There are few thinkers today that argue that art doesn’t convey emotional impact of some sort.
Much of the formal writing concerning expressivist theories of art since Santayana have assumed what is commonly called the “two terms theory”. That is, for art to happen, we need an object of some sort to contemplate, and we need something that the object expresses. Implicit in the argument is, of course, a third term: one to contemplate the art object.
Before we get into some of the problems and solutions to the question I asked before (i.e. how does the emotion get into the specific materials of the object, and how does the observer get them back out again?), I would like to start with the basic idea of what precisely is being expressed. In the version that is particularly influenced by early 19th century thought, the thing that is being expressed through the art object is the subjective emotions of the artist.
Jacques Barzun suggests a question that I will paraphrase. Is a mathematician less emotionally invested in his equations than a painter in his painting? Is a scientist less emotionally involved in her research than a composer is in her score? I think that we have to answer that question in the negative, but what does that mean for our discussion?
Secondly, if someone gives expression to his/her emotion, let’s say by sighing, is that the same thing as art? We have in that case, a subjective emotion being expressed through sound. Sometimes my dog sighs to convey her frustration at not being able to taste the delicious rabbits and squirrels that frequent my yard. Sometimes it moves me emotionally, and I wish that she could capture the little beasts. I’ve had an emotional experience because of the sonic actions of a dog expressing her emotions. Is that the same thing as listening to a symphony but on a smaller scale?
Finally, what happens when there is no artist? I may well be moved by a painting of a landscape, but I may be more moved by an actually landscape. When I look at the real landscape, I seem to be appreciating in it the same sorts of things I appreciate in the painting. Line, color, form, and depth seem to permeate the image, and I can be brought to a state of wonder and awe. Is this art?
OK, I'll give these questions a try…
Is the emotive content of an artwork objective or subjective? This question reminds me of the debate over "media images of women" (and of men): is there no such thing as objective physical beauty? is it purely a cultural construct? I've always thought both an objective and subjective element are at work: while granting certain exceptional examples (exceptions that prove the rule), all cultures tend to recognize more or less the same physical attributes as beautiful — those associated with health, strength, fertility, etc. Then, each culture offers its own unique "cultural constructs" as its own subjective way of celebrating these objectively beautiful physical properties. So it isn't a question of beauty being objective OR subjective; it's both objective AND subjective, these elements juxtaposed in usually complementary but potentially paradoxical ways.
So perhaps beauty in art is much the same. Painters and composers and poets have discovered patterns and lines (for line is the fundamental unit of beauty in all art) in their respective art forms that objectively correspond to certain human emotions, and do so across cultures. But artists offer their own take on these lines and patterns: their own subjective ways of acknowledging and celebrating them — perhaps at times in ironical or disillusioned ways that set their subjective takes on the objectively beautiful lines and patterns to some extend at odds with them.
Per Barzun, it seems at first glance that a mathematician or scientist does not offer the subjective response to an objective reality — to the lines and patterns in nature that they discover — that the artist does. Math and science offer an objective report of the existence of the lines and patterns they discover; they do not and cannot celebrate these lines and patterns, expound upon them, embellish and hyperbolize them. Also, it seems at first glance that the artist discovers his lines and patterns in man-made creations (works of art), where the mathematician and scientist discover them in nature. A further difference between the two.
Is an expressive sigh the same thing as art? Per my above commentary, we might argue: no. The expressive sigh, or the frustration of the dog with which you sympathize, is perhaps the objectively expressive line or pattern that it is function of the artist to celebrate, to embellish, to expound and hyperbolize upon using the forms his particular artistic discipline provides him. Since no artist has done so in the case of the sigh or of the dog, we have only instances of what might have been (or might yet be) the inspiration for art, and not instances of art, actualized according to those inspirations.
Likewise the landscape is not art. Art is the opposite of nature. (So wrote Quentin Faulkner, in an essay of his that I read in '96 or '97 when I was a student at UNL.) Again, art is the response of man to the objectively beautiful lines and patterns he perceives in the world. Or so one might argue…
Interesting stuff. I will say that the closest I ever came to feeling I had seen evidence there was a god in the universe was through studying mathematics, particularly phi and the golden ratio, which permeates things like art, music, and mollusks.
Perhaps we can dismiss the dog's sigh as "not-art" since the dog does not have a concept of what art "is." Is the landscape art? Depends on if there is an artist, which circles around to whether you believe in Jeebus or not, and turns the whole thing into a kind of chicken/egg situation.