Before I start I would like to make a quick disclaimer: my brief stint doing weekly posts is now over as I am now at university (yay!) The schedule is going to be a little bit all over the place whilst I try and figure things out, for which I apologize.
Also please feel free to like the post if you enjoy. No reason really, except that it gives me a little bit of serotonin, but that should be reason enough.
Have you ever stood in front of a piece of art and cried? Well, let’s widen the scope and say have you ever consumed any piece of media that had some creative input (a film or song, for example) and cried?
The answer is, very likely, yes.
But how? And why? Did it add to your enjoyment of the said media? Or help you understand it? Why would the creator want to even create this impact? Wouldn’t an emotional response draw away from the piece’s message?
And, most importantly, does art need to elicit an emotional response in the viewer?
To answer this question, we’ll be looking at the personal processes behind art as well as their political subject matter, using examples from each to likely pose more questions than answers, as per usual. These will continue down to the section at the bottom of the post with some more questions for you to consider.
Now let us follow the emotional journey of artist and viewer
In her book, ‘Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction,’ Cynthia Freeland states that “both the expression and cognitive theories of art hold that art communicates: it can communicate feelings and emotions, or thoughts and ideas. Interpretation is important because it helps explain how art does this.”
Here, Freeland highlights the importance of interaction between the artist and the viewer via their art, using the medium of choice to communicate the artist’s feelings or thoughts, but this can only do so through the viewer’s interpretation. However, this means the artist’s desired effect rests on a very precarious element as interpretation is always personal, always unique to the individual viewer. As viewer’s of art, we relate what we see to past experiences and our own current emotions when looking at a piece, so the artist’s message can get lost in this.
Alternatively, it can be said that human emotion, in general is unvaried, it can be grouped into anger, sadness, joy, hope and, when effectively communicated through the work, the audience are united in an emotional experience. In this line of thought, emotion is crucial in art if we want to create a shared experience between viewers.
But what about the emotions of the artist?
This might be a slight tangent, but let’s explore the emotions of the artist and their process of displaying these emotions in their work, because: is emotion essential to the artistic process?
Tolstoy and Collingwood have opposite views on the matter.
On one hand, the former argues that “to evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced and having evoked it in oneself then by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit this feeling that others experience the same feelings.” To Tolstoy, emotion comes first in the artistic process: the artist experiences an emotion then expresses it on the canvas via a variety of techniques which join to recreate the same emotion in the viewer. This perspective is flawed in how it forgets that the artist cannot possibly feel the same emotion throughout the whole process of creating a piece. Even if they can recall what they felt, it is no longer fresh in their mind and they are simply reflecting on a past emotion. Therefore, they no longer feel the emotion: it is no longer personal and internal, but already something that is external, apart from them.
On the other hand, Collingwood states that “until a man has expressed his emotion, he does not yet know what emotion it is. The act of expressing it is therefore an exploration of his own emotions. He is trying to find out what these emotions are.” The artistic process is instead, therefore, a way to understand the emotions the artist is experiencing- an act of catharsis if you will where the internal self can now be viewed from the outside.
Both these viewpoints establish art as solely personal in subject, rather than something that can take many other forms. Take Warhol’s prints, for example.
The mechanical nature of his production and the highly recognisable subject they depict don’t appear to speak to any of Warhol’s own emotions, and instead focus on society and culture, separate from Warhol’s emotional landscape. Emotion is purposefully steered around in these pieces as we view an image seen we’ve seen 100 times over, seeing it repeated again and again in the space of one piece of work. There is no emotional attachment allowed in these pieces.
This would suggest that emotion, whilst it can be a significant part of the process, is not all that necessary in art.
But as for place of emotion in the artistic process, it can be seen as being the last in the process. In a way, at least.
Vincent van Gogh’s work presents this. We cannot be entirely sure what he was feeling or thinking at the time of painting his famous sunflowers. Whilst we do have letters, we don’t have his actual thoughts step, by step. And yet, it is universally recognised that the piece displays his depression. Is this from the techniques he uses? Or because people know he was depressed? Does everyone really look at it and see the same thing, or is it because we already know the context of his work?
This example of Van Gogh would suggest that the emotional context of a piece can actually get in the way of the viewer establishing their own personal interpretation of a piece.
Here is where context comes in
Context plays a vital role in establishing emotion in a piece: once we understand what the artist was going through or the event their message relates to, we can understand what we are looking at. Sometimes, at least.
