art as communicable knowledge

8/11/2019 Art as Communicable Knowledge

1/14

Art as Communicable KnowledgeAuthor(s): Henry P. RaleighSource: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1971), pp. 115-127Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3331580.

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2/14

Art

as

Communicable

Knowledge

HENRY

P. RALEIGH

The

following

remarks are

addressed to the

notion that fine

art

is

a

special

mode

of

thought

and

knowledge.

This

speciality

is

most

interest-

ing,

for we

suppose

the

value of that

knowledge

shares

in

the

value

we

place

on

knowledge

in

general,

and,

additionally,

in

the

special

value

we

place

on

art

for both aesthetic and nonaesthetic

reasons.

The

impli-

cations this holds for a theory of art education are obvious. Insofar as

aesthetic

speculation

may

regard

the

experience

of fine arts

as

essentially

an

exchange

of

knowledge,

this would

certainly

be

considered

as con-

tributing

to a

theory

of

fine

arts

as

communicable

knowledge.

As

a

kind

of

knowledge,

even

special

or

unique,

it must be

supposed

as

well that

it

can

be

learned

and

promoted by

educational

means.

Art

as

knowledge

in

the above

sense is

especially, perhaps

peculiarly,

a

modem

innovation.

In the traditional

view,

from

the

Latin ars and

the Greek

techne,

art was

any

knowledge

that

served

as

a skill in trans-

forming

material. Art was

craftsmanship

and learned as such. That the

experience

of

art was a

form

of

divine

or

inspirational

madness was never

entirely

absent

from classical

aesthetics.

Inspired

madness was more a

disease

of

poets

than

artists

and

was

not

believed

by

the ancients to be

a

functioning,

valuable

knowledge.

The fine

arts stood

in

sometimes

subservient,

sometimes

purely

mystical

relation to

philosophy,

the

para-

gon

of

true

knowledge.

St.

Thomas did

speak

of

art as

intellectual,

its

apprehension

the

response

of the

maxime

cognoscitivi

-

sight

and

hearing.

But

art

was still

essentially making,

a

job,

in the

classic

sense,

HENRY P.

RALEIGH

is

Chairman

of

the

Division

of

Art at the State

University

College

at New

Paltz,

New

York.

He has contributed

to several

scholarly

journals

including

the

Journal

of Aesthetics

and

Art Criticism.

His

article The Problem

of

'Expression'

in

Art

and Art

Education was

published

in the

April

1968

issue

of

this

Journal.

He

is also

a

Journal

consultant.

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3/14

116

HENRY

RALEIGH

to be well done and one only loosely identified with the absolute source

of

knowledge

-

Beauty.

There is little

change

in

the

predominant

Greek

attitude until

very

much later

when,

in aesthetic

thought,

the fine

arts

begin

to assume

the

position

of

a

different kind of

mental

operation,

vague

to

be

sure,

but

somehow

representing

a

mysterious,

universal

truth.

Baumgarten,

following

Leibnitz,

had

attempted

to frame

a

logic

of

the

imagination

and

separated

the mind

into two

levels. One

of

these,

a

region

of confused

imagery,

was the seat

of artistic

knowledge.

Kant,

in

summarizing

and

structuring

these

newer

views,

was

among

the

first

to see art as autonomous and not

necessarily

reduced to an alien prin-

ciple

or

jurisdiction.

He

made

of art a kind

of

judgment,

a

union

between

the

imagination

and the

understanding.

Art

is not

merely

ex-

periential

but

the

bridge

joining

theoretical

and

practical

knowledge.

This

judgment,

for

Kant,

was

formal and

subjective,

not mediated

by

cognition

of

an end or

any

reflective

idea.

In

itself,

the

experience

of

art

may

serve

in

judgment,

yet

it

was

not

knowledge.

To

Kant,

as

to those

who had

preceded

him,

art

was

really

the

matter

of a

metaphysical

idea,

and

the

artist,

unknowingly,

exercised

a distinct

and

largely

detached

quality

of mind called

Imagination.

With

Schopenhauer

the real

oppo-

nents,

at least

in

modem

terms,

are

given

their

first,

characteristic

orm:

art versus science.

Schopenhauer

divorced

the

objects

of

cognition

from

the

blind,

irrational

apprehension

of

an

underlying

reality.

