Artistic forgery

« pieces, including pure music, where expressiveness is present in the absence of a narrated or depicted content.Whose emotions are expressed thereby and how are they expressed? 3 Arousal theory One suggested answer to the above question is that we ascribe emotions to art works just because those emotions are awakened in us.

This is the theory of emotivism or arousalism.

Two cases need to bedistinguished.

In the first, the art work or some aspect of it is the emotional object of a response in the standardway.

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

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

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

In the second case, one tendsto respond with sadness to works called sad, or with happiness to works said to express happiness.

Something inthe work calls forth the reaction that mirrors the work's expressive character.

One does not then feel sad or happyabout the work; indeed, the response seems to lack an emotional object, though the work is its perceptual object and cause.

Arousalism refers to this second kind of response in analysing artistic expressiveness: an art workexpresses an emotion if and only if it has the power to arouse or tends to arouse that emotion without an object inan appropriate audience.

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

The sadness is attributable to theart work, not to the person in whom the feeling is aroused, because the work has the power to awaken the samefeelings in a variety of suitably qualified perceivers.

Similarly, we say it is the grass that is green, not the perceivingof it, just because its effect on perceivers is largely indifferent to their individuality and idiosyncrasies.

The arousaltheory 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 feel sad.

A moreplausible objection denies the match (postulated by arousalism) between artistic expressiveness and the audience'stendency to respond.

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

In reply to this, the arousalist points out that a tendency to respondcan be blocked or inhibited - for example, where one is distracted from or overexposed to the given piece, and soon.

In some cases contemporary values and sentiments might permanently block the tendency that would havetriggered a response at the time of the work's creation.

Though it might deal with some counterexamples, I amdoubtful that arousalism successfully accounts for all the mismatches between artistic expressiveness andaudience's reactive tendencies, where these threaten its plausibility.

One can reject the arousalist account ofartistic expressiveness while accepting that sad works sometimes evoke sad reactions.

One might explain theechoing response as occasioned by the work's expressiveness.

Whereas arousalism holds that art works are sadbecause they make us feel sad, one might instead maintain that it is because they are sad that we respond as wedo.

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

And perhaps we are open to this mode of response because weapproach 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 their artists? We approach many works, including abstract ones, asdealing not merely with the affective side of life but with personal feelings.

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

Just as emotions are presented immediately and transparently in genuinetears, so that no inference from crying to sadness is required, we experience the expressiveness of art as residingin it.

Also, we find the expressiveness of art works highly evocative of sharing or empathic reactions and this is howwe respond to open, primary displays of emotion.

Despite its attractions, the expression theory seems to fail byentailing that when an art work expresses an emotion, the artist experienced that emotion.

This generalization ispatently false.

The process in which art works have their genesis allows little scope for unthinking expression or forundergoing emotions powerful enough to produce the outcome as described.

Moreover, some artists turn to creationto escape their traumatic circumstances and, in doing so, produce works that do not reveal the emotionsdominating their lives at the time.

The expressiveness of art works is usually achieved by their artists, but thishappens typically by design.

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

Besides, art works are notthe kinds of things that arise causally or naturally as immediate, transparent expressions of occurrent emotions.

Atendency to create art, unlike a tendency to tears, is not an essential part of sadness, so art works should not bethe kind of thing from which sadness can be read directly.

In a few cases an artistic action transfers its characterto the product that results - violently produced 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 thatexpressive character directly to the resulting piece.

The theory fares no better if performers (should the work havethem) are substituted for artists, or where the approach is counterfactual in suggesting that a piece expressessuch and such if it is the kind of art work that a person feeling such and such would create.

The first alternativeencounters objections like those confronting the original theory.

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

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

For instance, a grieving person might employ professional mourners to weep on their behalf, or might showhow they feel by deliberately putting on a sad face or by pointing to a mask of tragedy.

Artists, in a similar fashion,might express their feeling through those of characters in the work or by matching the expressive tone of the work. »