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The Road to Emotion: Paved with Propositional Intentions?

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 03:58:04 GMT

The Road to Emotion: Paved with Propositional Intentions?

While emotions are multifaceted phenomena, it seems there are some elements which are essential components of a comprehensive theory of emotion— specifically involving intentionality and how it might manifest cross-specially, viewed from cognitivist and Darwinian frameworks. While the gap between primitive emotion and intentional mental states has been a continual dilemma in studies of emotion, we may be able to reach a more inclusive theory by reevaluating the preconditions of intentionality and emphasizing the continuous interaction between neurophysiological responses and cognitive evaluation.

In John Deigh’s Primitive Emotions , the author identifies the two central facts which a theory of emotion must include, the first being that “emotions are intentional states in the sense that they are directed at something,” (Deigh, p.9, para.1) and the second being that “emotions are common to both humans and beasts” (Deigh, p.9, para.2). Various theories of emotion have grappled with these factors, though usually struggle to provide an account inclusive of both; cognitive approaches rely heavily on the intentionality of emotions, but have trouble explaining this in the context of non-human animals, and Darwinian theories easily accommodate the emotions of such animals, but struggle to reconcile this with intentionality. This “gap” which both theories have is one between primitive emotion and intentional mental states, the former of which seems to predate the capacity for the latter (Deigh, p.10, para.3).

Attendant upon such theories of intentionality is the capacity for language, as the cognitivists view emotions as being inherently propositional, but Deigh points out that the judgment theory seems to rely too heavily on language; the cognitivists deem emotions to be merely “affirmations and denials of propositions,” putting emotion beyond animals, babies, and so on— a conclusion which seems obviously implausible (Deigh, p.10, para.3). Cognitivist theories must acknowledge a fundamental difference between the thoughts in primitive emotions and those in distinctively human emotions (to avoid tying the nature of emotions solely to linguistic capacities), however they still struggle to account for how these different kinds of thought— given their significant dissimilarity— could both coherently be said to characterize the nature of emotions (Deigh, p.14, para.2).

The Darwinians (inspired by, but departing from, Darwin himself) believe emotions to be “neurophysiological event[s] whose manifestations typically include the facial and overt bodily movements that are the emotion’s true expressions” (Deigh, p.18, para.1). Using this model, it is clear how humans and some animals can share similar emotional responses, as they have common evolutionary origins (Deigh, p.19, para.1). In contrast to the problem the cognitivists face in reconciling propositional intentionality with primitive emotions which predate language use, the challenge for the Darwinians is then to explain how emotions can be intentional states without relying on propositional thought (of which many animals seem incapable). A significant problem also arises concerning the intelligibility condition of emotions; Deigh contends that for something to be the object of an emotion, it must appear to the subject in a way that makes the feeling intelligible, or be thought to possess a property that makes the emotion intelligible— if a subject has the neurophysiological response indicative of one emotion, but feels his emotions intelligibly to be another, then “the Darwinians must insist on his feeling some emotion that he is in fact not feeling,” posing a fundamental incompatibility with intentionality (Deigh, p.22, para.1).

Emerging research may be able to reveal, however, some way to bridge the gap between these two outlooks; the somatic marker hypothesis, proposed by Antonio Damasio, elucidates the relationship between the body, decision making, and emotion. He states that emotion “allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent,” (i.e., to assign somatic markers), which builds a ‘database’ upon which decisions are made; our decisions are swayed not only by past factual information, but also “whether or not what we felt was good or bad […] That tandem of fact and associated emotion is critical.” (Damasio, 1:41) The most famous study in support of this hypothesis is the Iowa Gambling Task, in which while normal people acquire an anticipatory galvanic skin response to risky bets before they even consciously recognize the risk, people with damaged ventromedial prefrontal cortices will never acquire this response (i.e., they will play until bankruptcy) (Dempsey, slide 8). From an evolutionary perspective, this link between emotions and decision making makes sense; like heuristics, emotions, “rather than having you think through the problem, would deliver a solution and make sure that you would act right […] if there is an opportunity, emotion is going to make sure that you, at some level, know that it’s there and that you’re going to have the tendency to act on it— and if there is a threat, you are going to be alerted to it; even before you’re alerted to the threat as such […] it happens nonconscious[ly], then you take consciousness of it.” (Damasio, 5:35) The somatic marker hypothesis provides strong support for theories of emotion in which somatic states play a prominent role— such as the James-Lange theory defended by Jesse Prinz in Embodied Emotions , which states that “emotions are perceptions (conscious or unconscious) of patterned changes in the body” (Prinz, p.45, para.2); the fact that patients who have sustained damage to the VMPC are virtually unable to make even simple decisions would indicate that said somatic responses are essential to evaluative judgments. This works in favour of theories which ground emotion chiefly in the somatic before any cognition occurs, and potentially poses issues for judgment or cognition-based ones.

