Why is Modern Dance Undervalued in Society?

Many modern dancers today find themselves dismayed at the lack of appreciation there is on the part of audiences for modern dance, a recent article in The Huffington Post is a pretty typical summary of this feeling on the part of dancers as well as an attempt to defend modern dance as an art form. The problem with these complaints is not so much that they don't successfully defend modern dance, it's just that modern dance is more or less still pretty avant-garde, especially for the average person. The cultural complaint that people "are afraid of modern dance because it's not evident what it's about, or what you're supposed to get walking away from it," is not a helpful one, nor is assuring audiences it's okay that they don't know what it's about and the joy about it comes from trying to figure it out. None of that is going to change the fact that people generally don't enjoy what they don't understand. The enjoyment which comes from the "higher" artforms are not evident at the first glance, but overtime people came to enjoy Classical and Romantic artforms more as they learned more about them and more people appreciated them. The fact is that the avant-garde or the close to avant-garde artforms are only going to be appreciated by a small section of society until those artforms begin to seep into the minds of the rest of audiences. And the other fact is is that most avant-garde works aren't very good either. I would estimate (very loosely) that 70-90% of works created today are not very good works of art. But this was true in the 1700s and the 1800s as well, it was also true that the general population did not like them very much either. Think about all the stories of great artists who were derided during their lifetime: Vincent Van Gogh, Ludwig Van Beethoven, William Blake, etc. It is just simply the nature of cutting-edge, not-for-the-purpose-of-entertainment art-forms. So stop complaining about society's failures of appreciating your work, because you chose to do the work. If you didn't want to be looked down upon or not appreciated to what you think you deserve, then you shouldn't be in an artform that's only been around a 100 years.

Interdisciplinary Artworks

Interdisciplinary artworks have grown recently in popularity in the artworld. The more one collaborates with other artists the more attention they seem to be given, and this seems right after all, one has much more of a chance of drawing an audience if they are using both dance and the visual arts, as opposed to just one or the other. Attention is not the only impetus though and many artists just like working with other artists in the creation process. The question though here is: Is just simply working with another medium a sufficient condition for a work to be interdisciplinary? The prima facie (on the face of it) answer to this is "Yes." However, there seems to be a problem with this assertion as some of the performing arts will many times include this as part of their art form. The two common instances of this are dance and theater. Each of these, will most of the time include collaboration with different artists. Most dances are set to music, most theater is accompanied by a set designs or costume designs. All of these instances incorporate different artforms or different artists, and it doesn't seem like we want to call them interdisciplinary. Otherwise, every time a choreographer creates to music, they are creating an interdisciplinary work. This seems to me to be a mistake, as people don't generally refer to such works as interdisciplinary works. A possible answer to this is to say that there has to be two artists of different mediums involved in the creation of the work. The problem with this line of argument rests in that even though multiple artists are involved in the creation of an artwork, it still can end up with the same problem as the previous one, in that the other mediums are only there for the purpose of supporting the main medium. In the case of dance, visuals and music can be there to just simply support the dance. Even though different artists may collaborate, the results often end up with one artform being the main medium and the others being supporting or subservient to the main. I have often heard the phrase, "Be careful the projections don't distract from the enjoyment of the dance." This statement underlies my concern. In that, how can an artwork be interdisciplinary if all the disciplines are not as important or close to important to be enjoyed? The importance of multiple disciplines seems to me to be the sufficient condition for an artwork to be considered interdisciplinary. Now, I feel it is time to say what makes a good interdisciplinary artwork as opposed to a bad one. To be clear, I am not talking about the artwork being good. I am talking about how does one determine the goodness or badness of the interdisciplinary aspect of a work of art. So there are two aspects of evaluation I am distinguishing here. I can evaluate a work of art on it being a good work or a bad work. This I can evaluate for any work of art. What I want to focus on here, is how do I determine if the artist(s) who created the work, worked with the different disciplines of art well? This, I think, lies in the idea of emergent properties. So good interdisciplinarianism lies in how the different mediums being used mix and match so that they create something new. The good interdisciplinary artist(s) are ones which create the new work which is not reducible to its individual parts. They complement each other well without either being subservient to the other, and create something new in the process. This is, what I think, makes a good interdisciplinarianism, the ability create a new work of art which is irreducible to the individual mediums. Why is it necessary here to not have one simply subservient to the other medium? After all, it seems like there is more that is added when a dancework has music as opposed to not having music (at least most of the time) so it doesn't appear to be reducible to its individual parts, movement and sound. The reason is simply that it still is dance in this instance. Since the parts are all subservient to the dance, we do not get something that is interdisciplinary, just simply a dance. So the parts, the music and the dance need to work together to create something new. The two forms need to meld and create something anew. That is what makes for good interdisciplinarianism.

