The Boo Hoo Approach to Art

I find there to be no greater example of hyperbole than when aesthetes write about emotion and the arts. The visual arts, it is said, express emotion or should it be that they sometimes depict humans expressing emotion?  There is a significant difference between the former and latter statement. 

Inas Alkholy, in an essay published on the net, describes the types of things she believes emotions to be.

“Emotion is a vital force in all art forms.  We experience positive and negative

emotions like happiness, love, satisfaction, hate, sorry, sadness, reverence,        depression, vulnerability, disgust, fear, anxiety, surprise, threat, etc.  They are distinguished by different kinds of evaluations; some emotional responses

 involve a mixture of pleasure and displeasure, fear and joy.[i]

While I would take issue with some of the examples she lists (depression for example is a shutdown of emotion and anxiety is a neurochemical response) she has provided a sample large enough to generate a discussion.   If you haven’t already done so, I would request that you read my earlier blog titled Emotions vs. Feelings: Busting an Urban Myth.

For Alkholy it seems that the be all and end all of art is the expressing of emotion which then becomes the meaning a work is said to have.  She writes:

Art conveys meanings, reflects moods, motivates both feelings and actions, and engages the viewer into a vivid dialogue the art work.  Artists through the ages have been expressing deep feelings and sufferings. The expressiveness of figurative art moves the viewer, not only to admire the artist but to feel the expressed emotions themselves. (2)

Frankly, this is a load of hooey.  Is there not a difference between depicting emotion and expressing emotion?  Am I being too difficult?  Well here are some thoughts from another observer:

“Now perhaps even more importantly, what it draws attention to is that curiously, when we say that a work is expressive, say it's expressive of melancholy, above all if it's an expression of, say sadness or something, or gloom, it's not really that it makes us feel gloomy, it's a more complex, more interesting phenomenon. After all, if a work made you feel gloomy and really depressed or something, you wouldn't actually want to perhaps listen to it very much. Or if a painting was like that, if it expressed a certain kind of pathos or suffering, sorrow, you wouldn't want to get that into your life; it's not that you kind of long for more of that, rather it's something a bit different.”

John Armstrong, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, speaking on The Philosopher’s Zone Saturday 28 April 2007 1:35PM

When asked why their work presented itself as it did, my Directing students would respond with something like: “I want the audience to feel what the character is feeling.” Or “I want to make them angry”, “At this moment I want them to cry.”  Consequently I had to remind them that they couldn’t second guess an audience because they didn’t know what baggage the audience was bringing into the theatre with them.  Some audiences laugh when it is most inappropriate, others get angry and stomp out when they take offense at something on stage, still others are stoic when they expected to be laughing.  “Don’t try to manipulate your audience.” I would tell them.  “You do your thing and let the audience do theirs.  Directors direct for themselves and hope the audience will see what they see.”  I believe this is true for all artists.  But let us cut to the chase and see what it is Alkholy would describe as the expressing of emotion in an art work.

This is an alabaster Assyrian wall relief from Nineveh referred to as the Dying Lioness.  Alkholy describes it:  “It is a tragic scene full of energy and considered one of the earliest examples that represent emotional expression of pain.”  No doubt for twenty-first century viewers, who are aware of the need to protect our animal wild life, this is a disturbing image but pain is not an emotion.  It is a sensation and we can only correctly describe this relief as depicting a lion undergoing the sensation of pain.  No emotion is involved in the relief even if we anthropomorphize the lion.  I don’t think the artist anthropomorphized the lion but it is not unusual that some artist try to treat animals as if they were human.  Consider the painting below by Augustus Schenck.

                                                

This example is so obvious it is silly.  Here we have a sheep supposedly grieving over and protecting its dead lamb while a murder of crows, in the manner of Hitchcock’s The Birds, circle, waiting to pick over the remains. It is clearly a fantasy for any sheep rancher knows that sheep are the dumbest of animals (able to be herded by a rabbit (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9oPdqIqIns&feature=fvsr) and care little for their offspring once it has died.  Again, the artist is attempting to depict emotion, not express it.  No doubt some will view the image and exclaim: “Oh the poor mother.” projecting onto the sheep a human persona but there is no accounting for taste.

The idea that art should express emotion is an 18^th century idea that has had its day.  Nevertheless there are still many around who believe that not only does art express emotion it is required to do it and they will find emotion in all works if only to spite the doubters.

This work is Picasso’s Weeping Woman but it is not at all clear what emotion it is supposed to depict.  People weep for many different reasons (Peeling onions for instance).  But then, again, some hold it is the viewer that describes the emotion and what the viewer says goes.  If you should be fortunate enough to view the actual painting you would be amazed at how bright and crisp the colors were.  It is not a large work but it is one of Picasso’s best.  The bright, crisp colors remind you that here is an artist who attends to technique and design.  It is difficult to become involved with the work on an emotional level because we are challenged to think of it in terms of the choices Picasso has made.  We marvel at his ability to give us a contorted image that is bright and cheery.  People who see this as merely a sad or sorrowful work miss the artist’s thought process that is the signature of his better works.  Perhaps this idea will be easier to understand if we compare this work to the work of another famous artist.    

