THE ANALYSIS OF THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE: THE ELEMENTS OF THE EXPERIENCE
Thus far we have sought to define art, to form a concrete idea of the
experience of art, and to place it in its relations to other facts.
We shall now pass from synthetic definition to psychological analysis.
We want to pick out the elements of mind entering into the experience
of art and exhibit their characteristic relations. In the present
chapter we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the elements, leaving
the study of most of the problems of structure to the following chapter.
Every experience of art [Footnote: Throughout this discussion, I use
"experience of art," "aesthetic experience," and "beauty" with the same
meaning.] contains, in the first place, the sensations which are the
media of expression. In a painting, for example, there are colors; in
a piece of music, tones; in a poem, word-sounds. To this material,
secondly, are attached vague feelings. It is characteristic of aesthetic
expressions, as we have observed, that their media, quite apart from
anything that they may mean or represent, are expressive of moods--the
colors of a painting have a _stimmung,_ so have tones and words,
when rhythmically composed. The simplest aesthetic experiences, like
the beauty of single musical tones or colors, are of no greater
complexity; yet almost all works of art contain further elements; for
as a rule the sensations do not exist for their own sakes alone, but
possess a function, to represent things. The colors of a landscape
painting are not only interesting to us as beautiful colors, but as
symbols of a landscape; the words of a ballad charm and stimulate us
not only through their music, but because of actions or events which
they bring before the mind. This involves, psychologically speaking,
that certain ideas--of trees and clouds in the painting, of men and
their deeds in the poem--are associated to the sense elements and
constitute their meaning. Such ideas or meanings are the third class
of elements in the aesthetic experience. But these ideas, in their turn,
also arouse emotions, only not of the indefinite sort which belong to
the sense elements, but definite, like the emotions aroused by things
and events in real life. For example, Rembrandt's "Man with the Gold
Helmet" will not only move us in a vague way through the character and
rhythm of its lines and colors, but will, in addition, stimulate
sentiments of respect and veneration, similar to those that we should
feel if the old warrior were himself before us. In such definite
feelings we have, then, a fourth class of mental elements. A fifth
class will make our list complete. It consists of images from the
various sense departments--sight, hearing, taste, smell, temperature,
movement--which arise in connection with the ideas or meanings, making
them concrete and full. For example, some of the colors in a landscape
painting will not only give us the idea that there is sunlight there,
but will also arouse faint images of warmth, which will make the idea
more vivid; other colors, representing the clouds, will produce faint
sensations of softness; still others, representing flowers, may produce
faint odors.
Let us study sensation as an element in beauty, first. Sensation is
the door through which we enter into the experience of beauty; and,
again, it is the foundation upon which the whole structure rests.
Without feeling for the values of sensation, men may be sympathetic
and intelligent, but they cannot be lovers of the beautiful. They may,
for example, appreciate the profound or interesting ideas in poetry,
but unless they can connect them with the rhythm-values of the sounds
of the words, they have only an intellectual or emotional, not an
aesthetic experience.
Yet, despite the omnipresence and supreme worth of sensation in beauty,
not all kinds are equally fit for entrance into the experience. From
the time of Plato, who writes of "fair sights and sounds" only, vision
and hearing have been recognized as the preeminently aesthetic senses.
These senses provide the basis for all the arts--music and poetry are
arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision.
And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of
all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of
expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts
and feelings; so do visual sensations--the facial expression or gesture
seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract
colors and space-forms, like red and the circle, have independent
feeling-tones. A taste or a temperature sensation may be pleasant or
unpleasant, but has no meaning, either by itself, as a color or a tone
has, or through association, as a word has. It has no connection with
the life of feeling or of thought. Its chief significance is
practical--sweet invites to eating, cold impels to the seeking of a
warm shelter, touch is a preliminary to grasping. All the so-called
lower senses are bound up with instincts and actions. Of course sights
and sounds have also a significance for instinct--the color and form
and voice of the individual of the opposite sex, for example. But,
before acting on the prompting of instinct, the lover may pause and
enjoy the appealing color and form; he may connect his feelings with
them and hold on to and delight in the resulting experience--an
emotional appreciation of the object may intervene between the stimulus
and the appropriate action, and even supplant it. In this way, vision
and hearing may free themselves from the merely practical and become
autonomous embodiments of feeling. The distance between the seen or
heard object and the body is important. The objects of touch and taste,
on the other hand, have to be brought into contact with the body; the
practical reaction then follows; there is no time during which it may
be suspended.