On The Kantian Sublime

Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime seeks to analyze a certain aesthetic affect which he terms as the sublime. He describes this affect as a, “feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital forces followed immediately by an outpouring of them that is all the stronger.” An inhibition of vital forces indicates a displeasure and a stronger outpouring of those vital forces indicates a pleasure. This means that the sublime is both a pleasurable and an unpleasurable affect. Kant seeks to explain both how the sublime is rendered within an individual and why it is both pleasing and displeasing. In order to do this, Kant distinguishes between two different types of sublime experiences: the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime.

The mathematically sublime, Kant states, results from two actions of the mind: apprehension and comprehension. Apprehension refers to the mind’s ability to receive sense-experience of an object. Comprehension, however, refers to the mind’s ability to perceive an object as a whole in order to make sense to the mind. Apprehension, the sense-experience of an object, occurs first and then comprehension is added to make sense of what is perceived. Sublimity occurs when, according to Kant, the mind is unable to comprehend what is apprehended, when there is so much to perceive, the mind cannot possibly grasp or understand what is perceived. What produces the painful part of the sublime affect in the mathematically sublime, states Kant, is that it shows the limits of the human mind to be able to comprehend experience. However, what makes this pleasurable is it allows us to recognize humanity’s obedience to the transcendental laws of reason to consistently try to perceive and understand an object as a whole, even when it is impossible to do so.

The dynamically sublime, by contrast, is produced by objects that arouse fear and respect due to how powerful those objects are. Kant states that though the object must arouse fear in us, we cannot be afraid of it to feel the sublimity resulting from our contact with it. For example, in order for us to feel the sublime affect from a thunderstorm, we must not be attempting to flee and fearful for our lives, but it does not reduce the respect for the power of the thunderstorm, just because we are not fearful for our own human lives. Kant states the pain part of this version of the sublime is a result of discovering our limits as human beings by encountering that which is much greater and more powerful than ourselves. The pain lies in the recognizition that humans are not the most powerful beings on Earth. The pleasure, on the other hand, lies in the recognition that in the presence of something greater, our Earthly concerns are small and insignificant. It makes us feel as if the worries and tribulations of the everyday are petty and insignificant in comparison to the greatness we are in the presence of.

I think that Kant gives us two good examples of the sublime and helps to illuminate the sublime by giving a theoretical framework in which to view such an elusive concept as the sublime. That being said, I do not think that Kant gives us a broad enough view of the sublime. It is unclear as to whether he thinks these are the only two varieties of the sublime affect. He does qualify his statements that these are the two types found in nature, and that all human-created sublimity is somehow an instantiation of these natural kinds of sublimity. However, this kind of statement relies upon Kant’s own metaphysical conception of the universe which may be drastically different from other metaphysical conceptions. I agree with Kant as to the affectual characteristics of the sublime (as quoted earlier); however, I believe I have a broader and more inclusive explanation as to how the sublime affect is induced in an individual. The sublime affect is induced only if the individual comes into contact with something which is not human, something which is not within the realm of the day-to-day existence of mankind, something which is not within the normal bounds of an individual’s comprehension of the world around us. Notice how this includes both Kantian types of the sublime, and is rendered from these types, but also recognizes the similarities between the two types: both types deal with things beyond and above human normal existence.

I also think that Kant mistakes, in his attempt to explain why the sublime affect is being aroused, the difference between an experience that is sublime and a revelation that is sublime. For example, I recently visited Rome and I saw the Pantheon, my experience in the Pantheon reflects Kant’s idea of the mathematically sublime. I was not able to comprehend what I was perceiving in the Pantheon due to how enormously vast it was, and the sublime affect was indeed induced within me to a great proportion. However, not once was I to think that I was limited and received pain or I had the power to obey transcendental laws of reason and received pleasure. Indeed, I do not think that the power of the human mind to obey transcendental laws of reason is even desirable, let alone pleasurable. This revelation which Kant talks about when in the presence of the mathematically sublime may in fact be a source of sublime pleasure. I do not deny that; however, what I do deny is that this recognition is the cause of the experience of the mathematically sublime to induce the peculiar pleasure/pain affect of the sublime. And what is really happening in Kant’s explanation, is two instances of the sublime affect: one of the experience and one of reflection upon the experience. It may be objected that these recognitions are actually subconscious recognitions and not ones we are aware of; however, I wish to give an explanation for why certain experiences are sublime which does not rely on speculations of subconscious activity. (For, if we are not aware of the thoughts how can we be so sure they are there?) The explanation is a rather simple one: contact with something that is not familiar is by its very nature pleasurable and unpleasurable. So, previously, I wrote that the condition which is required to produce the sublime affect is that we have contact with something alien, something inhuman, something foreign. Why does this cause displeasure? Well, because we generally like things which we have encountered before, things which are familiar, things which we understand, things that are foreign present a threat to how we learn and understand the world around us and we are likely to feel pain as a result of that. If this is painful, what’s pleasurable about it? Precisely the reason why it is displeasurable, it is not who we are, it is something new, something different, it brings us out of our normal everyday lives. Now something to note is that there are indeed exceptions to this. There are people who despise and find no pleasure in experiences which are foreign to them, and they are only a source of pain. Likewise, there are people who are the opposite, who love experiences foreign to them, and there is no pain involved at all. However the affect described by Kant, “[The] feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital forces followed immediately by an outpouring of them that is all the stronger,”still holds in these cases. What does not hold is the idea of the affect being both painful and pleasurable.