The route

to this felt

knowledge

was aesthetic

vision. Art

alone tore

the

objects

of

the

mind

out of the

fleeting, momentary qualities

of

rational,

pragmatic

scientific

thought.

Unhappily,

art

was

more an

escape

from

knowledge

than

a form of

knowledge

in itself

and

Schopenhauer,

as

Plato,

Vico,

and

Baumgarten,

concluded that

art was but

an

opiate

and

the

genius

ultimately

a madman.

This

conclusion,

Romantic

and

traditional as

it

is,

has

not satisfied

modern rationalists who

have come to

prefer

the

thesis

that art and

science

seek the same truths but

in

different

ways.

That

art and

science

are

the

same but different is

important

to

the

theory

that the

fine arts

represent

communicable

knowledge.

During

the fif-

teenth and sixteenth

centuries the artist had

enjoyed

a

brief

peership

with the

scientist and

in

some instances he was

the

only experimental,

methodological

worker

deserving

of

the

term.

The reasons

for

this

were

partly due to a quest

for

technical solutions to difficult and advanced

pictorial

and

three-dimensional

problems

and

partly

a desire to elevate

the

social

status of

the artist.

Frequently

the artist of

that time

was

a

geometer, engineer,

and

alchemist as well as

a

superb

craftsman. But

science and mathematics

soon

outstripped

the

comparatively

humble



4/14

ART AS

COMMUNICABLEKNOWLEDGE

117

level of technology that occupied the artist, and the artist as scientist

died

ignobly.

The alternative is

to

hypothesize

artistic

activity

as

another,

equivalently

valid,

hopefully

verifiable

way

of

truth-seeking

and thus

avoid the

unequal comparison

between

the

technological

funds of knowl-

edge

of

artist

and

scientist.

This

has

apparently

found

favor

in

the

present

time.

Out of

Romantic

aesthetic

conjecture

has

grown

a

belief that art

is

an

activity

that reveals the

unity

and

harmony

of the universal structure.

Art is the assembler of

wholes;

science is the

disassembler,

he

analyzer

of parts. From a meager and rather negative Platonic view that art

informs,

that

is,

communicates

knowledge

by

imitation,

through

Schiller

and

Schelling

and the

regard

for art as an

objective

philosophy,

there

has

developed

a

consistent theme of art as

knowledge.

The usual modes

of

thought

and

perception arrange

and

classify

objects

as

parts

of enti-

ties,

selecting

and

reordering

these as

parts

of

greater

entities--all

against

some

ultimate

purpose.

Art

suffers

no restrictions

of

utility

of

ends;

it deals

with whole

appearances.

Science is concerned with

the

coherent

relations

between

things,

art

with the

thing

in

itself. The

ques-

tions must

obviously

be

asked,

What is the exact nature of this

special

knowledge?

and,

What

is it

knowledge

of?

An

examination

of

but

a

few of the moder

speculative

ventures into

this

problem

of

aesthetic

knowledge

will indicate the

general

directions to

which

such

questions

have

led.

One

of the

first

of these

examinations,

much influenced

by

the

psy-

chologism

of

the

period,

was

Conrad Fiedler's.

Writing

in

the late

1800s,

Fiedler inherited

Goethe's

and

Herder's interest in

visual,

Gestalt

wholes.

A

work of

art

cannot

be known or

judged

in

the

same

way

as

a

product

of

nature. In the

Kantian

tradition,

artistic

judgment

is not

rational

nor

is it

conceptual

knowing.

Conceptual

abilities start with

appearance

forming

concepts

of what

is

given:

In abstract

cognition

we

possess

the means

of

submitting

appearances

to

certain demands of

our

thinking

faculties,

and

thus

appropriating

them for

ourselves

by

transforming

hem into

conceptual

Gestalt-formation. '

There

is another

form

of

cognition,

and

for Fiedler

the true

and final

level

is

that of artistic

perception.

Scientific

abstraction

rushes

through

and beyond the world of appearances.

Art

reveals what

is there:

It

should be

understood

that man

can

attain

the mental

mastery

of the

Conrad

Fiedler,

On

Judging

Works

of

Visual

Art,

trans.

Henry

Schaefer-

Simmern

and Fulmer

Mood

(Berkeley:

University

of

California

Press, 1957),

p.

