I managed to do some reading over Christmas, between stuffing my face and the Xbox!

I read some of Feeling and Form by Susanne Langer, which was more useful as a pointer to other works rather than her own theories. She starts by concentrating on semiotics and how a signifier and signified works, but she also raises the issue that the understanding of artwork is not based on the use of a language. She maintains that language is only for either the spoken or written word because there is strong inference between the word and the definition, which in turn means that it is extremely difficult to misinterpret a sentence. Personally I think she does have a point, but it’s not a massive point. There is a greater distance between the signifier and the signified in art and this is because the signifier can be interpreted in more than one way and I think this adds a richness to visual art.

However, I then started to encounter something called the aesthetic emotion and this seems to be the emotional part of the artwork that is transmitted, or expressed, to the viewer. This phrase seems much better than my own, which was pseudo emotion, because it is more defined and can relate more readily to the artwork. Other than these two points I felt that her theory concentrated too much on music and not the visual arts, and for me, that was a step further away from my own perspective. But she did provide a direction to go in as the person who introduced the term aesthetic emotion is Clive Bell in his book Art.

I also read some of The Philosophy of Art by H. Gene Blocker. This I did find really interesting because not only did he discuss the notion of Aesthetic Emotion but he also explored the idea that emotions have both a private and public sphere. By this he means that the way we express emotions that are translatable by others follow certain social rules and conventions, whereas when expressing these emotions privately, of how the emotion makes us feel internally, is very different. It is because of the public sphere of the emotion that we identify with, and so comprehend and internalise the emotion, which then allows us to understand the emotion expressed in the artwork.

My next steps are to start reading Art by Clive Bell (I have already read a small part of it and he sounds incredibly pompous!) Also, quite a few of the books I have read all mentioned that the expression theory has it’s roots in the Romantic Movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which was in reaction to the age of enlightenment and the prominence of science and logic. So on the reading list is Romanticism, A Very Short Introduction by Michael Ferber. I’ve read these books before and they do exactly what they say on the tin and are usually quite good and informative.