I would like to return now to a claim I made earlier: that there is both the sublime induced through experience and the sublime induced through reflection of an experience. This statement, if true, contradicts the Kantian assumption that the sublime exists only in the mind, only in the process of reflection. However, this idea that one way the sublime is instantiated is through the process of reflection has implications as to whether or not post-modern works of art should be considered works of art at all. The provocation of the sublime and the beautiful affects were once attempted to be used for defining art and differentiating what is art from what is not art. However, with the advent of modernism, and more specifically, post-modernism, those criteria have come into serious issues in that it does not seem like any works under the ‘post-modern’ category can induce the sublime or the beautiful affect. This is interesting in that ‘post-modern art’ is also sometimes described as ‘conceptual art’, in that the work provokes questioning of many different things, from metaphysics to politics to even the question of ‘What is Art?’ itself. So, if these works induce these questions, that means the audience must attempt to answer those questions, and if they do answer those questions, I wonder if the audience will achieve a sublime affect with the answer to the question. I wonder if when we discover a certain truth about the world, if we are not also experiencing the sublime affect of ‘[a] feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital forces followed immediately by an outpouring of them that is all the stronger.” It certainly seems like the audience will; I know I have definitely felt the sublime from epiphanies in my contact with works of art. It seems like discovering truths about the world meets the prerequisite for the sublime, in that contact with the truth, with some kind of absolute truth is a foreign thing to many human beings, if not all human beings, in that humans live in a world of subjective experience, so the epiphany of objective truth would be an alien concept. The interaction with that alien concept could cause a sublime affect. So maybe it is still possible to differentiate art and non-art in the sense before the advent of post-modernism, in that post-modernism exists in order to inspire inquiry which may lead to a sublime epiphany.