Jennifer Robinson, in Emotion: Biological Fact or Social Construction? , investigates the value of judgment theory (similar to the cognitivism covered by Deigh), and the theory does seemingly have a number of strengths. That emotions are based upon beliefs (for example, fear that a predator is threatening, or joy that someone is being kind to us) seems plausible, especially considering, as noted by Solomon, that “change in the belief or judgment seems to entail a change in the emotion and/or the abandonment of the emotion” (Robinson, p.28, para.2). Emotions are also subject to evaluation in a way that involuntary feelings, such as pain after being hit, are not; we say that certain emotional responses are reasonable or unreasonable given the circumstances, which implies an element of judgment (Robinson, p.29, para.1).

However, the theory is imperfect; primarily, it seems that while there is a clear connection, there is no inherent link between judgment and emotion. For example, emotions are still possible where judgments seemingly are not— say, in the emotions of babies (Robinson, p.32, para.2). Other factors which work against judgment theories include the presence of unlearned fears (of the unfamiliar, for example)(Robinson, p.32, para.3), and the many studies of Zajonc which show that things which are ‘subcepted’ (i.e., presented in such a way that the subject has no conscious experience of them) may also induce emotional response— indicating that these things are bypassing cognition (Robinson, p.33, para.2). Thus, while there is certainly evaluative cognition involved in the experience of emotion, it is not a prerequisite; indeed, it seems rather that the somatic response is the prerequisite which makes evaluation or judgment possible. Robinson summarizes that “the initial response to fear is generated by an ‘emotional appraisal’ in the amygdala that happens very fast and prior to cognitive intervention,” whereas “the subsequent slower ‘cognitive appraisal’ can identify the stimulus more carefully, assess the appropriateness of the prior automatic response, and presumably attempt to modify and control both the initial appraisal and the organism’s subsequent responses” (Robinson, p.36, para.3). In other words, Robinson’s position on the matter is one which seems to tie up many loose ends: emotional responses are triggered by affective appraisals (of simple or more complex stimuli) leading to physiological changes, which is then followed by subsequent cognitive processes that may modify the overall emotional experience (Robinson, p.41, para.2). This is in alignment with Damasio’s statements of an initially unconscious response of which we later become conscious. Thus, while cognition and judgment play a role in our emotions, “it is always an [automatic] affective appraisal that sets off an emotion process” (Robinson, p.43, para.3).

