode ofresponse because we approach art as human communication.

4 Expression theory In creating their works, do artists express feelings? Surely this is often so.

In that case, are the emotions expressed in art works those of theirartists? We approach many works, including abstract ones, as dealing not merely with the affective side of life butwith personal feelings.

One view, the expression theory, asserts that expressiveness can be attributed to art worksonly where there is this discharge of feeling, and because of it: art works are expressive because they stand inrelation to artists' occurrent emotions as do tears to sadness, as both arising from and revealing the feeling.

Just asemotions are presented immediately and transparently in genuine tears, so that no inference from crying to sadnessis required, we experience the expressiveness of art as residing in it.

Also, we find the expressiveness of art workshighly evocative of sharing or empathic reactions and this is how we respond to open, primary displays of emotion.Despite its attractions, the expression theory seems to fail by entailing that when an art work expresses anemotion, the artist experienced that emotion.

This generalization is patently false.

The process in which art workshave their genesis allows little scope for unthinking expression or for undergoing emotions powerful enough toproduce the outcome as described.

Moreover, some artists turn to creation to escape their traumatic circumstancesand, in doing so, produce works that do not reveal the emotions dominating their lives at the time.

Theexpressiveness of art works is usually achieved by their artists, but this happens typically by design.

So structuredand conventionalized is art, and so practical is the knowledge brought to its creation, that the making of art, evenof an expressive variety, cannot continue long or far without reflection, including attention to technique, detail, thenature of the medium and overall structure.

Besides, art works are not the kinds of things that arise causally ornaturally as immediate, transparent expressions of occurrent emotions.

A tendency to create art, unlike a tendencyto tears, is not an essential part of sadness, so art works should not be the kind of thing from which sadness canbe read directly.

In a few cases an artistic action transfers its character to the product that results - violentlyproduced brushstrokes often display the energy that went into their making.

But in general, artists' creative acts,even where these are impelled by emotions, are not such as to transfer that expressive character directly to theresulting piece.

The theory fares no better if performers (should the work have them) are substituted for artists, orwhere the approach is counterfactual in suggesting that a piece expresses such and such if it is the kind of artwork that a person feeling such and such would create.

The first alternative encounters objections like thoseconfronting the original theory.

The second presupposes art's expressiveness, without analysing it; one couldrecognize the work's aptness for expression only if it already independently displays the appropriate character.

Now,how could it be that art works display expressive directness while expressing the artist's feeling if they do not relateto that feeling as tears relate to sadness? One way this could be achieved would be by the appropriation ofsomething that itself possesses or simulates the immediate, primary presentation of feeling.

For instance, a grievingperson might employ professional mourners to weep on their behalf, or might show how they feel by deliberatelyputting on a sad face or by pointing to a mask of tragedy.

Artists, in a similar fashion, might express their feelingthrough those of characters in the work or by matching the expressive tone of the work to their feelings.

But ineither case, the expressiveness present in the work has its character independently of the artist's use of it, soexpressions of artists' feelings through the works they create presuppose, rather than explain, the expressivenessof those art works.

One version of the expression theory that has been influential in the recent history of aestheticsis that propounded by Benedetto Croce §2 and R.G.

Collingwood §3 .

In outline, their account is this: the process of artistic creation is one in which, through the articulation of inchoate feelings and impulses, the artist comes toexpress a particular, unique emotion, thereby bringing it to their conscious awareness.

The emotion is constitutedthrough the act of expression, having no prior identity; that is, the emotion achieves its particular character. »