Nietzsche, the Sublime, and Artistic Processes

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy”, Nietzsche seeks to characterize Greek tragedy by appealing to two archetypal creative impulses: the Apollinian and the Dionysian impulses. The Apollinian is associated with the arts which seek to represent images or dreams, such as painting or sculpture. Nietzsche also seems to associate the Apollinian with the impulse to build and refine along with the impulse to create civilization and to impose law and order on the world. The Dionysian, by contrast, is mostly associated with arts which seek to intoxicate and are more elusive than the Apollinian. Examples of this would be arts such as music and dance. The Dionysian impulse would be associated with a more primal notion of art, one that is both destructive and life-renewing. It would be destructive in that it counters the taming impulse of the Apollinian while life-renewing because it allows a less refined and more innately ‘natural’ impulse to come out, behind the images of the Apollinian. Nietzsche uses these two art impulses to explain ancient Greek tragedy as a fusion between these two seemingly opposing forces. I am reminded at this point of the Heraclitus quote, “The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.” It seems that Nietzsche agrees with this sentiment (and from what I’ve read, he tends to refer to Heraclitus quite a bit). This quote seems to give us an insight into the reverence that Nietzsche gives tragedy throughout the book as a great art form. However, despite this, Nietzsche recognizes a third impulse, one he claims is essentially unartistic, the Socratic impulse. This impulse, Nietzsche claims, underlies all or most subsequent thought about the world. The impulse is that which seeks to classify and understand all things through the use of logic and reason. This is reflected through much of Western philosophy and science and Nietzsche seems to harbor a rather intense dislike towards this impulse as it tends to destroy the artistic impulses of the Apollinian and the Dionysian, and especially the latter. Insight in how the artistic impulses are suppressed by the Socratic impulse can be found in Kant’s, “The Analytic of the Sublime.” In it, Kant speaks about the mathematically sublime. This type of sublime affect is created by the experience of something so vast, that we cannot possibly comprehend how vast the experience is. However, Kant writes that if we are able to reduce our experiences into some kind of logical or break it down into parts which are manageable for the mind to comprehend, then we no longer receive the feelings of the sublime. Complete understanding for Kant is contrary to the human experience of art. Indeed, it does seem that at least prima facie, that if we understand a work of art it ceases to be able to give us aesthetic experience. It seems that if we ever discover the secrets of art, we will cease to enjoy art as much. This is why Nietzsche dislikes the Socratic impulse so much, is because it hurts our ability to appreciate the world as art, and we then see it as a scientific, reductionist world where everything can be determined empirically and reduced to mere numbers and equations. However, Nietzsche realizes that something about the Socratic impulse is actually inherently a Dionysian impulse, that to discover the world and be able to understand the world, to face a world of so many different unknowns with rational thought, to resist staying in an obscure world, in which there seem to be many more questions than there are answers, is in fact a sublime task in and of itself. So what motivates this Socratic impulse is, in actuality, an art impulse. It seems like what Nietzsche may be concluding in this book is that to be an artist is inevitable to being a human being. Even when we attempt to compartmentalize and reduce the world to numbers and pure reason, we are being motivated by essentially artistic and irrational impulses, not the rational. But Nietzsche leaves us at the end of his book with a problem: science and rational thought pushes at epistemic boundaries. This means that science and rational thought cannot possibly account for all of the mysteries of the universe, even theoretically. And rational thought inevitably will understand that it has its own limits. This can be seen today as the philosophy of science is beginning to see certain problems that arise from its positivistic and naturalistic approaches to philosophy. There are certain things that logic, reason, and trust in an empirical world simply cannot tell us. Nietzsche uses an example from the narrative of Socrates that we receive from Plato. He gives us a scene where Socrates receives dreams from the gods commanding him to play music, and although Socrates condemns playing music as essentially worthless, he cannot help but think that maybe he just simply cannot understand why music is not worthless, that there is something about art and its impulses that cannot be understood through logic or reason. This demonstrates and symbolizes to Nietzsche the limits of logic to understand the world and how logic itself leads to the embracing of that which we cannot understand, the embracing of art and its mysteries. This leads us to a strange dilemma though: how do we move on from here? It seems that science and rational thought propelled us forward, and still continue to do so, but it seems like we are steadily pushing up against its boundaries. Should we just simply embrace the fact that we cannot possibly know everything, even with the most rational and logical approach? And let ourselves be dragged down into nihilism? Should we continue to attempt to approach the world rationally and logically and attempt to learn all we can, even when rational and logical thought itself has shown the futility of this? It seems like we are in an age where we have to both accept the futility of rational thought but still use rational thought to search for the answers we cannot obtain, in hope that we can make the best out of the situation we have. We have to be ‘agnostic’ much like the Socratic ideology wishes us to be, we must at the same time attempt to know what we can and admit that we cannot know for absolute certainty any of it. But I sense a bit of optimism in the end of Nietzsche’s work: What if we can find a way to fuse both the Socratic impulses with the artistic impulses of the Apollinian and the Dionysian? What if we can do like what the Ancient Greeks did and fuse two opposing forces together? What results from art and science working together? How do we even go about attempting to achieve this cooperation of the two impulses? How do we negotiate these two opposing impulses into propelling us to lead happy and fulfilling lives? Is there something ultimately sublime and fulfilling about existing at a perpetual standstill between reason and art? I wonder if art becomes greater when it exists at the edge of the possible knowledge we can obtain. If we push the limits of our rational and logical knowledge to its greatest boundaries, then it seems as if art can benefit by being as great as it possibly can be, by holding out on the edge of reason. This way no one can understand art completely, no matter how hard they try. But art and the irrational pushes on the boundaries in the opposite way by showing truths that cannot be possibly be captured through reason, and gives reason a challenge for it to attempt to understand. Now we are left with a beautiful duality of knowledge. We have nature being challenged to become so great it cannot be understood by reason and reason to attempt to understand what is brought to it by nature. (I’m using nature here to symbolize the irrational or the artistic impulses). This way we are in a perpetual conflict, but one which is mutually beneficial to our understanding and our appreciation of the world.

A Problem for Clive Bell

I submitted this paper for the undergraduate philosophy conference at RIT this year. It is more academic than other posts thus far. If you have any questions about the content or suggestions on how to make it better, let me know.