Both cognitivist (or judgment) and Darwinian theories paint a picture of emotions that is too one-dimensional; as with most conflicting theories, the answer lies somewhere in the meeting of the two. The primary issue with the cognitivists’ approach is not the proposition that emotions are intentional— which, as noted by Deigh, seems undeniable— but rather that intentionality relies upon propositional thought. The case against non-propositional thought proposed by Deigh is unsatisfactory; he dismisses the argument that thoughts in primitive emotions are like thoughts in distinctively human emotions (only lacking propositional form), questioning what makes these thoughts alike other than being part of intentional states of the mind— in Deigh’s view, this does not explain what specifically makes them similar (Deigh, p.11, para.3). But in fact, what is unclear is why Deigh believes this is not sufficient; if both animal and human emotions can be shown to have an object and to be directed toward something, then the issue of intentionality has been solved. The degree to which any complex thought can be achieved without language is questionable (as is addressed by Descartes (Deigh, p.14, para.1)), because language allows for levels of abstraction not available to purely image-based thought, but it is certainly sufficient for the purposes of intentional emotions. In order to defend animals as emotional beings, one need only demonstrate that they experience the same basic emotions as humans, which incorporate some aspect of intentionality. Therefore, the fact that there may be some emotions which depend upon highly complex abstract concepts, and are thus only accessible to humans, does not negate the fact that animals do experience emotions. Indeed, perhaps what the animals are lacking is not the emotion, but what Robinson identifies as the cognition which follows the physiological change, which may mediate the response and allow for a more sophisticated experience. In other words, by divorcing propositional, language-based thought from intentionality, we may be able to reach a theory of emotion which incorporates both the somatic and the cognitive. With a narrow view of intentionality out of the way, it becomes clear that views offered by Robinson, Damasio, and others—which illustrate the intimate relationship between neurophysiological stimulus response and cognitive appraisal in the emotional process— provide a comprehensive and plausible picture of emotion.

In summary, it seems neither cognitivist nor Darwinian perspectives can provide a complete and satisfactory account of emotions. The limitation lies, in part, with the cognitivist insistence on language-based thought as a prerequisite for intentionality; by exploring ways in which intentionality can exist beyond language, a more comprehensive theory of emotion may emerge. Furthermore, research illuminating the relationship between neurophysiological responses and cognitive analysis seems to mediate in favour of a blending of the two; rather than cognition preceding somatic response or vice versa, the most plausible account seems to be one of a reciprocal process of one informing the other. This approach promises a more nuanced understanding of the intricate nature of emotion than those provided by the cognitivist or Darwinian theories.

References

Damasio, A. (2011, June 14). How Our Brains Feel Emotion | Antonio Damasio | Big Think [Video] , 5:35. YouTube. https://youtu.be/KsSv1KzdiWU?si=TaEZxx9mQW2GThtP&t=335

Damasio, A. (2009, August 11). When Emotions Make Better Decisions - Antonio Damasio [Video] , 1:41. YouTube. https://youtu.be/1wup_K2WN0I?si=jKHWOay8aAVHh6HJ&t=101

Deigh, J. (2004). Primitive Emotions. In R. C. Solomon (Ed.), Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (pp.9, 10, 11, 14, 18, 19, 22). Essay, Oxford University Press.

Dempsey, L.P. (2023). Notes on the Somatic Marker Hypothesis [PowerPoint slides]. Lecture.

Prinz, J. (2004). Embodied Emotions. In R. C. Solomon (Ed.), Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (p.45). Essay, Oxford University Press.

Robinson, J. (2004). Emotion: Biological Fact or Social Construction?. In R. C. Solomon (Ed.), Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (pp.28, 29, 32, 33, 36, 41, 43). Essay, Oxford University Press.

Cover image: Illustration from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , 1872, Charles Darwin.

Aesthetic Experience and Meaning, From the Developmental to the Transcendental

Sat, 22 Jul 2023 22:27:22 GMT

Aesthetic Experience and Meaning, From the Developmental to the Transcendental

The process of artistic creation, especially in the West, has generally been a self-conscious one, constantly probing into the nature of art with endless questioning. Among these questions are most fundamentally: What is art? Must art be beautiful? And if so, can we form objective standards of beauty? While philosophers have been considering the nature and significance of art for centuries, only recently have we been able to consider the aesthetic experience as a biological and neurological phenomenon, with deep roots in our evolutionary history— one which is not merely a reflection of evolutionary imperatives, but more importantly a tool for extracting meaning from the mundane and shaping man’s understanding of himself and the world.