31.



5/14

118 HENRY RALEIGH

world not only by the creation of concepts but also by the creation of

visual

conceptions. 2

Unlike

the

Romantic

theorists

before and the

Expressionists

after

him,

Fiedler's

artist

is

neither an

emotional

escapist

nor an

objectifier

of his

feelings.

As

does

abstraction,

feeling (sensation)

obstructs

and

inhibits

the

artist's

perceptions:

..

.

we must

be able to

forget

every

sensation

in

order

to

further our

perceptual

grasp

of the

object

for its own sake. 3

His artist is a

strange

creature of

science who

neither thinks

nor

feels,

only

perceives

dispassionately.

Detachment and

disinterest

have been

borrowed from the Kantian aesthetic

contemplation

and made a virtue

of

the

personality.

Just

how visual

conceptions

will

help

give

a

mental

mastery

is not

explained.

That is to

say,

Fiedler does not tell us what

or

how artistic

perception

cognizes.

However,

we

are

told

something

of

what it

is

supposed

to

be.

Very

similar in his

regard

for

the

perceptual

function

and

the

con-

comitant distinctions of mental

processes

s

Hugo

Miinsterberg:

science

is

connection,

art

is

isolation:

To isolate

the

object

for the mind means

to

make

it

beautiful,

for

it fills the

mind

without an

idea of

anything

else. 4

The

value of

art is

to

separate

the

single experience

from

a network of

multiple

experiences.

Drawing

from

the

argument,

advanced

by

William

James

for

one,

that all

mental

processes

result in an

isolation

of

singulars,

Miinsterberg

continues the

opposition

to

scientific

thought by noting

that other

perceptual

activities lead to some action

or

to further

visual

relationships.

The art

object

holds us

in

arrestment.

Why

should

we

be

held

in

this

suspension?

Disappointingly,

it is not

to

gain

something

from

contemplation

freed

of all

practicality

and

purpose

but

only

to

effect

a

physiological

release of

tensions and

strains.

The

synaesthesis

of

Ogden

and

Richards is of

the same

order,

although purportedly

being

an

advance over earlier

theories of

the

reciprocal

relation of

aesthetic

pleasure

and

physiological

functions.

Synaesthesis,

according

to

Ogden

and

Richards,

is

mental

harmony, impersonal

and

disinterested.5

From semantic

and

psychoanalytic

studies

has

come

a

distinct

attempt

to

explain

art as an

interpersonal knowledge.

These

arguments

require

the

casting

of art

in

a

special

role

as the

symbolic

reconstructor

of

the human

psyche.

As

a theory

of

aesthetic knowledge such interpreta-

2Ibid.,

p.

40.

3

Ibid.,

p.

29.

4Hugo

Miinsterberg,

The

Principles of

Art

Education

(New

York:

Prang,

1905), p.

20.

5

Cf.,

C. K.

Ogden,

I. A.

Richards, J. Wood,

The

Foundation

of

Aesthetics

(London:

Allen and

Unwin,

1925).



6/14

ARTAS

COMMUNICABLE

NOWLEDGE

119

tions have interesting implicationsas well as seriousdeficiencies. It may

be

probably

agreed

that

any

activity

which

resulted

in

information

about

one's

self,

if more than

intuitional

guessing,

could

be

considered

knowledge,

especially

if

this information could

be

acted

upon

in the

performing

of a

descriptive

service.

A

theory

of

knowledge

is

expected

to

hold,

directly

or

indirectly,

that

knowledge

qua

knowledge

must be

useful in

some

way,

usually

in some

operable

sense.

Any

psychoanalytic

assumption

about

the

human

constitution

supposes

some

pathology

of

that constitution that

may

be

treated

educationally.

In

the

simplest

sense,unconscious and unorganizedknowledge is reorganized n the con-

scious

to

improve

the

efficiency

of

the

organism,

to restore

proper

emotional

functions.

Significantly,

psychoanalytic

treatment

of emotional

pathologies

is

educational and

not

medical

or

surgical.

Could

art,

there-

fore,

be considered

educational and

involving

useful

knowledge?

This

is

unlikely

in

current

psychoanalytic nterpretations

of

art.