A Problem for Clive Bell

I. Introduction

There exists within the art world today an undeniably high strain of formalist ideas which influence both the creation of art and the criticism art receives. Most artists who study or have studied some form of composition, whether it be music or dance composition, playwriting, creative writing, etc., have had experience with an emphasis on the form of their work. The classes in which these creative endeavors are taught, themselves are mostly teaching tools to create art, such as juxtaposition, line, color, shading, shape, space, counterpoint, etc. These tools and how well they are used seem to be what formalism praises.

Formalism probably presents itself in the most direct and influential way in the work of Clive Bell. Clive Bell’s essay, “Art”, appears in most anthologies today relating to the general study of aesthetics, and is undoubtedly a very compelling essay. I wish to attempt a criticism of formalism through a criticism of this essay, and though there may be some question as to the justification of such an overgeneralization, it seems as if Clive Bell’s work epitomizes the formalist underlying assumptions about art and what art ought to be.

II. What is Bell’s Formalism Exactly?

Bell’s theory, as espoused in “Art”, has several different vital components. I shall try to differentiate them to make clearer his position. The three main components are: formalism, aesthetic empiricism, and an affect-oriented approach to characterizing aesthetic experience. This third component, the affect-oriented approach, is Bell’s main goal within his essay. He attempts to establish aesthetic experience based upon some kind of effect or emotion a viewer feels. Formalism is what Bell believes causes this effect or emotion on the viewer, so formalism is vital only instrumentally, as a way to have aesthetic experience. Aesthetic empiricism is not something explicit within Bell’s work, but is implicit. Bell believes that aesthetic appreciation is a matter of a way of seeing, a state of mind. I shall expand upon each of these three parts of Bell’s aesthetic theory in the following passages.

Formalism. In order to expand and explain Bell’s formalism, I need to first explain what exactly he means by “form”. Bell states, “...lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms... These relations and combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call ‘Significant Form’” (Bell 1914) So form, at least in the visual arts (as the visual arts is mostly what his essay is directed towards), is just simply the arrangement and patterns of colors and lines. Form in music, it can be inferred, would be various patterns and orders of notes, rhythms, harmonies, etc. Form in poetry would be the use of poetic devices such as metaphor, alliteration, rhythm, etc. So, for Bell, arrangements of these individual and groups of entities are called the form of the piece, and the ones that evoke aesthetic emotion, are the ones which deserve the title of “a work of art”. Bell also states within the essay, “The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant.” (Bell 1914) This highlights another characteristic of formalism, that it is primarily the form, and in Bell’s case, only the form, which allows for the desired aesthetic emotion.

Affect-Oriented Approach. Bell uses throughout his essay an affect-oriented approach to characterize aesthetic experience. An affect-oriented approach is one which “[aesthetic experience is]...marked by a certain experiential quale, or pulsation, or peculiar feeling tone.” (Carroll 2006) Bell terms this aesthetic emotion. So what exactly is aesthetic emotion? Bell speaks about this throughout his essay. “Art transports us from the world of man’s activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment we are shut off from human interests, our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life.” (Bell 1914) So a major part of Bell’s aesthetic emotion is that it is an isolated experience; it transcends the day-to-day actions and interactions of mankind. This also means that Bell’s aesthetic emotion is also distinct from everyday existence.

Aesthetic Empiricism. Empiricism within aesthetics goes all the way back to the enigmatic Immanuel Kant. This states that aesthetic appreciation is resultant of a particular state of mind, a different way of seeing art. Now, as stated earlier, this is an assumption which is implicit within Bell’s work. Bell belonged to a tradition in art which presupposed the truth of aesthetic empiricism.

The main opposing viewpoint of aesthetic empiricism is contextualism. Contextualism states that aesthetic appreciation is contingent upon knowledge of the cultural vantage point and historical events which caused the creation of a work of art. Contextualism is obviously not his position as when he states, “To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form and colour and a knowledge of three-dimensional space.” (Bell 1914) So his aesthetic state of mind relies upon knowledge previously ascertained, either through training or innate ability, but not on any kind of historical or cultural knowledge. It is just pure formal knowledge. I think it is safe to assume that Bell’s aesthetic state of mind could be loosely defined as, “A state of mind which allows one to grasp the form of a work of art most easily.” (See Susanne Langer’s Feeling and Form for an attempt to spell out this state of mind)

