Aesthetic Emotion as an Intersubjective Phenomenon
When attempting to define such nebulous things as aesthetic feeling and significant form there is always the question of the usefulness of the theory. Bell’s theory provides a useful starting point for the consideration of a universal understanding of art. Bell readily admits that this subject matter is “purely a matter of taste” and that “any system of aesthetics that pretends to be based on some objective truth is so palpably ridiculous as to not be worth discussing.” So, having admitted that, on what basis does he venture to make his claims of universality? It turns out that he doesn’t precisely delineate how the conception of significant form is shared among diverse perspectives; instead he briefly outlines it with talk of different people liking different paintings but liking similar elements of form among the diverse paintings. In this paper I will argue that perception of significant form and the feeling of the AE is always dependent on its context. The context will always have certain elements in common, such as the art being viewed by a human with an individual sense of taste, the viewer being educated enough to know that they are viewing art, the assumption that the viewer is attempting to engage with the artwork, etc. The sharing of the context of the viewing of the artwork is what allows people to share their perceptions of significant form. This is such an obvious observation that one might wonder why it is worth describing. What it explains is how one can have an experience with a painting that can then be described and agreed upon by another viewer of the same painting, how the individual perception of a work creates a meaning for that person and how that meaning is shared with another perception, influencing it and influenced by it, to build a consensus of meaning that is larger in scope than the individual perception of the piece alone.
Bell says that all art must have some common quality, otherwise when we speak of it we “gibber”. This provides the first condition of the context in which he operates. Outside of the belief in some commonality among artworks there is no point in talking of them at all.
Bell names this commonality significant form and describes it as “certain forms and relations of forms that stir our aesthetic emotion.” He goes a little further to say it consists of combinations of line and color that move us aesthetically, all in all quite dissatisfyingly vague. And what exactly is the aesthetic emotion? This too we find to be a rather shapeless sort of description of a feeling that is austere, elevated and sublime. It is differentiated from mere human emotion in that it has no object associated with it; that is to say, the emotion is not a result of any representational content the picture may have but is rather a feeling produced by the significant form alone. The perception of significant form requires no specific tools according to Bell, other than a sense of form and color and an understanding of three dimensional space, which he admits is indispensable to recognizing the phenomenon. Bell also brings up the psychological question of what it is exactly about certain relations of color and form that produces this odd feeling but he drops this line of questioning, calling it irrelevant to pure aesthetics. By doing that, he is essentially dodging the accountability for explaining the universality of recognizing significant form. This is said explicitly when he prefaces the topic with the admission that, “the objects that provoke the aesthetic emotion vary with each individual.” And, “All systems of aesthetics must be based on personal experience- that is to say, they must be subjective.” We are left wondering how anything like significant form could reliably be discerned by disparate parties with disparate tastes. This question is what I aim to answer in this paper.
First the sharing of a context must be established. The obvious appropriate choice is the context provided by Bell himself. This would be someone English speaking, familiar with the terms significant form and aesthetic emotion, having healthy eyes, being in setting that provides artworks for viewing and encourages their interpretation and being in the company of some one with similar capabilities and disposition. It will become evident that the further we stray from this context that allows the give and take of intersubjectivity to take place, the less useful and cohesive the theory becomes. For instance, let us take the example given of primitive art having a great degree of recognizable significant form and examine it closely. Say we have a piece of pottery for instance, made by a tribesman somewhere. It is graceful and has a flowing line and shading to it, Bell would say it has significant form, but what would another tribesman say? Assuming there was a translator present, the tribesman might agree with that the pottery has a pleasing shape and color but does he really feel the aesthetic emotion? It is doubtful, since by Bell’s own admission, not everybody is aware of the possibility of feeling the aesthetic emotion separate from regular human emotion. In the mind of the tribesman, no distinction is made among the emotions felt. The singling out of the aesthetic emotion as a particular response to the specific stimulus of SF is unlikely given the necessity of the concept itself for understanding of the phenomena being dealt with. In other words, Bell’s theory only holds true within the context of knowledge of Bell’s theory. Let us take a look at another example that is problematic for the universality of SF. Suppose there was a Chinese court having a concert at which some visiting foreign dignitaries were being entertained. These foreign dignitaries happen to be distinguished art critics familiar with Bell’s theory and eager to apply it to the Chinese culture. As the dignitaries discuss the dissonance of the music to their finely trained western ears, they find it difficult to admit that the music has any significant form, yet they can plainly see some of the Chinese in the crowd are rapt in the throes of the aesthetic emotion. Here the problem is not ignorance of Bell’s theory but rather a problem of cultural context in which the viewer (or hearer) of the piece lacks some essential education in the particular art that would allow them to notice the significant form held in it. Incidentally, Bell emphasizes the application of his theory for visual art, perhaps because he considers recognition of visual SF more innate and universal than recognition of other kinds of SF.
Finally, let us consider how individual predilections might lead one to see SF where another sees nothing. Two people with similar knowledge of the art world and background are in an art museum arguing about a painting. The painting is of geometric shapes loosely tied to each other with straight lines. Viewer A likes the painting and says he receives the aesthetic emotion from the SF in it. Viewer B finds the painting distasteful and overly severe and says he gets nothing but a headache from it. So does the painting in fact have significant form? In this case, the individual tastes of each person constitute their personal context. Perhaps viewer A likes the painting because his mathematical nature allows him to perceive the relations between the lines with more clarity than his companion. Perhaps viewer B dislikes the painting because though there is no representational content, he is subtly reminded of a negative experience in geometry class. The point being, the individual filter of taste that we all perceive through will trump any conception of SF every time. This brings us full circle to Bell admitting the ultimate subjectivity of aesthetics and begging the psychological question of what exactly is it about a form that evokes an aesthetic feeling.
Nonetheless, something has been accomplished; we should now have an idea of how aesthetic perceptions may be shared and confirmed through the process of intersubjective consensus in a common context and also understand how, when lacking that context, one may quickly lose hold of any semblance of objectivity and slide in to “mere opinion”.
