Imago Asthetik wrote:
> Mr Brady, could you perhaps elaborate on why you think the word 'express'
is
> poorly chosen? It has a long, neoplatonic heritage (emanation,
> complication, and expression) which also figures in Hegel and Schelling. I
> do not think, for example, that it is wrong or catachrestic to say that an
> artwork expresses.
Because saying "the artist expresses X in the painting" and "we can see that
the painting expresses Y" tends to equivocate the word.
It is reasonably accurate to say the artist expresses something (i.e.,
"presses it out") in a relatively uncomplicated, denotative use of "express."
The artist has a notion, develops it mentally, and then externalizes it
("expresses" it) by making the work. Such terms as "German Expressionism" or
"Abstract Expressionism" point to that use of the word.
But it is misleading to say that of a painting, which is inert and only
"active" when one views it and perceives its form and formal aspects. A work
of art doesn't press anything out toward the viewer; it remains unchanging as
the viewer "extracts" the proxies and cues that William mentioned from the
(mostly) conventionalized forms in it (--which, btw, Cheerskep, is how an
artifact "contains" its meaning). Asserting that a painting "expresses" X or Y
can easily lead to claims that are highly subjective and that often are flawed
by the affective fallacy. "The work expresses X because it makes me feel Y."
Later in the thread, when William wrote "the work expresses more than is
experienced," he used the term to imply some action of the work, which I took
to be a traditional way of putting it, but I could only understand "is
experienced" to refer to either the maker or viewer. I saw that in both
instances--your comment that I replied to and William's--the word "express"
was being used ambiguously and, in terms of a work of art, at least
inaccurately.
I am not immediately conversant with either Hegel or Schelling (I read Hegel
many years ago and nothing of Schelling, unless it was in an anthology, which
I have subsequently forgotten), so I cannot reply to your comment.
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Michael Brady
