Art as Expression

Philosophy of art - Art as expression | Britannica

Art as expression
The view that “art is imitation (representation)” has not only been challenged, it has been moribund in
at least some of the arts since the 19th century. It was subsequently replaced by the theory that art is
expression. Instead of reflecting states of the external world, art is held to reflect the inner state of the
artist. This, at least, seems to be implicit in the core meaning of expression: the outer manifestation of
an inner state. Art as a representation of outer existence (admittedly “seen through a temperament”)
has been replaced by art as an expression of humans’ inner life.
But the terms express and expression are ambiguous and do not always denote the same thing. Like so
many other terms, express is subject to the process-product ambiguity: the same word is used for a
process and for the product that results from that process. “The music expresses feeling” may mean
that the composer expressed human feeling in writing the music or that the music when heard is
expressive (in some way yet to be defined) of human feeling. Based on the first sense are theories about
the creation of art. Founded on the second are theories about the content of art and the completion of
its creation.
Expression in the creation of art
The creation of a work of art is the bringing about of a new combination of elements in the medium
(tones in music, words in literature, paints on canvas, and so on). The elements existed beforehand but
not in the same combination; creation is the re-formation of these pre-existing materials. Pre-existence
of materials holds true of creation quite apart from art: in the creation of a scientific theory or the
creation of a disturbance. It applies even to creation in most theologies, except some versions of
Christian theology, in which creation is ex nihilo—that is, without pre-existing matter.
That creation occurs in various art mediums is an obvious truth. But once this is granted, nothing has yet
been said about expression, and the expressionist would say that the foregoing statement about
creation is too mild to cover what needs to be said about the process of artistic creation. The creative
process, the expressionist wants to say, is (or is also) an expressive process, and for expression
something more is necessary than that the artist be creating something. Great care must be taken at this
stage: some say that the creation of art is (or involves) self-expression; others say that it is the
expression of feeling, though not necessarily of one’s own feeling (or perhaps that and something more,
such as the feeling of one’s culture or of one’s nation or of all humanity); others say that it is not
necessarily limited to feelings but that ideas or thoughts can be expressed, as they clearly are in essays.
But the distinctively expressionist view of artistic creation is the product of the Romantic movement,
according to which the expression of feelings constitutes the creation of art, just as philosophy and
other disciplines are the expression of ideas. It is, at any rate, the theory of art as the expression of
feelings (which here shall be taken to include emotions and attitudes) that has been historically
significant and developed: art as specially connected with the life of feeling.
When people are said to be expressing feelings, what specifically are they doing? In a perfectly ordinary
sense, expressing is “letting go” or “letting off steam”: individuals may express their anger by throwing
things or by cursing or by striking the persons who have angered them. But, as many writers have
pointed out, this kind of “expressing” has little to do with art; as the American philosopher John
Dewey said, it is more of a “spilling over” or a “spewing forth” than expression. In art at least, expression
requires a medium, a medium that is recalcitrant and that artists must bend to their will. In throwing
things to express anger, there is no medium—or, if one’s body is called the medium, then it is something
one does not have to study to use for that purpose. It is still necessary to distinguish a “natural release”
from an expression. If poetry were literally “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” as William
Wordsworth said, it would consist largely of things like tears and incoherent babblings. If artistic
creation can plausibly be said to be a process of expression, something different from and more specific
than natural release or discharge must be meant.
One view of emotional expression in art is that it is preceded by a perturbation or excitement from a
vague cause about which the artist is uncertain and therefore anxious. The artist then proceeds to
express feelings and ideas in words or paint or stone or the like, clarifying them and achieving a release
of tension. The point of this theory seems to be that artists, having been perturbed at the
inarticulateness of their “ideas,” now feel relieved because they have “expressed what they wanted to
express.” This phenomenon, indeed a familiar one (for everyone has felt relieved when a job is done),
must still be examined for its relevance. Is it the emotion being expressed that counts or the relief at
having expressed it? If the concern here is with art as therapy or doing art to provide revelations for a
psychiatrist, then the latter is what counts, but the critic or consumer of the art is surely not concerned
with such details of the artist’s biography. This is an objection to all accounts of expression as process:
how is any light at all cast upon the work of art by saying that the artist went through any expressive
process or through any process whatever in the genesis of it? If the artist was relieved at the end of it,
so much the better, but this fact is as aesthetically irrelevant as it would be if the artist had committed
suicide at the end of it or taken to drink or composed another work immediately thereafter.