III. A Defense of Bell

I think it is important at this point, before I offer my problem for Bell, to offer a brief defense of Bell from the usual criticism given to his work. The problem with the usual criticism of Bell’s position, is that the criticism will usually be unconvincing to the formalist, in that the formalist attempts to claim an elite knowledge of art. As Bell himself states, “He who would elaborate a plausible theory of aesthetics must possess two qualities -- artistic sensibility and a turn for clear thinking.” (Bell 1914) Claiming that their critics lack “artistic sensibility” or have misguided “artistic sensibility”, is generally an easy default position to fall back upon, even if it does seem like a largely irrational, or ad hoc way of holding onto their beliefs and viewpoint. My purpose here is to attempt to pose a problem for formalism by presupposing the rightness of the affect-oriented approach to characterizing aesthetic experience. Because as stated earlier, for Bell, formalism is only an instrumental good within art. It is a way to obtain his aesthetic emotion. It seems as if aesthetic emotion is the highest and most intrinsic good within art for Bell. So if I can demonstrate a case in which aesthetic emotion is ascertained with content and not just form, then I should be effective in being convincing, enough at least for the formalist to comprehend the problem and give it serious thought.

IV. The Problem of the Sublime

Out of all the art forms, it is probably literature which challenges the formalist the most. Many have pointed out that the appreciation of literature needs to include content and not just form; they also tend to point to the fact that most literary critics will include content within their criticism. However, if the formalist is to be adamant, he or she will point out that the appreciation of content will not have anything to do with the deeper appreciation of a piece of art. Bell writes, “the appreciation of almost all great writers has been impure.” (Bell 1914) This shows Bell’s fierce determination to separate content from form and to claim that formal appreciation is the highest of all appreciation, even within the literary arts. But I think that Bell is mistaken, that form and content cannot be separated, at least not in the literary arts. Both form and content are necessary for ‘aesthetic emotion’.

I will focus on one specific brand of aesthetic emotion, that of the sublime, and it ought to be evident that the sublime falls into Bell’s definition of aesthetic emotion. However, it is necessary here to point out why the sublime is aesthetic emotion, just in case the formalist attempts to object to that notion. Philip Shaw states, “whenever experience slips out of conventional understanding, whenever the power of an object or event is such that words fail and points of comparison disappear, then we resort to the feeling of the sublime.” (Shaw 2006) If ‘words fail and points of comparison disappear’ or if ‘experience slips out of conventional understanding’, then Bell’s definition of aesthetic emotion ought to definitively encompass the sublime. If anything, the terms ‘aesthetic emotion’ and the ‘sublime’ could be seen as interchangeable; however, I will not attempt to assert that here.

Now that I have established the sublime as aesthetic emotion, I will now examine where in literature the sublime appears and attempt to point to a case in which it is clear and obvious that the sublime relies upon the content of the work of art, and not just simply the form. It appears in many places, especially the work of the Romantic writers. However, I would like to hone in on the writings of Virginia Woolf (who was, ironically, Clive Bell’s sister-in-law) and more specifically, a short story of hers called, “The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection.” This piece is in the public domain and is readily accessed with any ‘Google’ search. In this short story, Woolf spends almost the entire time convincing the audience of certain truths about the main character in the story. The story is told entirely from a 3rd person ‘omniscient’ narrator and there is no dialogue from the character. What causes the sublimity within this short story, is the author convincing the reader of certain truths of the character, and then at the end of the passage Woolf completely contradicts herself and says that in actuality they were all untrue. Woolf writes, “As for facts, it was a fact that she [Isabella, the main character] was a spinster; that she was rich,” (Woolf) and then later she writes, “For it was another fact...that Isabella had known many people, had had many friends; and thus if one had the audacity to open a drawer and read her letters, one would find the traces of many agitations, of appointments to meet, of up braidings for not having met, long letters of intimacy and affection...” (Woolf) These statements tell the reader rather directly, notice the use of the word “fact”, that Isabella is a very wealthy woman who has had a lot of friends and experiences. The reader will generally accept the truth of these claims made by the narrator of the world the writer creates, as what is implied in the nickname given to the 3rd person narrator, omniscient, is that the narrator knows all. And if the narrator knows all, then when they tell us “facts” we should accept them as true. Then at the end of the piece, Woolf writes, “She stood naked in that pitiless light. And there was nothing. Isabella was perfectly empty. She had no thoughts. She had no friends. She cared for nobody. As for her letters, they were all bills.” (Woolf) This paints a radically different picture of Isabella. The truths of what Woolf wrote before are actually lies. This is what causes the sublime aesthetic emotion of this short story. It is the complete contradiction of truths of what came before. Notice that when we are talking about truths, we are talking about content. The reader has an idea, something that relates to life, in their mind and that idea is undermined by the very same person who gave them that idea, that is what causes the sublime aesthetic emotion in Woolf’s short story, not form. At this point, the formalist might try and point out that there are other formal properties of Woolf’s short story which contribute or cause the sublime aesthetic emotion. However, this does not hold up well because even though form does contribute and help the sublime affect, the content is still key in causing the sublimity. This suggests that form cannot be the only cause of aesthetic emotion and that content plays a role in its causation.