Important also, especially for the beauty of art, is our greater power
to control sensations of vision and hearing. Only colors and sounds
can be woven into complex and stable wholes. Tastes and odors, when
produced simultaneously or in succession, do not keep their distinctness
as colors and sounds do, but blur and interfere with each other. No
one, however ingenious, could construct a symphony of odors or a picture
of tastes. Nevertheless, the possibility of controlling colors and
sounds and of creating stable and public objects out of them, is only
a secondary reason for their aesthetic fitness. Even if one could
construct instruments for the orderly production of tastes and
odors--and simple instruments of this kind have been devised--one could
not make works of art out of them; for a succession of such sensations
would express nothing; they would still be utterly without meaning.
The fundamental reason for the superiority of sights and sounds is
their expressiveness, their connection with the life of feeling and
thought. They take root in the total self; whereas the other elements
remain, for the most part, on the surface.
Under favorable conditions, however, all sensations may enter into the
sthetic experience. Despite the close connection between the lower
senses and the impulses serving practical life, there is a certain
disinterestedness in all pleasant sensations. Fine wines and perfumes
offer tastes and odors which are sought and enjoyed apart from the
satisfaction of hunger; in dancing, movement sensations are enjoyed
for their own sake; in the bath, heat and cold. But, as we have seen,
it is not sufficient for a sensation to be free from practical ends
in order to become aesthetic; it must be connected with the larger
background of feeling; it must be expressive. Now, under certain
circumstances and in particular cases, this may occur, even in the
instance of the lower senses. The perfume of flowers, of roses and of
violets, has a strong emotional appeal; it is their "soul" as the poets
say. The odor of incense in a cathedral may be an important element
in devotion, fusing with the music and the architecture. Or recall the
odor of wet earth and reviving vegetation during a walk in the woods
on a spring morning. Even sensations of taste may become aesthetic.
An oft-cited example is the taste of wine on a Rhine steamer. Guyau,
the French poet-philosopher, mentions the taste of milk after a hard
climb in the Pyrenees. [Footnote: _Les Problemes de l'esthetique
contemporaine_, 8me edition, p. 63.] A drink of water from a clear
spring would serve equally well as an example familiar to all. The
warmth of a fire, of sunlight, of a cozy room, or the cold of a star-lit
winter night have an emotional significance almost, if not quite, equal
to that of the visual sensations from these objects. Touch seems to
be irretrievably bound up with grasping and using, but the touch of
a well-loved person may be a free and glowing experience, sharing with
sight in beauty. The movement sensations during a run in the open air
or in dancing are not only free from all practical purpose, but are
elements in the total animation. And other examples will come to the
mind of every reader. [Footnote: Compare Volkelt: _System der
Aesthetik_, Bd. I, Zweites Capitel, S. 92.]
As our illustrations show, the lower senses enter into the beauty of
nature only; they do not enter into the beauty of art. Their beauty
is therefore vague and accidental. It usually depends, moreover, upon
some support from vision, with the beauty of which it fuses. Apart
from the picturesque surroundings seen, the mountain milk and the Rhine
wine would lose much of their beauty; the warmth of sunlight or of
fire, without the brightness of these objects, the odor of flowers
without their form and color, would be of small aesthetic worth. Through
connection with vision the lower senses acquire something of its
permanence and independence. People differ greatly in their capacity
to render the lower senses aesthetic; it is essentially a matter of
refinement, of power to free them from their natural root in the
practical and instinctive, and lift them into the higher region of
sentiment. But every kind of sensation, however low, may become
beautiful; this is not to degrade beauty, but to ennoble sensation.
From a psychological standpoint, sensation is the datum of the aesthetic
experience, the first thing there, while its power to express depends
upon a further process which links it up with thoughts and feelings.
We must inquire, therefore, how this linkage takes place--how, for
example, it comes about that the colors of a painting are something
more than mere colors, being, in addition, embodiments of trees and
sky and foliage, and of liveliness and gayety and other feelings
appropriate to a spring landscape. Let us consider the linkage with
feeling first.