Another problem should be noted: assuming that artists do relieve their oppressed states of mind
through creating, what connection has this with the exact words or score or brushstrokes that they put
on paper or canvas? Feelings are one thing, words and visual shapes and tones are quite another; it is
these latter that constitute the art medium, and in them that works of art are created. There is
doubtless a causal connection between the feelings of the artist and the words the artist writes in a
poem, but the expression theory of creation talks only about the artist’s feelings, while creation occurs
within the art mediums themselves, and to speak only of the former is not to tell anything about the
work of art—anything, that is, that would be of interest other than to the artist’s psychiatrist or
biographer. Through what paroxysms of emotion the artist passed does not matter anymore, insofar as
one’s insight into the work is concerned, than knowing that a given engineer had had a quarrel with a
friend the night before beginning construction on a certain bridge. To speak of anything revelatory of
works of art, it is necessary to stop talking about the artist’s emotions and talk about the genesis of
words, tones, and so on—items in the specific art mediums.
The expressionists have indeed brought out and emphasized one important distinction: between the
processes involved in art and in craft. The activity of building a bridge from an architect’s blueprint or
constructing a brick wall or putting together a table just like a thousand others the artisan has already
made is a craft and not an art. The craftsperson knows at the beginning of the processes exactly what
sort of end product is wanted: for example, a chair of specific dimensions made of particular materials.
A good (efficient) craftsperson knows at the beginning how much material it will take to do the job,
which tools, and so forth. But the creative artist cannot work in this manner: “Artists don’t know what
they are going to express until they have expressed it” is a watchword of the expressionist. They cannot
state in advance what a completed work of art will be like: the poet cannot say what words will
constitute the completed poem or how many times the word the will occur in it or what the order of the
words will be—that can be known only after the poem has been created, and until then the poet cannot
say. Nor could the poet set about working with such a plan: “I shall compose a poem that contains the
word the 563 times, the word rose 47 times,” and so on. What distinguishes art from craft is that the
artist, unlike the craftsperson, “does not know the end in the beginning.”
The distinction seems valid enough, but whether it supports the expressionist’s view is more dubious,
for it can be held regardless of the attitude assumed toward the theory of expression. The open-ended
process described as art rather than craft characterizes all kinds of creation: of
mathematical hypotheses and of scientific theory, as well as art. What distinguishes creation from all
other things is that it results in a new combination of elements, and it is not known in advance what this
combination will be. Thus, one may speak of creating a work of sculpture or creating a new theory, but
rarely of creating a bridge (unless the builder was also the architect who designed it, and then it is to the
genesis of the idea for the bridge, not to its execution, that the word creation applies). This, then, is a
feature of creation; it is not clear that it is a feature of expression (whatever is being done in expressing
that is not already being done in creating). Is it necessary to talk about expression, as opposed to
creation, to bring out the distinction between art and craft?
There does not seem to be any true generalization about the creative processes of all artists nor even of
great artists. Some follow their “intuitions,” letting their artistic work grow “as the spirit moves” and
being comparatively passive in the process (that is, the conscious mind is passive, and
the unconscious takes over). Others are consciously active, knowing very much what they want in
advance and figuring out exactly how to do it (for example, the 19th-century American writer Edgar
Allan Poe in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition”). Some artists go through extended agonies of
creation (the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms, weeping and groaning to give birth to
one of his symphonies), whereas for others it seems to be comparatively easy (Mozart, who could write
an entire overture in one evening for the next day’s performance). Some artists create only while having
physical contact with the medium (for example, composers who must compose at the piano, painters
who must “play about” in the medium in order to get painterly ideas), and others prefer to create in
their minds only (Mozart, it is said, visualized every note in his mind before he wrote the score). There
appears to be no true generalization that can be made about the process of artistic creation—certainly
not that it is always a process of expression. For the appreciation of the work of art, no such uniformity,
of course, is necessary, greatly though it may be desired by theorists of artistic creation.