Anton

Ehrenzweig

divides

form

or

form

language

into articulate

perceptions.6

These have

obvious

correspondence

o

the assumed

psychic

structure

of

the

conscious

and the unconscious.

The

production

of

art

entails

the

articulation

of inarticulate form

language,

the latter essen-

tially

pangenital,

driven into

the

unconscious because

of the

prohibitions

of civilized conventions.

Aesthetic

articulation,

the

form

quality

which

structurally

determines

that a

form is an

art

form,

is

like

any

convention,

the

acceptable

facade

behind

which

inarticulate,

secret

form

language

lurks

(in

Ehrenzweig's

words,

Gestalt-free ).

While

in

a

pure therapy

transaction

the

raw

material

of the unconscious

may

be revealed

as

operable

information,

the

stylistic

articulations

that

characterize art

for-

ever

prevent

the

Gestalt-free

imagery

from

being

acted

upon

and

thus

resolved.

The

tug-of-war

between articulation of

the inarticulate

always

wins

in

favor

of

conventionalized,

safe,

articulate

structure

and the artist

is

eternally

driven

to

go

on

to

yet

another

creation,

and

his

audience

to

yet

more

secret

communications without

ever

knowing

why.

Art

cannot

hold

out

the

relief

of

knowledge

but

only

the

frustration

of

almost

knowledge.

Art

is

self-perpetuating,

blind,

hardly

satisfactory

knowledge.

Other

psychoanalytic

references,

such

as H.

Westman's

return

to

a near

Neo-Platonism,

deny

that aesthetic

experience

can

be

regarded as a superiorknowledge.7

After

Jung,

Westman

views

art

as

the

symbolic

carrier

of

archetypical

forms whose

meaning

is

beyond

objective grasp

and

sensed

only existentially.

The

ontological

implica-

6

Cf.,

The

Psycho-Analysis

of

Artistic

Vision and

Hearing

(London:

Routledge

and

Kegan

Paul, 1953).

7

Cf.,

The

Springs

of

Creativity

(New

York:

Atheneum,

1961).



7/14

120 HENRY RALEIGH

tions very often approached in psychoanalyticaesthetic speculationsare

invariably

cut short

by

the

overbearing

tendency

to

consider

the artist

and his

audience as unconscious and

ignorant

victims of their

psychic

drives. Since such

psychic

drives are

fundamentally

the

same,

analytic

knowledge,

whether

pangenital

or

mythical,

is

repetitively

the same.

Inversely,

if men

were

more

knowledgeable,

they

would

have

no

need

of art either

to

produce

it or to see

it.

Symbolic investigations

of art

have

come,

perhaps,

the

closest,

method-

ologically,

to a

theory

of

art

as

knowledge. They

have

done

so,

un-

doubtedly

because it was

just

such an aesthetic

theory

that

symbolic

investigators

sought

to

find,

basing

their research

on

the fact that

other,

more familiar modes

of

knowledge

may

be

understood as

systems

of

signs

and referents.8

More

interesting

as

a

synthesis

of

the

stronger

features

of

both

semantically

derived

and

psychoanalytic

theories

of

art have been

Sir

Herbert

Read's

studies.

Read,

like other

theorists,

believes

there is

a

special,

investigatory

distinction in

artistic

processes

that is akin to

sci-

ence

although

not similar in method. In The Forms

of Things

Unknown,

Read

adopts

from Charles Morris

the

term

appraisive-valuative

o

indicate

the

type

of

discoursewhich is

represented by

art. This is distin-

guished

from scientific

discourse which is

designative-informative.

To

demonstrate

that

art

obeys

internal,

structural

relationships

similar

to

linguistic, grammatical

structures,

even

to

note

functional,

material

limitations which

correspond

to

the

orthogonal

restrictionsof

language,

is to

prepare

the

ground

for the claim

that

art

is

engaged

in

the

trans-

mission

of

some kind of information.

The nature

of that transmission

s,

of

course,

appraisive-valuative.

But what is

appraised

and valuated

by

the fine

arts?

Not

the

objects

of

reality,

for a

painted representation

is

only

a

designative sign

for

the

thing

it

represents.

The

alternative,

pur-

suing

the

theory

of

art

as

knowledge,

is to arrive

at the

impasse

of the

symbolists:

the

art

object appraises

and valuates

itself;

or

passes

on

to a

metaphysical

impasse

of unknowable

knowledge

that

lies

beyond

the

mind and

beyond

the level of

descriptive-informative nowledge.

