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21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 4. Emotion in Art

[role of feelings in artists, works and audiences]

6 ideas

20344	Music is not an expressive art, because it expresses no familiar emotions [Hanslick, by Wollheim]
	Full Idea: Hanslick concluded from the fact that music doesn't express definite feelings like piety, love, joy, or sadness, that it isn't an art of expression.
	From: report of Eduard Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music [1854]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 48
	A reaction: Whether music is 'expressive' (which it may not be) should not be confused with whether it is emotional, which it clearly is, even in its coolest examples. Hanslick viewed music as a code, not a language.

8123	The purpose of art is to help mankind to evolve better, more socially beneficial feelings [Tolstoy]
	Full Idea: The evolution of feeling proceeds by means of art - feelings less kind and less necessary for the well-being of mankind being replaced by others kinder and more needful for that end. That is the purpose of art.
	From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.16)
	A reaction: Underneath his superficially expressivist view of art, Tolstoy is really an old-fashioned moralist about it, like Dr Johnson. This is the moralism of the great age of the nineteenth century novel (which was, er, the greatest age of the novel!).

20425	In the cinema the emotions are weaker, but much clearer than in ordinary life [Fry]
	Full Idea: One notices in the visions of the cinematograph that whatever emotions are aroused by them, though they are likely to be weaker than those of ordinary life, are presented more clearly to the conscious.
	From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.25)
	A reaction: Fry had probably only seen very simple melodramas, but the general idea that artistic emotions are weaker than real life, but much clearer, is quite plausible.

23926	Art is distinguished by its aesthetic emotion, which produces appropriate form [Bell,C]
	Full Idea: The characteristic of a work of art is its power of provoking aesthetic emotion; the expression of emotion is what gives it its power. ...Rightness of form is invariably a consequence of rightness of emotion.
	From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III)
	A reaction: Bell doesn't dig very deep, because the obvious next question, not really addressed, is what makes the emotion 'right'. He suggests that significant form reveals reality, but why would an emotion do that? Does each work have a distinct emotion?

12164	Expressing melancholy is a good thing, but arousing it is a bad thing [Scruton]
	Full Idea: To describe a piece of music as expressive of melancholy is to give a reason for listening to it; to describe it as arousing or evoking melancholy is to give a reason for avoiding it.
	From: Roger Scruton (The Nature of Musical Expression [1981], p.49)
	A reaction: Expressing sexual desire, while avoiding arousing it, is the nice challenge for a particular type of art. Would Scruton say that expressing joy is a good thing, but arousing it is bad? It is a nice observation, though.

20404	Music isn't just sad because it makes the listener feel sad [Davies,S]
	Full Idea: The 'arousal' theory says music is sad because it moves the hearer to sadness, ...but this seems to get things back to front, because we normally think it is because the music is sad that it moves the listener to sadness.
	From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 6.4)
	A reaction: The objection is right. If Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' always makes me feel sad (because it is so hopelessly optimistic), then that makes the music sad. Is the theory saying that there are no feelings in the music?