In their paper The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience , researchers V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein propose a number of compelling laws of aesthetic experience that elucidate why humans respond to art in the way that they do. These laws have also been critiqued by Cynthia Freeland in her book But Is It Art? An Introduction to Art Theory . One of their proposed laws, the peak shift principle, is praised by Freeland for its explanatory value with regard to caricature and other extremes in the arts. (Freeland, p. 173 para. 1) If a little bit of something is adaptive (such as strategically advantageous natural landscapes, exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, etc.), it makes sense that this could easily be taken to extremes, and become manifest in aesthetic preference. This could perhaps explain exaggerated female forms in some artwork. Freeland, however, takes issue with the overall focus on the ‘evolutionary imperatives’ invoked by the authors as the basis for much of aesthetic experience, especially those having the human body as the focus. Freeland writes, “his choice of the verb ‘titillate’ in the quotation above seems all too apt, because many of the article’s illustrations are depictions of erotic nude females. The article suggests that ‘our’ interest in their beauty derives from universal evolutionary imperatives—a point that cries out for some Guerrilla Girls intervention!” (Freeland, p. 172 para. 2) Despite feminist protestations, the experience of beauty certainly does derive from such biological imperatives, be they of a sexual nature or not (such as the fruit-finding adaptivity of colour vision (Osorio, p. 598)). It may be that both sexes derive an interest from the biological imperatives, but in different manners; while the basis for male interest in the female form is obvious enough, women too derive important information about the nature of female desirability through such art. Additionally, “there is evidence that women may direct as much visual attention to, and be as physically aroused by, the sight of (nude) women's bodies as men's.” (Bogaert, p. 19 para. 1) The interest that a woman takes in beauty can serve to affirm her own desirability, reflected back through art and displayed as an object of admiration; this is evolutionarily adaptive insofar as this appraisal allows the woman to correctly assess her mate value compared to women considered as standards of beauty, and “demand an optimally high price for her sexual resource.” (Bogaert, p. 12 para. 2) When viewing other women in sexually suggestive contexts, women (especially more so than men) typically experience “‘positive projective identification’ […] able to "project” themselves onto the female protagonist.” (Bogaert, p. 16 para. 1) Thus, women may also take an evolutionarily adaptive sexual interest in female nudes, which is transferred into a desexualized aesthetic interest as it is for men. Though Freeland does not address it, another of the most compelling aesthetic laws offered by the authors is that of symmetry. As the maintenance of bilateral symmetry in animals is extremely bioenergetically taxing, the ability to maintain a symmetrical phenotype in the presence of environmental instability, disease, and as the authors note, parasites (R&H, p. 34 para. 1) is a sign of good genes, and should be inherently attractive to humans.
Beyond the biological issues, Freeland criticizes Ramachandran and Hirstein’s claim that “all art aims at beauty,” because “we know from Chapter 1 (on blood) that this is not true.” (Freeland, p. 172 para. 2) Despite being confidently stated, it was not shown to be true that not all art aims at beauty, and a compelling argument can be made that all real art aims at beauty, in at least some capacity. It can be simultaneously true that beauty is not the aim of an artwork, while also being a requisite that such a beauty is present; an artwork can also be beautiful without being visually beautiful, through the themes that are being addressed. Take Freeland’s argument of blood in art, for example; in the European tradition, depictions of rituals or myths involving blood aim at the beauty of the story being depicted, not the blood; the blood is significant only so far as it symbolizes the bravery, or the sacrifice. What we find beauty in is those ideals being expressed, not the blood— hence why the bleeding wounds of Christ on the cross can be profoundly beautiful, expressing the ultimate sacrifice, and the rags soaked in HIV-infected blood (Freeland, p. 4 para. 1) are not. Despite all these criticisms, Freeland ends on a seemingly contradictory note of ambivalence in stating that “art inevitably depends on perceptual and cognitive processes.” (Freeland, p. 173 para. 1) Why this should not also include those based upon biological and reproductive imperatives is unclear.