For

Read,

the

cognitive

quality

of art

is

found

in

its treatment

of

singularity:

The

apprehension

of

singulars,

in

any complete

sense,

is the

artistic

process

itself. 9

The notion of art as involved with this special attribute of the world

8

For

a criticism of

such semantic

based

theories see

Max Reiser's

The Se-

mantic

Theory

of

Art in

America, Journal

of

Aesthetics and

Art

Criticism,

Vol.

15,

No.

1

(September

1956).

9

Herbert

Read,

The

Forms

of

Things

Unknown

(New

York:

Horizon

Press,

1960), p.

44.



8/14

ART AS COMMUNICABLE

KNOWLEDGE

121

seems to be a consequence of the phenomenal, singular quality of art

objects

themselves as well as

the

desire to

distinguish

a

mode of

appre-

hension

by

contrast

to

apparently

pluralistic

and relational

apprehension.

It

is

not

plausible

to conceive of the art

object

as relational

in sensate

experience.

The

assumption

here is

always

that art

knowledge

is like

scientific

knowledge

in

that it

informs,

interpretively,

of

a

cause

and

effect

world but

in

its

own

way

of

expressing

the

singular.

The

mis-

leading

and

probably

self-defeating

result

of

this

assumption

is

that

scien-

tific

discourse

does,

by

the

very

nature

of

the

symbolic

devices

employed,

impart an equivalentstructural

sequence

in the events or series it chooses

to

describe. The

process

of

artistic

activity

may

well be

similar

but

the

product,

since a

physical

object,

is

not

symbolic

of

a

serial

activity.

It is

always

a

singular

and cannot

be

viewed

any

other

way.10

The

singular

symbol

of

a

propositional

formulation is

arbitrary

and like a

painted

representation,

or,

more

abstractly,

a

painted

geometric

shape,

may

or

may

not

refer

to

something

in

reality

but does

not evaluate

or

appraise,

or

in

any

manner

provide

information about

its referent. The

significance

of the

singular

symbol,

the fact of

its

being

apprehended

as

knowledge

about

something,

is relative to the

possibility

of verification of the

pro-

position

in

reality.

The

art

object,

as a

singular

symbol,

cannot

at

all be

verified in

reality

in order to

gain

reifiable

knowledge.

This

is

no

more

possible

than

to

do

the

same

for the

symbol

one

or x.

The

way

out

of the

dilemma

for

the

symbolic

theorist,

if he

wishes

to

avoid

an ate-

ological

absolute,

is

to

internalize

knowledge,

referring

it back to

some-

thing

within

the

participant

in

the

aesthetic

experience.

The

referral

activates

or

reconstructssome

knowledge

already present.

Read

accepts

the

Jungian theory

of

psychologically

continuous

mythic

materials.

In

this

respect

artistic

knowledge

is

merely

an

endless

reminiscing

of the

primordial

past

in

psychic

symbols

which alter

their

forms

but

never

their

content.

Read, however,

would

have

the

best

of

two

possibilities.

He finds a

vital difference

between the

repetitive

psychic

symbol

and

the

pure

aesthetic

symbol

which is

concerned

only

with the

sensations

pro-

duced

by

the

art

object.

It

(the

aesthetic

object)

is a

perceptual

mode

that excludes all

details

of

accident

and environment

not

intrinsic to

the

thing

itself. '

As

knowledge,

the

aesthetic

symbol

is

caught again in its own trap

of

informing

the

observer

that it is there

and

no more

-

a

symbol

of

10

The

cinema,

on the other

hand,

suffers no such

disadvantage

and

the

nature

of

its

communicability

is

much

closer to

that

of

literature.

1

Read,

op.

cit.,

p.

80.



9/14

122

HENRY

RALEIGH

itself. Both Cassirerand Whitehead have argued for art symbols as a

type

of

intuitive

knowledge, claiming

that such

special

information is

one of the

ways

of

achieving

an

objective

view

of

reality.

Cassirerwished

to

give

an

autonomy

to art

by separating

the

symbolic

functions of

art,

language,

and

science.

He

considered

art as

a

language

of

forms of

feelings,

not

of

concepts.

