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College notes Aesthetics (CC2007) Thinking Art, ISBN: 9789400787094
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Summary + articles Braembussche, A. (2009) Thinking Art | Aesthetics
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Week 5: chapter 3: Expression TheoriesCharlien adriaansen and Lucas made a work: besmette stad, made during the lockdown.
Referring to Paul van Ostaaijen’s (expressionism and formalism) book: Bezette stad in
1920.
Learning objectives
1. Explain the central theoretical principles of the Croce/Collingwood theory of
art as expression
2. Mention and explain the major criticisms on the CC theory, as suggested by
Van den Braembussche
3. Explain the central theoretical principles of formalism, as suggested by
Hanslick and by Bell/Fry
4. Mention and explain the major criticisms on formalism, as suggested by Van
den Braembussche
5. Analyze to what extent the Flemish poet Paul van Ostaijen could be defined
as either an expressionist or a formalist
3.1 introduction
Less radical versions of the mimesis theory argue that the true work of art is in the artists
minds and that he/she has to materialize this pure idea into an artwork. The emphasis is
on this idea that the artist has in mind.
When we make an aesthetic judgment, we take the artist’s point of view into account but
also the audience’s point of view. Early expression theories focussed on the arousal of
emotions in the audience, later versions focus on the expression of emotions by the artist.
Expression theory: relation between artist and artwork is central. (imitation theory: relation
between the artwork and reality is central, reality is objective, outside of the artwork).
Expression theories: Reality is subjective; the artwork represents the inner reality of the
artist. Emotions, feelings, intuitions, ideas. Not always an expression of emotions. CC
theory: Art is a cognitive, mental activity.
The artwork-viewer relation is central in the CC theory but also in Tolstoj (art is
contagious, can affect people in the audience). CC: It’s up to the viewer to finalize the
artwork.
Recap: what do we already know about art as expression?
Lecture 2:
- Imitation theories in broad sense (from the object to the subject of representation).
Art can reflect the inner reality of the artist.
- Aristotle: tragedy is about cleansing the audience’s emotions of pity and fear. Art
is contagious. Emotions encoded within an artwork.
- plotinos/renaissance: artwork is the representation of an idea previously formed in
the mind of the artist.
Lecture 3: Kant also wrote about artistic creation:
- Genius is “the talent (or natural gift) which gives rule to Art”. it’s up to him to create
from within, outwards.
- Artwork is not an imitation of nature, but the product of personal expression.
Lecture 4: romantics striving to go beyond Kant:
, - From the aesthetic experience to the active process of creation (poiesis)
Expression is a bodily activity, the expression of emotions, feeling. This extends in
modernism. Abstract expressionism: create art as a bodily activity.
Lecture 5: different conceptualization of the notion of expression: more of a mental
activity. (difference between romanticism and the CC theory: CC are embedded in an
idealist philosophy).
What do we need to know about Idealism (and Hermeneutics)?
Idealist philosophy: there is an ideal world beyond the sensorily perceivable world. Plato:
metaphysical Idealism (dualism between noumenal (ideal) and phenomenal world). Kant:
transcendental Idealism (ontology: distinction between noumenal and phenomenal world).
There is a world of ideals lying beyond the empirical world.
Expression Theories are even more radical than Kant: there should be no distinction
between the noumenal and phenomenal world. Idealists: the world is purely a
construction of the human mind. There is no world outside of our mental activity, our own
constructions. Empirical reality/nature is a big mind that increasingly becomes self-
conscious. Idealists argue that reality comes to life due to human’s mental activity. Reality
is a mental construction. Idealists: everything is a construction of the human world. There
is no world outside of our mental activities.
The CC theory is an example of traditional hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics - against the idea of Positivism
- Humans are subjects //(not objects)
- Humans have their own intentions, inner will, //and are not moved by external
factors
- Human being (subject) is mental/spiritual (they have a mind) and historical (all
individuals are embedded in social historical context, which also shapes the
individual)
We should not study the world of men (as positivists, using statistics), but use our own
mind (as scholars). If we want to understand the individual and its environment, we need
to enter the minds of subjects through interpretation or Verstehen (central notion in
hermeneutics). We can’t study humans at objects, looking at social structure. All actions
are individual actions, mental activity. Use our own mind, enter the mental activity.
3.2 Art as the arousa/infection of emotion: Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910): What is art?, became
a radical socialist towards the end of his life. (don’t study him, as his theory is rather un-
philosophic and very criticized).
Tolstoy’s criteria: (subarguments)
1. art is the ‘infection’ of emotion, art is only a matter of emotion and has nothing
to do with knowledge. //Science is about thinking, art is about expressing emotion.
(storytelling: translate an emotional experience into a narrative, a story. Artists
encode their emotions in an artwork, infecting the reader with this emotion.
2. The artist has the responsibility of ‘infecting’ the audience with the same feelings
he has. Tolstoy pleads for the democratization of art. He emphasized on topics
that the whole population would understand, not only typical modern art topics.