Throughout the book, though centralized in chapter 6, Freeland lays out the core tenets of her views on art and its interpretation. Her central belief is that though art is a “cognitive enterprise,” there is not “one true account of ‘the’ cognitive contribution made by an artwork.” (Freeland, p. 175 para. 1) Freeland’s view on art interpretation and critical analyses is that they “help explain art—not so as to tell us in the audience what to think, but to enable us to see and respond to the work better for ourselves.” Without defining the parameters of such interpretations as Hume did, Freeland gives a Humean view on (qualified) art critics, whose joint verdict he deemed the “true standard of taste and beauty.” (Hume, p. 229) Both believe that such people can help guide the public thought on works of art.
Although carefully considered and measured, Freeland’s views tend to err on the side of vaguery and fence-sitting. Part of her definition, for example, that artists “express thoughts and ideas in a way that can be communicated to audiences, enriching our experiences” and “do this in a context, and their ‘thoughts’ serve some specific needs within that context” (Freeland, p. 175 para. 1) is painfully imprecise and inclusive. I can express thoughts and ideas, in a context, that serve specific needs within that context, and enrich others’ experiences, with something like an instruction manual— but we would hardly consider this art. Her views are also perhaps too permissive when it comes to what constitutes art. In stating the importance of cultural context to an artwork, Freeland points out that Warhol’s Brillo Box would not make sense to people in ancient Athens (Freeland, p. 149 para. 1), and thus we “must know ‘external’ facts before trying to acquire the ‘internal’ attitude of appreciation” of the work (Freeland, p. 64 para. 1); in contrast, much of the art produced in ancient Athens still holds immense meaning to modern humans, even without the relevant surrounding information or explanation. If we are to conclude that Warhol’s boxes are in fact art, it seems safe to say that some works of art are then simply worse than others.

All things considered, I argue that the laws of Ramachandran and Hirstein (most notably the ensuing two) point toward both the psychobiological and metaphysical significance of art— namely, the extraction of meaning from the mundane. This is a process available both to the artist and to those who experience the art. One of the eight laws proposed by Ramachandran and Hirstein primarily relevant to meaning-making is that of ‘art as metaphor.’ The utility of a metaphor is that it “allows us to ignore irrelevant, potentially distracting aspects of an idea or percept […] and enables us to ‘highlight’ the crucial aspects.” (R&H, p. 31 para. 1) It is the act of detecting the signal amongst the noise, in a world that is composed mostly of the latter. A truly good metaphor, visual or otherwise, is able to “evoke an emotional response long before the metaphor is made explicit […] even before one is conscious of it” (R&H, p. 31 para. 1) The painter Jannik Hösel speaks of something similar, stating in an interview, “Pure symbolism can really go astray […] A bad vanitas painting, for example: the skull represents death, this flower represents sorrow, the worm represents decay […] very low-resolution meanings for one thing. A good symbol is when there is more in it the deeper you go, so it unfolds itself. That’s what Odd [Nerdrum] also recently said: ‘A good painting is when there’s more in the painting than the painter knows— if there’s something more than he was conscious of while he was painting it.’” (Hösel, 52:10) The artist and the viewer seek then not merely conveyance or experience of an emotion, but fundamentally to find something out about himself and the world. In this way, a (visual) metaphor can act as a sort of tool for bringing into consciousness that which has been obscure. It is likely that the more adept the artist and the interpreter, the more they are able to see the connection between “superficially dissimilar events” (R&H, p. 31 para. 2) to extract out what is not only common, but meaningfully common between them— and perhaps the level of skill lies in the level of dissimilarity between the multiple ideas which they are able to synthesize into a gestalt. This synthetization is the process by which we are able to “transcend tokens to create types” (R&H, p. 31 para. 2), harkening back to the Platonic ideals and the essences of things which exist separately and above the mere instances.
Another of the eight laws salient to how the artist and viewer extracts meaning from an artwork is that of the ‘peak shift’ effect; in art, this effect relies upon “the ability of the artist to abstract the ‘essential features’ of an image and discard redundant information.” (R&H, p. 17 para. 3) This is also essentially what an artist is doing when he invokes a metaphor. Though peak shift can occur as a natural process, the artist can also cause this shift through an exaggerated deviation from the norm— as the authors note, often “in a manner that is not obvious to the conscious mind.” (R&H, p. 20 para. 1) The works of Van Gogh and Monet, for example, may (respectively) “excite the visual neurons that represent colour memories of those flowers even more effectively than a real sunflower or water lily might.” (R&H, p. 20 para. 1) In this idea, we again return almost to the Platonic idea of the artist who is able to tap directly into the world of forms, to create an artwork that is ‘realer than real,’ which unveils something to the world formerly shrouded in the profane, normally inaccessible. The authors speak of “a mnemonic component of aesthetic perception, including, the autobiographical memory of the artist, and of her viewer, as well as the viewer’s more general ‘cognitive stock’ brought to his encounter with the work.” (R&H, p. 20 para. 2) While it seems that Ramachandran and Hirstein are postulating the presence of imagery pulled from the artistic canon and the culture at large, I suggest that a large amount of this imagery is also a priori and archetypal. This is perhaps what Jung was aiming at in the mapping of his archetypal figures, “the numinous, structural elements of the psyche [that] possess a certain autonomy and specific energy which enables them to attract, out of the conscious mind, those contents which are best suited to themselves.” (Jung, p. 213 para. 344) The archetypes therefore allow for a flexible plethora of possible manifestations through imagery, left up to the artist and viewer to manifest and interpret.