Here is another colorful weeping woman by Roy Lichenstein.  What was it Alkholy  said?  Oh yes, “The expressiveness of figurative art moves the viewer, not only to admire the artist but to feel the expressed emotions themselves.”  Admittedly, some may not wish to call Lichtenstein’s work art but they would be an eccentric minority.  Alkholy’s statement was all inclusive.  I would be amazed to discover an arts patron who on viewing this work felt ‘the expressed emotions themselves’ but I suppose it would not be impossible that someone should identify with the situation this painting presents.  No doubt some works fill us with delight which can be described as an emotional reward.  Such a work for me was this small painting by Vermeer.

A photograph does not do the work justice.  It literally sparkles, drawing viewer into the work, forcing them to see what the artist saw.  We almost paint the work again following the line of color which exposes the artist’s technique.  Am I being too emotional here?

Launt Thompson

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[i]Inas Alkholy, Is the Reception of Emotional Expression in Visual Art Global? Pp3.

Aesthetics Vs. Art

In 1735 the twenty one year old Alexander Baumgarten introduced to the art world the notion of the ‘aesthetic’ and proposed it to be a discipline that allowed the senses the priority place in the judgment of art.  Since that time all manner of books and essays have been written in an attempt to clarify and advance the ideas Baumgarten spawned. When a new field of knowledge evolves there is sure to be a ‘babble of disagreements’[i]among thoughtful scholars seeking to establish their credentials and aesthetics, as a result of its seeming adversity to rational thought, has provoked more than its fair share of scholarly angst.  

Aesthetics is said to be a discipline that seeks to explain how we may experience the ‘aesthetic object’ by taking up an ‘aesthetic attitude’ which is marked by a disinterested attention toward it.  In other words, we are only to consider that aspect of the object that moves us, all other considerations are pragmatic and inessential.  Though an aesthetic attitude is said to be a natural psychological phenomenon we must learn how to acquire or enhance it.  Initially aesthetics was concerned with ‘beauty’ and the many ways it was manifested in the aesthetic object but it was soon recognized that the term was too slippery for simple elucidation.  Attention shifted from what the aesthetic object was said to contain to what the viewer perceived in the object and how they described their perception. As perception is a subjective phenomenon the viewer was only required to point out what provoked their particular perception rather than demonstrate its objective validity.  

The problem is that a theory of aesthetics (or any theory for that matter) may be held reasonable only if it is true[ii] and theories that depend on subjective phenomena tend to defy truth tests.  Trevor Pateman reinforces the distinction between art and aesthetics:  “Aesthetic and artistic are different categories.  Aesthetic interest and relevance concern only what is available in the surface or structure of a work, even though in some cases that surface or structure may only be accessible to those with a quite definite knowledge.”[iii] This quite definite knowledge is thesural in scope for the landscape of adjectives and adverbs is the distinguishing tool of the aesthetician.  The aesthetician informs us of his perception of a work using terms like somber, graceful, garish (even gracefully garish), diminutive, flaccid, weakly, washed out, lanky, anaemic, wan and so forth.[iv]  Such terms are said to identify particular aesthetic qualities within a work.  Aestheticians defend the tendency to be verbose by hiding behind the mask of taste. 

But for some, aestheticians do not serve their discipline that well.  “Aesthetics fails to illuminate, often enough, because the aesthetician wants to retain “mystery”, rather than dispel it, to conceal his subject rather than to reveal it.  He wants to treat art instrumentally, as a “clue to reality”; his aesthetics is a spring-board to transcendental metaphysics.”[v]

Art critics and, in some instances, art historians borrowed generously from the vocabulary and practice of aestheticians to enhance their special disciplines.  It has come to pass that the critic who is most notable is usually the one who is most articulately verbose and maintains an eclectic vocabulary to capture the interest of his or her readers. Critics are, perhaps, the persons most responsible for passing on excerpts of aesthetic practice to the general public.  

For the most part, however, aesthetics is a practice that is much misunderstood and abused.  Carolyn Korsmeyer argues that “...philosophers will continue to be beset with theoretical difficulties concerning the concept of the aesthetic until a distinction is acknowledged between the aesthetic and the artistic.”[vi]   Korsmeyer’s concern is even more relevant when new developments in art are considered.  Conceptual art which is a reaction against notions of aesthetic experience and the role of perception provides no handle for the aesthetician to grasp.  Conceptual art is a major movement in the art world.  The 2001 winner of the prestigious Turner Prize was a work by Martin Creed titled The Lights Going On and Off. Creed merely used a bare room at the Tate and manipulated the lighting by a timer. 

                                                  

Aesthetic practice displaced the need to discern the integrity of the form that contains the work of art but conceptual art reminds us that attending to form is a necessity.  Conceptual art is not merely a passing aberration.  Rather it is the child of Duchamp’s ready-mades; the evolution of an idea spawned by the Dada movement.  For conceptual artists the process of undertaking the work is their reward.  The work itself is little more than a grin without a cat.

