For week 4 of the Tate Modern Modern Aesthetics course we focussed on R.G.Collingwood's theory of art as set out in his book The Principles of Art (1938) (see reading 26 of Cahn and Meskin - the course set book).
[For a more general introduction to questions about the definition of art, listen to my interview with Derek Matravers from the Philosophy Bites podcast series.]
For Collingwood, the artist - whether a poet or a painter - tells his or her audience 'the secrets of their own hearts' (p.336). The artist expresses an emotion, that is takes it from the stage of inchoate feeling to expressed and clarified emotion. The process of designing while making makes the nature of the emotion more precise:
'Until a man has expressed his emotion, he does not yet know what it is.'
and the artist proper is
' ...a person who, graplling with the problem of expressing a certain emotion, says 'I want to get this clear'. (p.114)
The audience in appreciating the work of art comes to express their own emotion in reaction to the work in a kind of recapitulation of the process the artist has gone through.
There aren't blueprints in art, nor is art simply a matter of technique (though he acknowledges that you need some technique to create anything). Art isn't a matter of knowing what you want to create then finding the best means to achieve that end; rather it is a process of dicscovery, of self-discovery that ultimately aids the viewer's self-discovery. In part this may be achieved by an appreciation of tactile values - the imaginative physical engagement through small body movements with the brushstrokes, or carving marks, or shapes in a picture of sculpture (an idea that Collingwood borrowed from the connoisseur Bernard Berenson).
In contrast various kinds of 'art so-called' such as magical art are means/ends directed. Magical art evokes emotions that have a practical use in life. Examples include propaganda art , religious art or patriotic art. None of these count as genuine art for Collingwood. Nor is Amusement Art. This is skilfully constructed to evoke a particular kind of emotion, a preconceived effect. Again, this is a craft. Think of Hitchcock's film Psycho (not Collingwood's example) and the ways in which Hitchcock skilfully and knowingly evokes fear in his audience through a range of techniques surrounding the famous shower scene. This is a real end-directed craft.
Real art, 'art proper', turns the audience into artists in that they engage in the same imaginative activity of making their emotions precise. Collingwood cites Coleridge approvingly:
'we know a man for a poet by the fact that he makes us poets'
In discussion it became apparent that some people thought this an outmoded and romantic approach to art; others acknowledged that this is close to how many gallery goers understand art.
In the gallery we looked at works in on Level 3 East of Tate Modern, and particularly the works in this room. Many of these are self-consciously expressionistic - if the theory doesn't work for these it won't work for any art. Approaching these works from a viewpoint of expressed emotion produced a different kind of attention that very much reflected back on the concerns of the artist producing the work, in contrast with Clive Bell's approach (examined last week), which was almost entirely concerned with the effect on the viewer.
Next week, reading 29 Walter Benjamin 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'
Further Reading on R.G. Colingwood
Nigel Warburton, The Art Question, chapter 2.
Aaron Ridley R.G. Collingwood
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