There are two characteristics of aesthetic feeling in its relation to
sensations and ideas which must be taken into account in any
explanation; its objectification in them and the universality of this
connection. Expression is embodiment. We find gayety in the colors of
the painting, joy in the musical tones, happiness in the pictured face,
tenderness in the sculptured pose. We hear the feeling in the sounds
and see it in the lines and colors. The happiness seems to belong to
the face, the joy to the tones, in the same simple and direct fashion
as the shape of the one or the pitch of the others. The feelings have
become true attributes. It is only by analysis that we pick them out,
separate them from the other elements of idea or sensation in the
whole, and then, for the purpose of scientific explanation, inquire
how they came to be connected. And this connection is not one that
depends upon the accidents of personal experience. It is not, for
example, like the emotional significance that the sound of the voice
of the loved one has for the lover, which even he may some day cease
to feel, and which other men do not feel at all. It is rather typified
by the emotional value of a melody, which, through psychological
processes common to all men, becomes a universal language of feeling.
The work of art is a communicable, not a private expression.
As we have observed, the elements of feeling in the aesthetic experience
are of two broad kinds--either vague, when directly linked with the
sensuous medium, or else definite, when this linkage is mediated by
ideas through which the medium is given content and meaning. The former
kind, which I shall consider first, comprises all cases of the emotional
expressiveness of the medium itself,--of tones and word-sounds and
their rhythms and patterns, of colors and lines and space-forms and
their designs. The detailed study of this expressiveness I shall leave
to the chapters on the arts; here I wish merely to indicate the kind
of psychological process involved.
In many cases the psychological principle of association operates. The
tender expressiveness of certain curved lines, like those of the Greek
amphora, for example, is due, partially at least, to association with
lines of the human body, with which normally this feeling is associated.
The associated object, together with its feeling tone, are sufficiently
common to the experience of all men to account for the universality
of the emotion, and the isolation of the stimulus--abstract line--from
its usual context of color and bulk accounts for the vagueness.
Sometimes, on the other hand, expressiveness seems to be due to a
direct psychological relation between the sense-stimulus and the
emotion. This is almost certainly the case with rhythms, and, as I
shall argue in the chapters on painting and music, is at least partially
true of colors and tones. The expressiveness is at once too immediate
and too universal to depend upon association with definite things and
events, or personal, emotional crises. A rhythm, for example, may be
exciting the first time it is heard; one does not have to wait to hear
it at a battle-charge; a melody may be sad even when one has never
heard it sung by chance at parting. Of course the fact that associations
are not remembered is no proof that they do not operate; but it is
difficult to conceive of any which could operate in these cases. For
this reason, I think, we must suppose that certain sense-stimuli and
combinations of stimuli not only produce in the sensory areas of the
brain the appropriate sensations, but that their effects are prolonged,
overflowing into the motor channels and there causing a total reaction
of the organism, the conscious aspect of which is a vague feeling. The
organic resonance is too slight and diffuse to produce a true emotion;
hence only a mood results.
In all the representative arts the vague expressiveness of the medium
is reinforced through emotions aroused by ideas which interpret
sensation as an element of a thing. The green in the painting is not
only green, but green of the sea; the red is not only red, but red of
the sky; the curved line is not a mere curve, it is the outline of a
wave. The totality of colors and lines is not a mere color and line
composition, but a marine landscape. The feeling tones of the elements
of this complex and of the complex itself are not only those of the
colors and lines as such, but of the interpretative ideas as well;
which in turn are the same as those of the corresponding real things.
The psychological process is here simple enough. The feeling tone of
the sea is carried by the idea of the sea, which now fuses with the
green color and wavy lines of the painting.
But in order fully to explain the phenomena of aesthetic expression,
it is not sufficient to show how the connection between feeling and
sensation and idea takes place; it is necessary, in addition, to explain
the nature of this connection. The feeling is not experienced by us
as what it is--our reaction to the sensations or represented
objects--but rather as an objective quality of them. The sounds are
sad, the curve tender, the sea placid and reposeful. Why is this?
The explanation is, I think, as follows. Despite their usual
subjectivity, feelings tend to be located in the objective world
whenever they are in conflict with or not directly rooted in the
personal life or character of the individual. In listening to music,
for example, feelings of despair and terror may be aroused in me who
am perhaps secure and happy; and even if the feelings are joyous, they
are not occasioned by any piece of personal good fortune--my situation
in life is the same now as before. Hence, finding no lodgment in the
ego, and having to exist somewhere, they seek a domicile in the sounds
evoking them. And, in general, works of art arouse but offer no personal
occasions for feeling, and therefore absorb it into themselves.