Science

gives

us

order in

thoughts; morality

gives

us

order

in

actions;

art

gives

us order

in the

apprehensions

of

visible,

tangible,

and

audible

appearances.1'l2

We would

assume

that

such

apprehension

is

special

insofar as it

reveals something of objective reality, but in Cassirer'sview this is not

exactly

so: .

..

art

gives

us a

new

kind of truth-

a

truth

not

of em-

pirical things

but

of

pure

forms. 13We

are led back

to

classical theories

which

sought

the

sources

of

knowledge

in

categories

of

absolute

beauty

or absolute forms

that

lay

behind,

as

logical

necessity,

and

beyond

the

knowledge

of

objective

reality.

The

presence

of

a

visual

art

object

as

totally

given

to

immediate

apprehension

of the senses

is troublesome

to

account

for in

any specu-

lation

concerning

the

knowledge,

truth,

or

meaning

of the arts. The

forms of literature

may very

well,

as

John

Hospers

has

remarked,

con-

tain

statements about

the

world

which,

as

information,

may

or

may

not

be

relevant to

it as

art. From

a

novel,

for

example,

Hospers

believes

we

may

learn

truths about

human nature

not as

directly presented

but in-

directly,

simply

by

virtue

of

its

being

true

to

human

experience:

Appre-

ciation

of

art

gives

us

new

'ways

of

seeing'

but no

knowledge,

no

facts,

no

propositions;

so also with

music and much

literature,

especially

poetry. 14

Not

all would exclude

poetry

from the

realm of

cognitive meaning.

Bertram

Jessup15

requires

as

a

test

of

cognitive

meaning

only repeat-

ability

of the described

experience,

whether of a

scientific

report

or of a

poetic

statement.

This

cannot

be

claimed for

the

visual

object,

for there

is

nothing

to which

it

may

be

compared

and thus

tested for

repeatability

unless

it be

a

matter of

further visual

cognitions.

Obviously

a

painting

does

not

teach

us to see

in

new

ways.

We

may

see

something

else or

something

different.

There

is no evidence

that

art teaches us to

see

differently,

although

Heinrich

Wolfflin

had

suggested

an

evolution

in

12

Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1944), p.

168.

Ibid.,

p.

164.

14John

Hospers,

Meaning

and

Truth

in the Arts

(Chapel

Hill:

University

of

North

Carolina

Press,

1946), p.

206.

15

Bertram

Jessup,

On Fictional

Expressions

of

Cognitive Meaning,

Journal

of

Aesthetics and

Art

Criticism,

Vol.

23,

No.

4

(Summer 1965).



10/14

ART

AS COMMUNICABLEKNOWLEDGE

123

visual perception. We suppose, both practically and for purposes of

critical

operations,

that all viewers of the art

object

see

it

in

exactly

the

same

way.

If art could

promote

changes

in

the

perception

of

reality

this

would indeed

be

considered a contribution

to

knowledge.

Still,

we

know

that an

Impressionist

painting

of

a

bowl

of flowers

is different

from an

Expressionist

treatment

of the same

subject

and both in turn

are

quite

different

from

the

real

bowl

of

flowers

that

may

have served

as

inspira-

tion for

the

paintings.

We

know,

as

well,

that

the

painters

saw

the

original

bowl

of

flowers

just

as

we

did

-

only

their

presented

forms are

different. It is the

stability

of

perception

that

handily

allows us to dis-

tinguish

the

paintings

from

one another

and from the

object

of

reality.

There is

yet

another

approach

to

the view

that

visual

art communi-

cates

knowledge.

This

view

requires

a

very

rudimentary

definition

of

knowledge:

knowledge

is

literally

any

resultant of the action

to

know

and

is

often

equivalently

identified

to

it.

Such theories

of art as

com-

municable

knowledge

sustain

themselves

on

tenuous

grounds

since

they

would tend

to include all

effectory

situations

or

stand as almost

purely

tautological.