V. Conclusion

I have intended to demonstrate a problem for the formalist which contradicts many of formalism’s held beliefs by giving an example of a piece of literature which requires content to produce their “world of aesthetic exaltation”, and does not rely completely on form to achieve this. One may object that this is just one example and is based largely upon my own experience and other’s experiences of this specific work of art; however, if I can find even one obvious example which contradicts the formalist’s principles, then it, from my perspective, gives some reason to doubt their theory of art. It suggests that there may be more examples out there which also contradict the formalist’s theory, as well as suggests that content also has something to do with aesthetic emotion even in cases where it is not so obvious.

This essay has been attempting to show that even in the case of one of the most rigid and dogmatic cases of formalism, there are examples out there which causes problems for the formalist. So where does this leave content? I would suggest that there is probably a continuum of form and content which provides for great aesthetic experiences. Sometimes, depending upon the artist, form is more integral to the work, and sometimes content is more integral. I find it rather doubtful that either content or form can exist upon its own, and even the distinction between content and form is rather vague, especially in literature. How exactly is a metaphor just form, and not content, when it is comprised of words which refer to real life situations? Perhaps the negotiation of form and content is not a question for philosophers, but a skill that an artist must learn and acquire. Perhaps that is part of what makes art, art; the perfection of art is actually a perfection of skills related to the creation of an artwork. Such as form vs. content, artist vs. audience, artist vs. performer, artist vs. society. Perhaps the great artists just simply acquired a great ability to negotiate and work with these opposing forces to create the gems of art which still inspire and move us today. Is this true? Or is this not true? Those are ruminations to be answered for another day. What one should realize is that there is not a simple, concrete way of saying, “This is art, and this is not art”, such as what Bell attempts in “Art”, but that there are many factors which help elevate a piece from just simply a creation to a creation of art.

References

Bell, Clive. “Art.” 1914. Ed. Aaron Meskin & Steven M. Cahn. Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. 261-69. Print

Carroll, Noel. “Aesthetic Experience: A Question of Content.” Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed, Matthew Kieran. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006. 69-97. Print.

Shaw, Philip. The Sublime, London: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. “Lady in the Looking-Glass.” University of Pennsylvania, Department of English. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/

The Sublime and the Pantheon

(Sublimity can be defined as a feeling of being in the presence of something great, something greater than one's self)

As I stated in my previous post, I spent about eight days in Rome during the winter break. During that time, I saw pretty much all of the famous and great churches and monuments of Rome. My favorite of all the buildings was the Pantheon. This was due to me experiencing the greatest moment of supreme sublimity when I entered the Pantheon. (This was a consistent experience, I went inside of it at least 5 or 6 times.)  Nowhere else in Rome did I have an experience even close to this, even with St. Peter's Cathedral's dome being only slightly smaller than the Pantheon's. But sublimity was the intention of these baroque architects, constructing these gigantic and ornate churches, so why did I not really receive sublimity from these churches?

I think the answer might have something to do with analogy between how I sit in regards to the church as an institution, and the placement I am in the actual physical church. I should start with my relationship as a human being to the church. I grew up with very little to no knowledge of the Christian faiths and kind of developed my own views that 'God' is not an entity which lives above and beyond us but that nature in and of itself is 'God'. When I think of spirituality, I do not associate it with a relationship to heaven, but with a relationship to nature. Spirituality and faith is a much more immediate thing for me and is not so much longing for some kind of divine worship from above, but a more naturalistic worship from around us. (You can see my influence from people like Thoreau.) So let us analogize this to the Pantheon vs. St. Peter's. The Pantheon is much closer to the Earth. The dome is not something far above us, but is right there. While St. Peter's (and the other gigantic Christian cathedrals) are so far above me, I feel no connection, I don't feel overwhelmed (being overwhelmed is usual prerequisite for sublime beauty), more disinterested. St. Peter's is beautiful and all, but I don't seek for that which is beautiful, I seek for that which is sublime.

So now this comes to my relationship with dance. How in the world do I produce a sublime affect through dance? Most treatises on sublimity actually focus upon literature as a source of sublimity. The reason why I ask this question is because sublimity is really what, for me, makes art worthwhile. I do not really know the answer to this question, and it will probably be the focus for a lot of my next few years. (I think I have always really sought the sublime in dance, I just haven't noticed it until recently.) I am doing some extensive reading upon the sublime and am currently experimenting with my choreography to see if I can produce that result, or a different, more peculiar, form of the sublime within dance itself. But one of my professors told me that Ballet is actually aimed at the sublime, but I quickly pointed out that I do not feel sublimity from ballet. So maybe there is another analogy that we can make from the previous analogy. Maybe I have the same relation to ballet as I do to Christianity or to baroque architecture? I do not know. These are all questions which I will continue to seriously ponder as I go into my future as a choreographer and philosopher.

