Definition of Art and Aesthetic Expression
Definition of Art
Preliminary Definition
To develop an understanding of art, a preliminary definition is needed to identify and distinguish the field of investigation. A useful starting point is Croce's definition: art is expression. Expression involves putting purpose, feeling, or thought into a sensuous medium, allowing the expresser to re-experience and communicate it to others.
A lyric poem is an expression of a poet's intimate experience in words.
Epic and dramatic poetry express visions of a larger life through the same medium.
Pictures and statues embody artists' ideas of visible nature and man in color and space-forms.
Architecture and industrial arts embody purpose and the well-being derived from fulfilled purpose.
Limitations of the Definition
While every work of art is an expression, not every expression is a work of art. Automatic expressions (e.g., cries of pain or shouts of joy) and practical expressions (e.g., commands or market conversations) are not aesthetic. Works of art, like the Ninth Symphony or Ode to the West Wind, are valued for themselves.
Artistic expressions are produced and valued for themselves, serving as ends in themselves for both the artist and the appreciator. They are not executed mechanically nor are they a means to a future end.
A love poem is valued for the rhythmic emotional experience it provides.
A declaration of love is valued for its consequences and is considered successful when its end is quickly attained.
The value of a love poem, even if written to persuade, is not measured by its success. Its significance is broader than the success or failure of its motive. Similarly, a Russian novel remains significant after the revolution. Art is free or autonomous expression, maintaining perennial worth.
Freedom of Aesthetic Expression
Aesthetic expression intensifies a quality inherent in any expression. Expression is not merely practical; it is rewarding in the pleasure of the activity itself, containing a generous superfluity in human behavior. Activities become disciplined only when they're difficult or their fruits are hard to attain. Spontaneity returns when needs are met without difficulty.
The activities of children, the rich, and people on holiday exemplify this spontaneity. In trade, speech is brief and necessary, while in leisurely conversation, verbal expression expands without a specific end. Brevity is not valued, and play replaces narrow seriousness.
Divergent Types of Expression: Science
Not all free expression is art; science is a divergent type. Science embodies thoughts in words, diagrams, mathematical symbols, and chemical formulae to portray objects of human experience. Scientific expressions serve a practical function, acting as "plans of action." Nonetheless, scientific knowledge is both an end in itself and a utility, bringing joy in the construction and possession of concepts and laws.
Although science involves free expression, it doesn't necessarily involve beauty. Abstract expressions like Euclid's Elements, Newton's Principia, or Peano's Formulaire are not works of art. While mathematical formulae may be admired for simplicity, clarity, and scope, they are not considered beautiful. Similarly, representations or descriptions of mere things, whether inaccurate or accurate, as in the empirical sciences, are not works of art.
The Role of the Observer's Reaction
The key difference lies in whether the description includes the artist's reactions to things, their mood or emotion in their presence. Artistic descriptions convey total, concrete experiences, incorporating the self of the observer. Scientific descriptions, however, focus solely on objects, intentionally excluding the observer's feelings. Science aims to be objective and, from an artistic perspective, may seem dry and cold.
Even realistic novels and plays, while striving for an accurate portrayal of human life, rely on basic dramatic feelings like sympathy, suspense, and wonder. Aesthetic expression is always integral, embodying a total state of mind centered around some feeling, whereas scientific expression is fragmentary or abstract, restricting itself to thought. Art may include truthful images and abstract ideas but always incorporates their life, feeling tones, or values.
The Expression of Value
Philosophy is closer to art because it admits the element of personality. Some scientists, like James and Huxley, created literature out of science by infusing their writings with their passionate interest in their discoveries and descriptions.
The need for the expression of value in art is the primary distinction between art and science. Science may express the individual, and art may express the concept. For instance, a geographer describes particular regions, and an astronomer studies individual celestial bodies. Poets like Dante, Lucretius, Shakespeare, and Goethe express universal concepts of ethics or metaphysics.
What defines them as poets is that they always express the human significance of the concept, not just its clear statement. A theory of human destiny, such as expressed in Prospero's lines:
We are such stuff \As dreams are made of, and our little life \Is rounded with a sleep.
…is imbued with overtones of feeling. Lucretius passionately argues for a naturalistic view of the universe. Poets use concrete images to convey and attach their emotion, as only a few abstractions can evoke and fix emotion.
Personal and Emotional Expression
Aesthetic expression is originally personal, observable in a child's early uses of words and things, which are touched with emotion. Descriptive names convey emotional reactions to objects, as disinterested knowledge doesn't exist for the child. Initial perceptions contain feeling and attitude, as well as color, shape, sound, and odor. Pure science and industry are abstractions, forced upon the mind by the stress of living.