The main difficulties in the way of accepting conclusions about the creative process in art are (1) that
artists differ so much from one another in their creative processes that no generalizations can be arrived
at that are both true and interesting or of any significance and (2) that in psychology and neurology not
enough is known about the creative process—it is surely the most staggeringly complex of all the mental
processes in human beings, and even simpler human mental processes are shrouded in mystery. In
every arena hypotheses are rife, none of them substantiated sufficiently to compel assent over other
and conflicting hypotheses. Some have said—for example, Graham Wallas in his book The Art of
Thought (1926)—that in the creation of every work of art there are four successive stages: preparation,
incubation, inspiration, and elaboration; others have said that these stages are not successive at all but
are going on throughout the entire creative process, while still others have produced a different list of
stages. Some say that the artist begins with a state of mental confusion, with a few fragments of words
or melody gradually becoming clear and the rest starting from there, working gradually toward clarity
and articulation, whereas others hold that the artist begins with a problem, which is gradually worked
out during the process of creation, but the artist’s vision of the whole guides the creative process from
its inception. The first view would be a surprise to the dramatist who set out to write a drama in five
acts about the life and assassination of Julius Caesar, and the second would be a surprise to artists like
the 20th-century English artist Henry Moore, who said he sometimes began a drawing with no conscious
aim but only the wish to use pencil on paper and make tones, lines, and shapes. Again, as to
psychological theories about the unconscious motivations of artists during creation, an early Freudian
view is that in creating the artist works out unconscious wish fulfilments; a later Freudian view is that
the artist is engaged in working out defenses against the dictates of the superego. Views based on the
ideas of the 20th-century Swiss psychologist Carl Jung reject both these alternatives, substituting an
account of the unconscious symbol-making process.

Answer the following comprehension questions.

1.Art as expression is contrasted with art as “imitation”. How do you under Art as imitation?
I perceive art as imitation to be a somewhat outdated but still valuable concept—it’s about crafting
representations of the external world, capturing reality as precisely as possible. Historically, this
perspective dominated the art scene until more modern theories introduced the idea of art as a mirror
to the artist's internal experiences rather than just a replication of the outer world.
2.In your own words, how would you define the theory that “Art is Expression”?
For me, the essence of "Art is Expression" lies in the notion that art transcends mere depiction. It’s not
about the accurate portrayal of a landscape or a person but about conveying the emotional or
intellectual reality of the creator. Art becomes a conduit for expressing the inner state, the feelings, and
thoughts of the artist, transforming subjective experiences into universal insights.
3.According to the “Expressionist view” of art. What defines “Art creation”?
According to the expressionist perspective, art creation isn’t just about forming something new; it's about expressing
the artist's internal world. This process involves more than just technical skill—it’s about the revelation and
communication of the artist’s deepest emotions and thoughts through the medium of their craft.
4.According to the philosopher John Dewey, what does artistic expression require?
John Dewey emphasized that true artistic expression involves a medium that resists, one that the artist
must master and manipulate to portray their emotions effectively. This contrasts with mere 'spilling
over,' where the expression is uncontrolled and unrefined.
5.Why might Art be a useful tool in mental health and therapy?
Art can be a profound tool in mental health and therapy because it allows for the expression of
thoughts and feelings that might be too difficult to articulate in words. It provides a non-verbal outlet
for complex emotions, offering both the artist and the audience a way to process and understand
emotional experiences.
6.What distinguishes art from craft?
The key difference between art and craft lies in their end goals and processes. Craft involves a predetermined
outcome and a clear, often repetitive method. Art, in contrast, is exploratory and open-ended, driven by intuition and
emotion rather than a fixed blueprint.
7.What do you understand about the creative processes of artist? Are they all the same?
The creative processes of artists are as varied as the artists themselves. Some may follow intuitive,
spontaneous methods, while others might be more deliberate and structured. The diversity in artistic
creation is vast, with no single process fitting all.
8.Graham Wallas proposed four stages in art creation, what were they?
Graham Wallas described the creative process as consisting of four stages: preparation, incubation,
inspiration, and elaboration. This framework helps in understanding how artists transition from initial
idea to final creation, though the stages might overlap or vary in duration depending on the artist and
the art form.
9.What is the Freudian view of Art Creation?
Freudian theory suggests that art creation is a form of sublimation where the artist's unconscious desires are
transformed into socially acceptable forms through the creative process. This can be seen as a way for artists to
resolve internal conflicts and express wishes that cannot be fulfilled in reality.
10. How does your creative process work? Do any of these theories or ideas resonate with your
experience?
My creative process tends to be a blend of intuition and sporadic bursts of inspiration, reflecting some
of the ideas presented by Wallas and even Freud. I often find that my best work comes from a deep
emotional drive or a sudden insight that demands expression, and this aligns with the expressionist view
that art is fundamentally about conveying the inner life.