The process of objectification may, however, go further. It often
happens in the aesthetic experience that feelings are not objectified
alone, but carry with them the idea of the self--I come to feel
_myself_ as joyous or despairing in the sounds. The extent to which the
idea of the self thus follows the objectified feelings depends largely
upon the amount of their reverberation throughout the organism. When
this is small, and the feelings are vague and tenuous, as in color
appreciation, there is little or no definite projection of the idea
of the self; when, on the other hand, it is large and the emotions are
strong, as oftentimes in music, where breathing, circulation, hand and
foot are affected, then I myself seem to be there,--striving, pursuing,
struggling, in the sounds. I am where my body is. The projection of
the idea of the self is facilitated for the same reason when the body
is actually employed in the creation of the work of art, as in singing
and acting. It also occurs more readily when the life expressed in the
work of art is akin to the spectator's. Thus, an emotional and
suggestible woman, in watching a fine performance of "Magda," inevitably
puts herself in the place of the heroine if she has herself lived
through a similar experience. But when the life expressed is strikingly
foreign to our own, the projection of the idea of self is more
difficult; the duality between subject and object tends to remain.
These phenomena have excited special attention when, as in painting
and sculpture and the drama, a human being is represented. Suppose,
for example, I see a statue of a runner ready to start. I not only see
the form and color of the marble and recognize them as a man's; I also
feel emotions of excitement, tension, and expectation such as I should
myself feel were I too posed and waiting to run a race. And these
emotions I experience as the man's, and as his, not in a vague way,
but as definitely present in his sculptured form, even in particular
parts of it,--in the swelling chest and tightened limbs. Or consider
another case. Suppose I see Franz Hals' "Laughing Cavalier." I feel
jollity in the face, as the cavalier's. Yet in both cases I may feel
the emotions as also my own--as if I too were about to run or were
laughing. And the projection of the idea of the self will occur most
readily if I am myself a runner or a jolly person. In both instances,
moreover, the process will be mediated by impulses to movements that
are the normal accompaniments of the emotions in question. If I observe
myself carefully, I may find that my own chest is tending to swell and
my own limbs to tighten, in imitation of the runner's, or my own pupils
to dilate and the muscles of my face to wrinkle and to part, in
imitation of the Dutchman's. And these movement-impulses I objectify.
I not only see jollity in the face, but laughter as well; in the statue,
not only excitement, but running. And again--where my body is, there
am I; so I am jolly with the cavalier and excited with the runner. The
psychology of this process is simple enough. In my experience there
is a plain connection between the sight of a movement and sensations
attendant upon movement, and further, a connection between some of
these movements, namely, the expressive movements, and the emotions
which they express. In accordance with the law of association by
contiguity, whenever any one of several mental elements usually
connected together is present in the mind, the others tend to arise
also. So here. Seeing the semblance of tight muscles and a smiling
face, I feel the emotions which have these visual associates, experience
the correlated movement-sensations, project them all into the object
which initiated the process.
In recent years, a great deal has been made of these movement-sensations
in explaining aesthetic feeling. [Footnote: See the discussions in Lee
and Thompson: _Beauty and Ugliness_.] Yet in the case of all people who
are not strongly of the motor type, people in whose mental make-up
movement plays a minor part in comparison with vision and other
sensations, they play a secondary role, or even hardly any role at
all. Most spectators, indeed, instead of actually making slight
movements imitative of the movements seen or represented, and
experiencing the corresponding sensations, make no movements at all
and simply experience movement images; this substitution of image for
movement probably occurs in the minds of all except the most imitative.
Most people, even of the motor type, do not smile when they see the
"Laughing Cavalier" or start to run when they see the statue of the
runner; careful observation of themselves would disclose only faint
movement images which seem to play about their lips or limbs--mere
images of movement have supplanted movements. And many visualists would
not find any images at all. However, although the mistake has been
committed by some investigators of supposing that everybody experiences
movement because they themselves, being of the motor type, do, it
cannot be denied, I think, that such people attain to a vividness of
aesthetic living not reached by others. They appreciate beauty with
their bodies as well as with their souls. And in their case too, as
has been shown, aesthetic appreciation is more strongly histrionic--they
not only put themselves into the work of art, but the idea of themselves
as well.