The appreciation of works for their artistic achievement requires attention to objective criteria and is subject to truth tests which many members of the general public believe is a rigor that leaves them open to embarrassing  failure.  No such possibility exists in the practice of aesthetic appreciation.[vii]  The most that can be attributed to an inarticulate viewer is a lesser description of their experience.  To this end, aestheticians sought to promote a wider use of an aesthetic vocabulary which was believed to enhance the experience of viewers.  To be sure, aesthetics has had its detractors[viii] but it has, nevertheless, maintained a prominent position in discussions about art.

The answer to the question ‘What is Art?’ has proven to be even more illusive to scholars, academics and the general public than the question ‘What is Aesthetics?’, though artists tend to find no challenge in the former and dismiss the latter as outside of their domain.  For aestheticians a work of art is an aesthetic object that is man made but for many past and emerging artist works of art need be neither man made nor an aesthetic object.

For many there seems to be no unity of purpose among artists.  Artists are forever challenging accepted norms and so they should but it is not at all clear that artists always know what they are doing or always succeed at the artistic enterprise.  An artistic enterprise is that activity that results in a work of art but there is no specific or particular activity that guarantees a positive result.  There has yet to be proposed a universally accepted answer to the question ‘What is art?’ that sets out  definitive criteria that provide sufficient grounds for describing a work as a work of art.  This is particularly amazing when we realize that so many millions of art works have been produced and artists of all kinds seem to have little difficulty discerning between the failures and the successes of their fellow artists.  That this is so should lead us to suspect they are using criteria that they find difficult to express even should they have the unusual desire to do so.  After all, artists are doers, not theorists.

There are, of course, many different kinds of artists, some of whom use language as the medium of their artistic work.  For this type of artist theoretical musing is not a strange pastime.  Indeed, a number have entered the debate setting out their personal views.  Unfortunately they most often demonstrate a bias toward their own particular approach to art.  They seem to overlook the point that definitive criteria that provide sufficient grounds for describing a work as a work of art must be applicable to all the various art forms that have been and will be created.  For most artists and scholars devising such criteria is a fool’s enterprise. The problem, in part, comes about because the practice of aesthetics tend to fog the lenses of those seeking to find  all embracing criteria which may be used to describe our art forms and their works.

Universal acceptance for sufficient definitive criteria for works of art will never be possible until it is recognized that they have always been in the public domain but have seldom been delineated.  Such criteria are known to scholars as public criteria[ix] which are logically implicit in what we say and the way we behave.  The term ‘public’ means that such criteria are not hidden but open to discovery by anyone who cares to undertake the pursuit.  Be that as it may, ‘public criteria’ are not always matters of public agreement.  (There are still some among us who are prepared to accept as true the hypothesis that the world is flat.)  Rather, ‘public criteria’ establishes that the tests for truth are publicly determined.   It is important that we clarify the foundational concepts of art if we wish to both ‘see’ art and demonstrate how they strengthen our answer to the question ‘What is Art?’. 

Works of art invite us to read them.  We cannot think an artist spends his time and energy producing something he believes to be of worth so that we can choose what to concentrate on.   The playwright wants us to notice the script, the scenographer wants us to notice the set, the costume designer wants us to notice the costumes, the lighting designer wants us to notice the use of the lights, the actor wants us to notice the script’s interpretation, the director wants us to notice his or her treatment and staging.  Painters want us to notice the medium they are using, the pigments they have chosen and the techniques they have applied and in what light or environment it is presented to us.  They want us to appreciate the work in its entirety.

 

Unlike aesthetic appreciation, art appreciation requires that we attend to all aspects and parts of the work. Perhaps most important, art enthusiast  by analysis will quickly discover what it is they don’t know about a particular work and how to go about filling the gaps in their art knowledge.

Launt Thompson

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^[i]See Sparshot, F.E. ’The Structure of Aesthetics’, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1963.

^[ii]Sparshott, op. cit. pp13

^[iii]Pateman, Trevor, Key Concepts A Guide to Aesthetics, Criticism and the Arts in Education, The Falmer Press, London, 1991. pp136.

^[iv] See Sibley, Frank, Aesthetic Concepts, Philosophical Review, Vol. 68.1959

^[v]Passmore, J.A., The Dreariness of Aesthetics, Mind, 1951.pp324.

^[vi]Korsmeyer, Carolyn, On Distinguishing “Aesthetic” from “Artistic”, Journal of Aesthetic Education , 1977pp.46

^[vii] “Hence aesthetic description need not have truth conditions in the strong sense, and to justify them may be to justify an experience and not a belief.” Scruton, Roger, Art and Imagination, Methuen & Co.Ltd., London 1974 pp55.

^[viii]  See Passmore, J.A. “ The Dreariness of Aesthetics” in Mind 1951pp318 also in Elton, William, ed: “Aesthetics and Language”, Blackwell, Oxford, 1954

^[ix]See Wittgenstein, L., op. cit.