These

views

might

be

subsumed

under

general expressionist

theoriesof art but are differentin the

respect

that

they attempt

to frame

expression

or

feeling

as a

type

of

knowledge

or

some form

of com-

municable

meaning. John

Hospers,

for

example,

accepts

a most inclusive

definition of

meaning

n art: .. . a work

of

art

means to

us

whatever

effects

(not

necessarily

emotions)

it

evokes

in

us;

a

work which

has

no

effect on

us means

nothing

to

us,

and

whatever effect it

does

evoke

con-

stitutes its

meaning

for us. '6

This

would not

be

helpful

as a

suggestion

of

an aesthetic

theory

of

knowledge

for we must ask

if

no

effect is not as

significant

a

meaning

as a

positive

effect.

It would

be

true,

too,

that

to

recognize

an

object

as an

object

intended

to

produce

an

effect,

although

no further

addi-

tional

effect

may

be

reported,

is,

nevertheless,

an

effect deducible

as

meaning.

However,

Hospers

is not concerned

with

formulating

a

theory

of aesthetic

knowledge

for he notes

that

even the

statements

made

of

the

world

by

literature are irrelevant as information.

The alternative

to

this

is

to

claim

for

art,

not informational

communication,

but a

special

and

exclusive function of emotional

communication.

Under certain

assumed

conditions objectified-feelings might be construed as knowledge, em-

ploying

a

definition

of

knowledge

in

common

usage:

information

of

a

kind

that

can

lead

to

further,

unspecified

action;

that

is

susceptible

to

methodological

treatment;

that is

communicable as

understanding.

6

Hospers, op.

cit.,

p.

95.



11/14

124

HENRY

RALEIGH

Argumentsof this nature draw in part from Kant's theoryof knowledge,

assigning

to the mind

some active

principle

which

exercises

a

power

held to be

a

necessary

condition

for

the

knowledge

of

objects

or

the

self.

In Art

and

Scientific

Thought,

Martin

Johnson

compares

both

art and

science relative

to

their roles

of

communicating

agreed

to

patterns

or

structures: ... each

attempting

to communicate

mental

images

through

patterns

and

structures and

forms,

in

the

qualitative

domain of

mea-

surement

respectively. 17

In

the

face

of

a

persistent

belief that art

objects

are

independent

and

unique

entities it is difficult to

speak

of

agreed

to

patterns

and struc-

tures

in

the same

way

that one

may speak

of

them in science.

While

it

cannot

be denied

that art

objects

do have

patterns

and structures

as

do

all

entities,

their existence

as art

objects

depends

not

on

any

relational

dependence

on other

structural

systems

(other

objects),

but on a

total

distinction from

all

other structures

and

patterns.

The criterion

of

reasonable

agreement

for

scientific entities

is

well

known and this alone

is sufficientto

diminish the

value of

such

a

comparison

to

the arts.

Straddling

the

positions

of

art

as

a different

mode

of

perceptual

reality

and

as

objectified

emotion

is the

recent

suggestion

advanced

by

Harry

S.

Broudy.

Underscoring

the

importance

of

the

problem

of

art

as

knowledge

and

recognizing

the

inherent

difficulties

in

this

stance,

Broudy

does not

entirely

abandon

the

belief that art must serve

some

sort

of

cognitive

function:

. . .

it

is

exceedingly

hard to

construe

works

of art

as statements

of

meaning.

But as

objects

of

perception

they

can

and

often do

express

a

meaning by making

an

image

of some

feeling

or

ideas

or

some

combination

of

them. '8

Broudy argues that while such expressed meanings are not assertions,

they

are clues

from

which

assertive inferences

may

be

made.

The

difficulty

here

is

only

delayed.

A search for inferred assertions

s

no more

clear

or accessible

than

a

search for assertions of

meaning immediately

given.

Yet more

difficult

is

the

possibility,

since inferences

are

by

clues,

of

gross

misinterpretation

and an

inference

of

no-meaning

s as

defen-

sible

as of

some-feeling

or

some-idea.

Most

thorough

in its search for

adequate grounds

on

which

to base

an

aesthetic

theory

of

objectified

feeling

is the thesis

of

Milton

C. Nahm.

Nahm recasts the Kantian theory in moder behavioral terms: The

17

Martin

Johnson,

Art

and

Scientific

Thought (New

York:

Columbia Univer-

sity

Press,

1949),

p.

24.

18 The

Structure

of

Knowledge

in

the

Arts,

in R. A.

Smith

(ed.),

Aesthetics

and

Criticism

n Art

Education

(Chicago:

Rand

McNally,

1966).