Following the German school of einfuehlung, I have insisted throughout
this discussion on the importance of feeling in the aesthetic
experience; yet I do not think the voice of those people can be
neglected who claim that their experience with works of art is of
slight or no emotional intensity. There are people who would report
that they feel no jollity when they see the "Laughing Cavalier," or
anguish when they read the Ugolino Canto in the Inferno; yet such
people often have a highly developed aesthetic taste. How can this
difference be accounted for?
Starting with the emotional appreciation of art as primary, we can
account for it in this wise. It is a familiar phenomenon in the mental
life for a concept or idea of an emotional experience to take the place
of that experience. What man has not rejoiced when the simple and cold
judgment, "I suffered then," has come to supplant a recurring torment?
Or who that has lived constantly with a sick person has not observed
how, looking on the face of pain, inevitably the mere comment, "he is
in distress," comes to supplant the liveliest sympathetic thrill? There
are many reasons for this. The idea or judgment is a less taxing thing
than an emotion, and so is substituted for it in the mind, which
everywhere seeks economy of effort. The idea is also more efficient
from a practical point of view, because it leads directly to action
and does not divert and waste energy in diffused and useless movements.
The physician simply recognizes the states of mind of his patients,
he does not sympathize with them. Finally our own reactions to an
objectified emotion may interfere with the emotion. If, for example,
we see an angry man, our own fear of him may entirely supplant our
sympathetic feeling of his anger. In general, in our dealings with our
fellow men, we are too busy with our attitudes and plans with reference
to them, and too much concerned with economizing our emotional energy,
to get a sympathetic intuition of their inner life, and so are content
with an intellectual recognition of it. Now this habit of substituting
the more rapid and economical process of judgment for the longer and
more taxing one of sympathy, is carried over into the world of art.
Nevertheless, the world of art is a region especially fitted for
_einfuehlung._ For there the need for quick action, which in life
tends to syncopate emotion, does not exist. The characteristic attitude
of art is leisurely absorption in an object, giving time for all the
possibilities of feeling or other experience to develop. Moreover, in
art there is not the same saving need for the substitution of idea for
feeling as in real life. For in art, feeling is not so strong as in
life; even when the artist expresses his own personal experience, he
lightens its emotional burden through expression, and we, when we make
his experience ours, find a similar relief. The emotion is genuine,
only weakened in intensity. In other cases, where the artist constructs
a world of fictitious characters and events, our knowledge that they
are not real suffices to diminish the intensity of the emotions aroused.
For emotions have the practical function of inciting to action, and
when action is impossible, as in the purely ideal world of the artist,
they cannot keep their natural intensity. We cannot feel so strongly
over the mere idea of an event as over a real event. Were it otherwise,
who could stand the strain of _Hamlet_ or _Othello_?
Throughout this discussion of the elements of the experience of art,
I have used the terms emotion and feeling with an inclusive meaning,
to cover impulses as well as feelings in the narrower sense. For in
the aesthetic experience, there are impulses--impulses to move when
action is represented in picture and statue, impulses to act, as when,
in watching a play, we put ourselves in the place of the persons. But
such impulses are always checked through the realization that they
come from sources unrelated to our purposes, and fail to get the
reenforcement or consent of the total self necessary to action. In
reading or singing the "Marseillaise," to cite an example from poetry,
I experience all kinds of impulses--to shoulder a musket, to march,
to kill--but no one of them is carried out. Now an inhibited impulse
is scarcely distinguishable from an emotion. With few exceptions, the
impulses in art do not issue in resolves, decisions, determinations
to act; or, if they do, the determinations refer to acts to be executed
in the future, in an experience distinct and remote from the
sthetic--the "Marseillaise" has doubtless produced such resolutions
in the minds of Frenchmen; and there is much art that is productive
in that way, providing the "birth in beauty" of which Plato wrote.
[Footnote: In the _Symposium_.] In art, impulses result in immediate
action only when action is itself the medium of expression, as in the
dance, where impulses to movement pass over into motion. Of course such
actions still remain aesthetic since they serve no practical end and are
valued for themselves.