Expanded Perceptions of Architecture

This winter break, I spent eight days in Rome and then eleven days traveling across the Western Mediterranean. (Spain, Portugal, Morocco) During this time I saw great work of architecture, after great work of architecture, after great work of architecture. The architecture in Europe is just purely outstanding. And then when I returned, I noticed, and still am noticing, my perception and appreciation of architecture has shifted dramatically. No longer do I walk past beautiful pieces of architecture, or even just minimally beautiful pieces, I actually see the architecture. Before I would just vaguely acknowledge the buildings, now I can really perceive them, and appreciate them. What is kind of amazing about this is that I do not have any real tangible knowledge of architecture. I could not really tell you the difference between gothic and Renaissance architecture, and even if I did, these concepts would not increase my appreciation at all. This experience of mine supports a cognitivist conception of the arts. The cognitivists believe that art can non-trivially teach us, not in terms of physical, concrete knowledge, but in terms of understanding and ways of perceiving. (see Gordon Graham)

But what interests me the most about this, is what way/ways of perceiving is essential to the appreciation of dance. It seems as if dance has multiple levels and layers of appreciation. Dance can have musical qualities, visual qualities, kinesthetic qualities (physicality), theatrical qualities, poetic qualities, dramatic qualities, emotional qualities, etc. And while it emphasizes, or at least tries to, the kinesthetic qualities, it is hard to extract the kinesthetic from the other layers. (The three main ones are probably musical, visual, and kinesthetic. The other ones seem as if they might be optional or up to the artistic sensibilities of the choreographer.) Kinesthetic is probably the unique thing about dance and is perhaps what dance is most valuable for in terms of new ways of perceiving. But I wonder if it would be a good idea to add in those other qualities to reach a broader audience, or if we would lose some of dance's teaching abilities by adding in those other, non-kinesthetic qualities.

Why Should Artists Study Aesthetics?

I was quoted this recently from some source unknown to me, "Aesthetics is to the artist as ornithology is to the birds." Implying of course, (disregarding the bad analogy as it is generally accepted that dancers should study kinesiology) that the study of aesthetics have nothing to do with being an artist or creating art. Being someone who wants to find in-roads for philosophy and dance to interact, this was a troubling sentiment to me. So what exactly does the study of aesthetics do for a choreographer? Well, my first reaction, and the one I like to default on, is that the study of different areas brings new ways of thinking and perceiving in the creation of a work of art. However, that does not really answer the question, because the same holds true for the study of any discipline and it says nothing about the content of the field of aesthetics.So let us examine the importance of a specific debate upon an artist, say, the debate between the aesthetic empiricist and the aesthetic contextualist. (We will be skipping the enlightened empiricist position for the sake of simplicity)

Aesthetic empiricism is the idea that the appreciation of art is a matter of a distinct state of mind which allows someone to grasp the formal and expressive qualities of a piece of art. It has been described as a way of seeing or perceiving distinct from ordinary, day-to-day perceptions. Aesthetic contextualism, by contrast, is skeptical of this distinct state of mind and believes that aesthetic appreciation is a result of knowing the context which surrounds the art, along with the artwork itself. They claim that certain works require context in order to appreciate and that you cannot separate the art from its context.

So how does this affect an artist? Why should they care if aesthetic empiricism is right or aesthetic contextualism is right? Well, the answer is, that they do not really need to know if one is right or wrong, what they do need to do is recognize which one they believe in. If I am an aesthetic empiricist (which I am), then this information is vital for how to get my audience to enjoy my work. So I need to be able to communicate the type of mindset or somehow get them prepared to see my show by getting them in the right mindset to appreciate my work. But if I am an aesthetic contextualist, then I need to know what information to communicate to my audience if they are to get my dance.

So the answer to the question: "What does the study of aesthetics do for the artist?" is really quite simple. The study of aesthetics enables an awareness of the audience and how the audience should and should not be perceiving the work of an artist. It allows an artist to be able to avoid the usual answers to the all too much asked question: "What does it mean?" It allows the artist to guide the audience into the appreciation of their artwork, without appeal to artistic virtuosity. (The ability for the artist to create the piece of work, which is usually a quick, but undesirable, in-road to works of art.) Aesthetics is vital for the artist who wants an audience to actually appreciate their work.