12/14

ART AS COMMUNICABLE

KNOWLEDGE

125

behavior called 'feeling' is knowledge of the nature of the stimulus. '9

Space permits

only

an

outline of certain salient features

of

Nahm's

theory.

The artist

reproduces

his

feelings

in

the

object,

although

he

need

not refer

directly

to

the

specific

stimulus and

he

is

most

likely

uncon-

scious of

the referent. The

generic

source of these

feeling-symbols

s

the

artist's

biological

and cultural

past.

In

its

biological, primitive

origins

the

human

mind

held a

structural

potential,

an

emotional

predisposition

to

react to its

environment

in a

way

most

probably

suited

to

insure its

survival.

This assumed

nervous

mechanism is not learned

nor

is

it

con-

trolled

by

the individual. Before a stimulus, it servesto

produce,

rather

to

reproduce,

the

best

biologically

appropriate

feeling

response

out

of all

other

possibilities

of

response. Imagination

is thus the

organism's

effec-

tive

presentation

to

itself

of a

stimulus. 20

Moreover,

all

man-made

symbols

are

recognitive

and In all

men,

'reproductive

imagination'

operates

to

permit recognition

of

the

presented

stimuli for

feeling. 21

Such

symbols

are

the

perceptual recognition

of

an

earlier

knowledge

of

morality,

science,

ethics

-

all of the differentiated

feeling

responses,

externalized as

concrete

expressions

of

man:

By

means

of

art,

the

maker

actualizes

the

symbols

in

sensuous

media.

Those

who

experience

the

art

actualize

in

their own

experience

the

predisposition

to

action

which,

in its

primitive

form,

is the mechanical

reaction

of

organisms

behaving

with

some

appropriateness

to

particular

features

of

their

en-

vironment.22

This

position

removes

the difficulties

encountered

in

other

symbolist

theories;

the art

object

appraises

itself.

For

Nahm,

the art

object

reappraises

and revaluates

man

himself and leads him

to

unspecified

ends of

action.

Nahm's

psychoanalytic

implications

are

evident and

therein

lies

a

familiar weakness.

The aesthetic

experience

is less a

form

of

self-knowledge

than

quite

literally

a neurotic

response.

Despite

Nahm's claim

that

aesthetic

experience

is

characterized

by

a sense of

exaltation and

courage

that

furthers

action,

his

description

of

the

sensation bears

the

qualities

of a

pure

neurosis,

uncontrolled

and

trig-

gered

by

stimulus

cues of

varying strengths.

The

argument

would

not

lose

in

plausibility

by

considering

the

aesthetic effect as

a

neurotic

reaction to

situations

designed

for

such an

end.

However,

neurotic be-

havior cannot

be

ranked as

a

kind

of

knowledge,

that

is,

as

rational

19

Milton

C.

Nahm,

Aesthetic

Experience

and

Its

Presuppositions

(New

York:

Harper, 1946), p.

355.

20

Ibid.,

p.

357.

21

Ibid.,

p.

366.

2

Ibid.,

p.

368.



13/14


14/14

ART

AS COMMUNICABLENOWLEDGE

127

conditions of the outside world. All such attempts lead ultimately to the

conclusion

that

references

which

the

usual

symbols

of

knowledge

must

have are

unknown.

It

may

therefore

be

conjectured

if the

question

of the

nature of the

knowledge

represented

by

the fine

arts

may

be

meaning-

fully

asked.

Further,

it

seems reasonable

to

query

the

relationship

of the

development

of

theories of

aesthetic

knowledge

to the

stylistic

develop-

ment

of

the fine

arts.

It

is,

perhaps,

not

accidental

that theories of

aesthetic

knowledge

become

more

pointed

in

their

premise

that art is

a kind of communicable

knowledge

as

the

styles

of

the

fine

arts reach

higher levels of abstractionaway from

reality.

That is, abstractand non-

objective

forms

take on

more

the

appearance

of all

symbol

systems

whose

forms

are

arbitrarily assigned.

In

the

latter case the

meaning,

that

is,

the referents of

the

symbols,

are

agreed

to.

In

fine

art,

such forms

are

called

creatively-unique

nd

there

is

no

agreement

as

to their

referents.

art as communicable knowledge

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