If the question were raised, which is more fundamental in the aesthetic
experience, idea or emotion? the answer would have to be, emotion. For
there exists at least one great art where no explicit ideas are present,
music, whereas art without emotion does not exist. Take away the
emotional content from expression and you get either a mere play of
sensations, like fireworks, or else pseudo-science, like the modern
naturalistic play. However, the supreme importance of the idea in art
cannot be denied. Every complex work of art, save music, is an
expression of ideas as well as of feelings, and even in music there
exists the tendency for feeling to seek definition in ideas--do we not
say a musical idea? And do we not find the masters of so abstract an
art as ornament employing their materials to represent symbolic
conceptions? I wish to call the attention of the reader to certain
very general considerations touching the nature and function of ideas
in the aesthetic experience, leaving the study of the concrete problems
to the more special chapters.
First, the relation of the idea to the sense medium of the expression.
Here, I think, we find something comparable to the process of
_einfuehlung_. For in art, ideas, like feelings, are objectified
in sensation. Only sensations are given; out of the mind come ideas
through which the former are interpreted and made into the semblance
of things. Consider, for example, Rembrandt's "Night-Watch." A festal
mood is there in the golds and reds, and gloom in the blacks; but there
also are the men and drums and arms. If we wished to push the analogy
with _einfuehlung_, we might coin a corresponding term--_einmeinung_,
"inmeaning." In all the representative arts, this is a process of equal
importance with infeeling; for the artist strives just as much to
realize his ideas of objects in the sense material of his art as to put
his moods there.
When, moreover, we consider that the expression of the more complex
and definite emotions is dependent upon the expression of ideas of
nature and human life, we see that the process is really a single one.
Feeling is a function of ideas; if, then, we demand sincerity in the
one, we must equally demand conviction in the other. The poet could
not convey to us his pleasure at the sight of nature or his awe of
death unless he could somehow bring us into their presence. The painter
could not express the moods of sunlight or of shadow until he had
invented a technique for their representation. Clear and confident
seeing is a condition of feeling. Hence every advance in the imitation
of nature is an advance in the power of expression. The demand for
fidelity of representation, for "truth to nature," so insistently made
by the common man in his criticism of art, is justified even from the
point of view of expressionism.
Yet this fidelity of representation does not involve exact reproduction
of nature. The limitations of the media of the arts definitely exclude
this. No painter can reproduce on a canvas the infinite detail of any
object or exactly imitate its colors and lines. In the single matter
of brightness, for example, his medium is hopelessly inadequate; even
the light of the moon is beyond his power, not to speak of the light
of the sun; he has to substitute a relative for an absolute scale of
values. The sculptor cannot reproduce the color or hair of the human
body. However, this failure exactly to imitate nature does not prevent
the artist from suggesting to us ideas of the objects in which he is
interested. If the outline of the marble be that of a man, we get the
idea of a man; if the color and shape be that of a tree, we get the
idea of a tree. Our acceptance of these ideas is, of course, only
partial; for we are equally susceptible to the negative suggestions
of the whiteness of the marble and the smallness of the outline of the
tree. Every work of art represents a sort of compromise between reality
and unreality, belief and disbelief.
Nevertheless, despite this compromise, the purpose of art is
uncompromisingly attained. For art does not seek to give us nature
over again, but to express its feeling tones, and these are conveyed
when we get an idea of the corresponding object, even if that idea is
inadequate from a strictly scientific point of view. We do not react
emotionally to the infinite detail of any object, but only to its
presence as a whole and to certain salient features. The artist succeeds
when he constructs a humanized image of the object--one which arouses
and becomes a center for feeling. This image, when made of a few
elements, may be far more telling than a much more accurate copy; for
there is no diffusion of interest to irrelevant aspects. How effective
a medium for expression are the few and simple lines of Beardsley's
draftsmanship! The amount of detail necessary to convey an emotionally
effective idea is relative to the technique of the different arts and
varies also with the suggestibility and discrimination of the observer.
Here no a priori principles can be laid down for what only the
experimental practice of the artist can determine.
