The expressivist theory of art runs into immediate problems in the interpretive phase. If we say that Romeo and Juliet is “sad” (a poor descriptor, I know), what do we mean? Do we mean that Shakespeare was sad when he wrote it, and some of his sadness got into the words? If I watch it and feel sad, am I feeling my sadness or Shakespeare’s sadness? What if someone doesn’t feel sad when they watch a performance? Does that mean that the ending isn’t sad? Does it have to make everyone sad or a majority of people sad?
The Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff suggests that we consider the problem like this. Using Osgood’s discovery that people across cultures interpret affective meaning in radically similar fashion, he suggests that people the world over would understand a wavy line being more expressive of tranquility and a jagged line being more expressive of restlessness. Now, if we take a piece of paper and draw a wavy line and a jagged one and “then focus our attention back and forth between the two. Are we by doing so cast first into tranquility, then into reslessness, then back into tranquility, etc?” For him the answer is no. He says that we can “even recognize that the one line is expressive of tranquility without being tranquilized, and that the other is expressive of restlessness without being made restless.”
This quality that we recognize in the symbol is something he likes to call “fittingness”.
“An object O is expressive of some quality Q when and only when, the aesthetic character of O is fitting (to a significant degree) to Q. Expressiveness is grounded in fittingness.”
There are certainly a lot of things to like about this theory. It completely avoids the “intentional fallacy”. It saves us from some of the nonsensical sides of the subjective arguments about art. I’m thinking here of people who suggest that a work can mean anything to anyone. Specifically, Beethoven’s Funeral Marches really are expressive of sadness even if you think they sound like happy music to you. It avoids some of the confusing terminology that we use. When people say that a painting is “religious”, they don’t mean that the canvas and oil “accepted Jesus into its pigmented heart.” They mean that the painting has a religious theme and possibly evokes emotions (religious or otherwise) in them when they view it.
The problem is that for the theory to work, we have to have a “fittingness police” to make it work. For Wolterstorff, he finds his police force in the “objectivity of fittingness” via Osgood’s cross-cultural semantic studies. I’m still not completely convinced. I would also add that I’m not positive about the wavy/jagged line experiment. They are simple symbols, not a Shakespeare play, but even in their simplicity, I do feel more uneasy looking at the jagged line than the wavy one.
I would suspect that Shakespeare felt elated when he completed Romeo & Juliet, knowing that he'd written something very good. Having said that, it is sure that he poured much emotion into those lines, but I doubt he could have been feeling the teenage melodrama of young love and its ill-fated consequences. Thus, this example puts a partial lie to what is my understanding of Expressivist theory, which according to my interpretation states that art is valid, that it is art, only if it reflects the artist's emotions. This is, no doubt, an oversimplification of what is, I am sure, a glorious artistic theory, but I find such grand theories of a somewhat dubious nature at any rate. Perhaps I find too much validity in the rival Hedonistic theory and therefore am underwhelmed by Expressivism's many charms.
I certainly feel that art must reflect and be born of an artist's emotions, but I cannot divorce the intellectual process from the act of creation. While Shakespeare certainly must have suffered through "teen angst" like the rest of us, we can never know that he was enduring it during the composition of this play. Perhaps he was embroiled in a kind of ill-fated love affair as the movies would suggest, but perhaps he had just stored away these feelings and pulled them from his toolkit when they were later needed.
As to Osgood and Wolterstaff, their lines, and fittingness, while I can see some validity in their ideas, I cannot, due to my own experience, deny that subjectivity is inherent in both the creation and the interpretation of art.
Certainly colors, shapes, and sound can have certain affective meanings. Red is, objectively, red and, subjectively, may be associated with anger or fire. However, an artist can employ these meanings or transcend them. He or she could ignore them even in an attempt to break out of conventional paradigms. Perhaps he or she is a post-structuralist and has disassociated objects from their cultural and subliminal meanings.
Perhaps my problem is that I writhe against any ideological chains, that I am too inclined to "kick against the pricks".
I knew it wouldn't take long for post-structuralism to enter the conversation. If there is one thing I am on a campaign to stomp out in this world, it is post-structuralism. If there are two things, it is post-structuralism and jeans skirts. Another solution to the problem is forthcoming. Looking forward, as always, to your thoughts.