The ability to see things without feeling or to describe them without emotion is a disciplined accomplishment. Training and haste transform objects from stimuli of wonder to mere cues for recognition or analysis. Knowledge can enter into beauty when it participates in an emotional experience, and every expression can become aesthetic by regaining its power to move the heart. An artist is like a child, free and sensitive in envisaging the world.
Beauty in Nature and Perception
Under these conditions, nature can be beautiful. Things are not inherently beautiful, but our perceptions of them can be. Perception is a process of mind that embodies meanings in sensations. Sensations are interpreted as objects through ideas. Perceiving a friend involves constructing the object by embodying the thought in the color and shape seen. This elaboration is rapid, but realizing a misidentification reveals the mental activity involved. Perceptions are beautiful when they embody feelings like mystery, tenderness, or majesty.
The sea, clouds, hills, men, and women evoke reactions which are experienced as belonging to the things themselves. This process of emotional and objectifying perception has no other end than perception itself. The aesthetic perception of nature is disinterested, autonomous, and free. Similarly, life, as remembered, observed, or lived, may possess the quality of beauty.
In reverie, significant events are recalled and embody the wonder and charm that prompted their recollection. Remembering is not a habitual or practical activity, but spontaneous and self-rewarding. Events in others' lives and actions performed can also have the quality of beauty, absorbing pity, joy, or awe.
Distinctions between Art and Nature
Despite their similarities, beautiful nature and art differ significantly. Comparing a Monet painting of a lily pond with the aesthetic appreciation of the real pond reveals differences. The pond is beautiful each time it is seen, expressing gladness and repose. The painting replicates this value but with essential differences.
The painting is deliberately constructed and composed, controlled by the artist, whereas natural beauty is an immediate reaction to given stimuli. Natural beauty involves an element of conscious intention, as we choose our point of view. Art consists of works of art, while natural beauty consists of more immediate experiences. Art is purer and more perfect, as the artist's control makes it fully expressive without irrelevant parts.
Permanence and Communication in Art
Art is communicable and abiding, created through a fixed mechanism developed by the artist, while the immediate beauty of nature is incommunicable and transient. The aesthetic perception of nature starts with variable aspects, unique to each observer, giving Monet a unique experience of the lily pond. Memories of beauty are private and fleeting. Only by transferring this beauty to a canvas can it be preserved and shared. The work of art is the tool of the aesthetic life.
As tools enhance efficiency, works of art enhance aesthetic capacity and experience, becoming a common possession. Each work of art serves as a foundation for new experiments, elevating aesthetic expression. Monet's art relied on the impressionists, who were indebted to French painting traditions. Art grants social sanction and assistance to the aesthetic life, which would otherwise be private.
The Artist's Impulse and Enduring Work
The permanence and communication of expression are vital to art. Artists create expecting to be understood and need appreciation. Deprived of sympathy, the artistic impulse withers or relies on the hope of finding it. Genuine artists desire their work to endure, safeguarding their substance and immortality. Art is not mere inspiration but a work of communication, meant to endure.
Characteristics of Aesthetic Expression
Certain characteristics define aesthetic expression. The sensuous medium receives attention and possesses significance not found in other expression types. In ordinary conversation or scientific woodcuts, sensation is a transparent means to communication and recognition. In art, words, tones, colors, and lines awaken feeling and pleasure and are deliberately fashioned to hold our attention.
The aesthetic expression is meant to possess worth and is fashioned to hold us, drawing us in. If the medium directly expresses the artist's feelings, the expression gains power. Sounds of words or colors and lines of a painting convey the feeling tone of the subject, re-expressing and enforcing the mood of thoughts. This re-expression through the medium is ubiquitous in the arts.
Superior Unity in Art
Another characteristic is the superior unity in aesthetic expressions. In other expressions, unity lies in the purpose or the content of the thought. The unity of a chair is its purpose, while the unity of a business conversation is governed by the bargain to be closed. Compare this to the unity of a sonnet or a painting, where there is additional pattern not bound by grammar or logic.
In paintings, beyond the dramatic unity of action or spatial togetherness, there is a harmony of colors and a composition of lines not found in nature. In useful objects, a design exists that cannot be explained by use. Artistic expressions have a unity in the material, superimposed on the unity required by purpose or thought. Since the medium is valuable in itself, the mind craves unity there also.
The unity of the fundamental mood of the thought expressed pervades the material. This results in an autonomous development of unity in the material, raising the total unity of the expression to a higher level.