Moreover, the negative suggestions of a work of art, although they are
effective in preventing entire belief in the reality of the idea
expressed, do not hinder the communication and appreciation of the
attached feelings. Just so long as the belief attitude is not wholly
extinguished, this is the case; and the skillful artist takes care of
that. Of course, an attitude of self-surrender, of willingness to
accept suggestions, has to be present and we cooperate with the artist
in creating it. Aesthetic belief implies sufficient abandon that we
may react emotionally to a suggestion, but not enough that we may react
practically. We let the idea tell upon our feelings; we do not let it
incite us to action. The aesthetic plausibility of an idea depends
largely upon its initial plausibility with the artist. There is nothing
more contagious than belief. To utter things with an accent of
conviction is half the battle in getting oneself believed. If the
artist pretends to believe something and expresses himself with an air
of assurance, we accept it, no matter how preposterous it may be from
the practical or scientific point of view. Think of Rabelais!
A work of art is a logical system. It presupposes certain assumptions,
postulates, conventions, which we must accept if we are to live in its
world. Now, in order that we may accept them, the artist must first
have vividly accepted them himself. Only if they have become a very
part of him, can they become at all valid for us. The failure of
classicistic art in a non-classical age, of "Pre-Raphaelitism" after
Raphael, is a failure in this--the artist has never lived even
imaginatively in the world he depicts. His belief is an artifice and
a sham, and he cannot impose upon us with his pretense. But once we
have accepted the artist's postulates, then we are prepared to follow
him in his conclusions. In the Homeric world, we shall not balk at the
intercourse between gods and men; in mediaeval painting and drama, we
shall accept miracle; in _Alice in Wonderland_, we shall accept
any dream-like enchantment. But we demand that the conclusions shall
follow from the premises, that the whole be consistent. We cannot
tolerate miracle in a realistic novel or drama, or glaring inaccuracy
of fact in a historical novel, because they are in contradiction to
the laws of reality tacitly assumed. The final demand which we make
of any work, of art is that it live. What can be made to live for us
may be beautiful to us. But nothing can draw our life into itself which
has not drawn the artist's, or which is untrue to its own inner logic.
One of the most life-creating elements of a work of art is imagery.
Everywhere in art the tendency exists for ideas to be filled out,
rendered concrete and vivid, through images. In looking at a painting
of a summer landscape, for example, we not only recognize the colors
as meaning sunlight, but actually experience them as warm; in looking
at a statue we not only recognize its surface as that of the body of
a woman, but we feel its softness and smoothness; which involves that
the ideas of sunlight and a human body, employed in interpreting the
sensations received from these works of art, are developed back into
the original mass of images from which they were derived. However,
although ideas are formed from images, they are not images,--as our
ordinary employment of them in recognizing objects attests. We may and
usually do, for example, recognize a mirror as smooth without
experiencing it as smooth--the image equivalent of the idea remains
latent. Our ordinary experience with objects is too hasty and too
intent on practical ends for images to develop. On the other hand, the
leisurely attitude characteristic of the aesthetic experience is
favorable to the recall of images; hence, just as in the aesthetic
perception of objects we put our feelings into them, so equally we
import into them the relevant images. The aesthetic reaction tends to
be total. Our demand for feeling in art also requires the image; for
feelings are more vividly attached to images than to abstract ideas.
It is a fact familiar in the experience of everybody that the strength
of the emotional tone of an object is a function of the clearness of
the image which we form of it on recall. We can preserve the feeling
tone of a past event or an absent object only if we can keep a vivid
image of it; as our image of it becomes vague, our interest in it
dissipates. Everywhere in our experience the image mediates between
feeling and idea. So in art. Images have no more an independent and
self-sufficient status in art than sensations have; like the latter
they are a means for the expression of feeling. In the painting of
sunlight, for example, the images of warmth carry joyousness and a
sense of ease; in the statue, the tactile images convey the emotional
response to the represented object. In literature the expressiveness
of images is perhaps even more impressive. Consider how longing is
aroused by the tactile, gustatory, and thermal images in the oft-quoted
lines of Keats:--
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.
Examples might be multiplied indefinitely.