I gave the example with Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers, but we can also see this in more political works.
The work of Ai Weiwei is conceptual and always centres around a specific political event. This message is cannot be understand without knowing the context behind a piece- or the facts, in other words.
His exhibition for ‘Hause der Kunst’ in Germany included a sculpture of backpacks. the type worn by school children in China, arranged to spell out the Chinese characters for ‘She lived happily for seven years in this world’. Not only is there the language barrier here for some people looking at the art as well as the lack of knowledge about who these backpacks are usually worn by, there’s also the hidden facts about who said this and what they were speaking on.
In actuality, this is a quote from the mothers of a victim of the Sichuan 2008 earthquake which led the badly-made schools of the area to collapse, killing those inside. The Chinese authorities wanted to cover up their involvement in allowing such badly made structures, in allowing these children to die.
Weiwei’s work, therefore, creates an emotional response in the viewer only when joined with fact. Without it, we are left standing looking at a pile of artfully arranged backpacks, but with it we share Weiwei’s mourning for the children’s deaths.
Weiwei must have had this emotional connection with the disaster in order to create the pieces, establishing that emotion must be included in the process of making political art.
Goya’s ‘The Third of May 1808’ is piece we’ve spoken on in a previous post, but we return to again due to the alternative perspective it presents.
Without knowing the history and context behind the piece, we can still understand the emotions it presents and perhaps we too share the feelings of fear presented through the widened eyes and the martyred figure in the face of the anonymous enemy.
But understanding that this piece commemorated the shooting of Madrid by the French, allows us to understand the paintings further. Through understanding the facts behind the piece can we sympathize more with the subject? Or are we left with a fact induced numbness to another tragic event in a long history known to already be pretty tragic?
I would argue that the emotional connection in the piece is established only through the artist’s ability to sympathize with the subject himself, only through his own knowledge of it can he address the topic and incite the viewer’s own sympathy through this dramatised approach.
In short, it seems that emotion, whilst always relevant in political art, does need to be aided by fact and context to some degree, if not always to level of Weiwei’s work.
Let me support my argument by exploring the flip side: political art based entirely on emotion.
Here we have propaganda.
Whilst hope, pride and joy have their political uses, shame, anger and frustration tend to be more effective in picking up followers, and generally rallying people.
And the most effective of all techniques: scapegoating.
There’s Trump scapegoating people of colour, The Sun newspaper scapegoating immigrants or Hitler scapegoating the Jewish population- this is all achieved through some form of media and a whole lot of anger.
Pre-Nazi Germany were going through a period of prolonged economic turmoil and just general chaos following their defeat in WW1. The National Socialist Party (or Nazis as they would later be called), provided a scapegoat to place the blame on, drawing from already widely used anti-Semitic stereotypes. The frustration people felt at their situation was channeled into anger, based on what? Fact? No, a stereotype. In other words, emotion is what drove people.
Heavily emotional political art does have its uses though. Whilst there was the fact of the situation behind the pieces, Victorian realist paintings relied on the sympathy of the patrons to encourage them to donate to charities.
The working class people they depicted (typically children) purposefully countered the stereotype that they were simply criminals and public nuisances. But countering this was at the cost of their agency, with working class people now being seen as simply victims and the upper class as angels, giving a small portion of an enormous income which doesn’t contribute anything to solving any issues at all.
But that is besides the point, emotion over fact is crucial in this genre’s aims, being semi-political, if never getting to the root of the problem itself.
So, is emotion necessary in art?
I would argue that it depends on the purpose of the piece.
If the artist wants to engage the viewer in a narrative emotionally, then yes, it is crucial. But if it’s a frank analysis of something like culture, like Warhol’s prints for example, then emotion isn’t necessary.
Political art, alternatively, must always elicit emotion. But this must be balanced with fact.
Lean too much one way and you ignore the factual truth, but lean too much the other way and the viewer is presented with facts that they can easily ignore.
They must be emotionally engaged in a piece- so much so that they cannot ignore the facts.
Questions to consider:
What element of a piece elicits this emotion?
Are there any emotions that are dangerous or useless in art?
What is the artist’s position in all this? How does their engagement with a piece affect the emotional result?
Further reading and the sources used:
Currently reading: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Random recommendation: Trouble by EVNNE