Artists encode their emotions in an artwork, infecting the audience with these
, emotions. (Wagner: weltschmerz, romantic love, feeling alienated from society:
intellectualised emotions, but according to Tolstoj: art should not encode those
emotions, but express the emotions of the common people: folk music)
3. Ethical dimension: art should contribute to the moral elevation of the people.
Infecting the audience with feelings of brotherly love and solidarity. (christian
church, socialist)
3.3 Objection to Tolstoy’s theory
1. Intellect is important in art. If it was only about emotions, an artist couldn't create,
because of these overwhelming emotions at first.
2. Art only to infect the audience with feelings? doesn’t mean we find it aesthetic.
Superficial idea.
3. Normative statements: ethics and aesthetics are equal to Tolstoy, should be about
common emotions, he thinks like a socialist. He looks at art from an ethical point
of view: express common emotions.
4. ‘Theory’ leads to random results. He likes Schiller, Dickens, they can be encoded
by common people. He doesn’t like Shakespear, Dante, this should be criticized.
So we should exit Tolstoy.
3.4 Art as the self-expression of the artist: the Croce-Collingwood theory
The human spirit is the only reality that manifests itself in and through history. They
developed the theory independently, but their ideas are very similar. Their ideas in
aesthetics are lumped together into the CC theory.
3.4.1 Philosophy of history: inside-outside approach
Benedetto Croce, Estetica: historians concentrate on a historical event in its unique
individuality, which distinguishes it from physical events. You can’t generalize or classify
historical events. Intuition is required to know the uniqueness of a historical event, so the
historian can re-enact past experience. Intuition is an immediate spiritual contact. The
historian must relive the event in his own mind or spirit. If you want to know about
Napoleon, you should get into the mind of Napoleon, as a unique, individual event. Croce
contrasts history with the natural sciences (positivism). History is not something material
or objective. Study the inside of an event by entering it from the inside, by using intuition.
To acquire intuitive knowledge the historian has to make the inner motives of the action
present again in his own mind; presentism. “All history is modern history”, re-
experiencing historical events in the mind of the historian.
Robin George Collingwood, Principles of Art: also states that all events have an outside
and an inside. Each historical action/event is the unity of an event’s outside and inside.
The inner aspects (mental activity, people have minds) are made up of thought
processes. The historian uses his imagination and places himself in the event to recreate
these thought processes. History is a “Re-enactment” “All history is the history of thought”
All history = recreating of past experience.
3.4.2 Philosophy of Art: the CC theory
They both adhere to an inside-outside theory. The work of art is in the artists minds. The
essence of art is the expression of intuition or imagination, it must not be identified with
, the material object in which the idea is externalised. The true work of art is only
accessible to an audience to the extent in which the observer re-experiences the artist’s
original expression. The theory has three fundamental principles:
1. Art as self-expression: expression of intuition (Croce) or imagination (Collingwood)
For Croce and Collingwood expression belongs to the inside, inner reality of the artist.
Croce: intuition and expression occur simultaneously in the mind of an artist. It belongs
to the mental activity of the artists. Intuition and expression form a unity. We form an idea,
content, we already make it in our mind at the same time. Content and form occur
simultaneously and they both produce an artwork. Artists have strong intuition,
imagination, which is why they can make great artworks. Forming an idea and developing
it occur simultaneously. “One paints with the brain, not the hands” (Michelangelo).
Collingswood: art is imaginative expression. Imagination does not precede expression but
they occur simultaneously. Psychic expression (emotion in daily life, involuntary physical
reactions) vs imaginative expression (translate daily experiences, emotions, into an
artwork, it makes these emotions conscious). When we experience an emotion
consciously, we take part in self-expression. Artists invite us to experience these
emotions by means of our own imagination. The work of art as self-expression is present
in the artist’s imagination from the very start. The poem is a translation of an everyday
emotion into art, into imaginative expressions (= conscious self-expression: makes the
daily emotions conscious in his own mind, a reflexive move. Reflecting on this process
and translating it into an artwork, the unconscious.).
Yet still: Imagination is expression, so the art (original artwork) (with all its formal
characteristics) is already in the artist’s mind.
2. Work of art as a purely mental product (result from 1)
It is possible for an artwork to be materialised, but it is not necessary.
Croce: the aesthetic fact is form. Unity/identity between form and content. The artwork
exists in the mind of the artist, as an expression in which the content has already been
fashioned by the form = unity/identity between form and content. Idealist philosophy:
identity as in unity).
Also with music, Collingwood argues, the art is not the sound, but what was in the head of
the composer. The original expression is in the imagination of the artist. The uitvoering or
external manifestation is not the artwork, it will never be perfect, it can be continuously
improved. It will be a bad translation from what happened in the minds of the artist. Da
Vinci first looked at the wall for a few weeks, but already shaped this artwork in his mind,
then translated it. Vs Pollock: creates more like a linear process.
3. Art as recreation or re-experience of the artist’s original expression (consumption
side, viewing/listener/reader position)
Expression theories focus on the reception of art as well. The true work of art inspires us
to express our own emotions. The reader/viewer of an artwork is just as much an artist.
Otherwise, the audience would not be able to recreate the true work of art.
Croce: taste and genius as essentially identical. Reception of art amounts to reproducing
the work of art in oneself (by using our intuition) and then becoming an artist ourselves.
Audiences reproduce original expressions of the artists and become an artist yourself.
There’s an Identity of taste (reception, reproduction) and genius (artistic creation)
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