In literature alone of the arts, images from all departments of sense
can be aroused. Visual images play a greater role there than in painting
and sculpture, for the reason that, in the latter, visual sensations
take their place--we do not image what we can see. In sculpture, the
greater part of the imagery is of touch and motion--in the imagination,
we feel the surfaces and move with the represented motions; the
whiteness or blackness of the materials prevents the arousal of the
image of the color of the body. In painting, besides the temperature
images already mentioned, there are touch images--in still-life, for
example, when silks and furs are represented; images of odors, in
flower pieces; of motion, in pictures which depict motion, as in the
racing horses of Degas; of taste, in pictures of wine and fruit. Of
course the kind and amount of imagery depend upon the imaginal type
to which the spectator belongs and the wealth of the imaginal furnishing
of his mind. In any art, moreover, the chief and requisite thing is
expression through the sense medium, which should never be obscured
by expression through associated images. It is not the primary business
of a flower painter to arouse images of perfume, but to compose colors
and lines; nor the function of the musician to arouse the visual images
which accompany the musical experience of many people, but to compose
sounds. In sculpture, on the other hand, images of touch and movement
play an almost necessary part, for they are constituent elements in
the representation of form and motion; yet it is not indispensable to
the appreciation of sculpture that images of the sweet odor of the
human body be awakened. The image is seldom the basis of aesthetic
appreciation; it is more often its completion. But we shall go into
these matters more in detail in our special chapters.
In the representative arts, particularly painting and sculpture, the
associated images are fused with the visual sensations which constitute
the medium. I see the softness and sweet-odorousness of the painted
rose petal, just as I see the real rose soft and sweet; I see the
surface of the statue firm and shapely, just as I see the human body
so. This is because the ideas of the things represented in painting
and sculpture seem to be actually present in the visual sensations
which they interpret; the flower and the man seem to be there before
me. In these arts, aesthetic perception is a fusion of image with
sensation in much the way that normal perception is. In literature and
music, on the other hand, the connection between the sense medium of
the art and the associated images is less close; and for the reason
that the sounds are no part of the things which they bring before the
mind. In looking at a picture of a rose, I see the red as an element
of the rose represented; whereas, in reading about a rose, I only seem
to hear a voice describing it. In the latter case, therefore, the
olfactory and visual images have a certain remoteness and independence
of the word-sounds; I do not actually see and smell them in the sounds.
However, in the case of familiar words with a strong emotional
significance, the fusion of image with sound may be almost complete.
Who, for example, does not see a sweet and red image of a rose into
the word-sounds when he reads:--
Oh, my love's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June.
Or, when Dante describes the _selva oscura_, who does not see the
darkness in the word _oscura_? In all such cases a strong feeling
tone binds together the word-sound with the image. This fusion is most
striking in poetry because of the highly emotional material with which
it works.
The ideas and images associated with a work of art depend very largely
on the education, experience, and idiosyncrasy of the spectator. The
scholar, for example, will put tenfold more meaning into his reading
of the _Divine Comedy_ than the untrained person. Or compare Pater's
interpretation of the "Mona Lisa" with Muther's. Can we say that certain
ideas and images belong properly to the work of art, while others do
not? With regard to this, we can, I think, set up two criteria. First,
the intention of the artist--whatever the artist meant his work to
express: that it expresses. Yet, since this can never be certainly and
completely discovered, there must always remain a large region of
undetermined interpretation. Now for judging the relevancy of this
penumbra of meaning and association the following test applies--does it
bring us back to the sensuous medium of the work of art or lead us away?
Anything is legitimate which we actually put into the form of the work
of art and keep there, while whatever merely hangs loose around it is
illegitimate. For example, if while listening to music we give ourselves
up to personal memories and fancies, we are almost sure to neglect the
sounds and their structure; we cannot objectify the former in the
latter; with the result that the composition is largely lost to us.
Naturally, no hard and fast lines can be drawn, especially in the case
of works of vague import like music; yet we can use this criterion as a
principle for regulating and inhibiting our associations. It demands of
us a wide-awake and receptive appreciation. The genuine meanings and
associations of a work of art are those which are the irresistible and
necessary results of the sense stimuli working upon an attentive
percipient; the rest are not only arbitrary, but injurious.
To this, some people would doubtless object on the ground that art was
made for man and not man for art. The work of art, they would claim,
should interpret the personal experience of the spectator; hence
whatever he puts into it belongs there of right. There are, however,
two considerations limiting the validity of this assertion. First, the
work of art is primarily an expression of the artist's personality
and, second, its purpose is to provide a common medium of expression
for the experience of all men. If interpretation remains a purely
individual affair, both its relation to the artist and the possibility
of a common aesthetic experience through it are destroyed. For this
reason we should, I believe, deliberately seek to make our appreciations
historically sound and definite. And in the social and historical
appreciation resulting, we shall find our own lives--not so different
from the artist's and our fellows'--abundantly and sufficiently
expressed.