This meaning-making (or perhaps finding) out of the chaos of the world is the final cause of art, the reason for its existence and for man being inexorably drawn to it. All theories of art that fail to take into account the necessary meaningfulness of an artwork cannot fully encapsulate its essence. Even Anderson’s definition, which includes “culturally significant meaning,” (Freeland, p.77 para. 2) fails to take into account that the work must not just contain a meaning, but must be interpreted as meaningful in the larger mosaic of the life of the individual; it must allow us to make sense of our experiences, in relation to ourselves and others. As Roger Scruton wrote in Beauty, “This ‘blessed rage for order’ is present in the very first impulse of artistic creation: and the impetus to impose order and meaning on human life, through the experience of something delightful […] In the highest form of beauty life becomes its own justification, redeemed from contingency by the logic which connects the end of things with their beginning.” (Scruton, p. 128 para. 1) We are drawn to art, especially its beauty, because it provides an ideal to which we may compare ourselves and serves as an orienting guide for ordering our values and goals, and ultimately, being more than what we are. This aligns perhaps most closely with Dewey’s theory, insofar as he “emphasized art’s role in enabling people to perceive, manipulate, or otherwise grapple with reality […] to enrich their world and their perceptions.” (Freeland, p.166 para. 2) I depart from Dewey in arguing that the individual, not the culture or community, is the central agent and important factor in the artistic experience. It facilitates Jung’s concept of individuation, which through the experience of the individual “brings to birth a consciousness of human community precisely because it makes us aware of the unconscious, which unites and is common to all mankind." (Jung, p. 158 para. 227) Therefore in the final analysis the specific culture is not crucially relevant.

In summary, the human experience of beauty undoubtedly originates in the evolutionary history of our ancestors, with traits that conferred an advantage in survival of the animal or its offspring persisting in the population and eventually coming to compose our aesthetic sensibilities. Though the experience of art and beauty may originate in the purely mechanistic workings of evolutionary biology, it does not mean that this is where it must end, nor does it take anything away from the aesthetic experience. For example, although feelings of romantic love are evolutionarily adaptive insofar as they facilitate pair bonding and effective rearing of offspring, scarcely anyone interprets the ultimate meaning of love in the human experience to be one of pure adaptivity. Beyond the mere neurological function, art can serve as a profound source of meaning in the life of man, allowing him to bring order from chaos, and interpret and understand the world and his life in it.

References

Bogaert, A. F., & Brotto, L. A. (2014, June 14). Object of Desire Self-Consciousness Theory . Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/0092623x.2012.756841
Freeland, C. (2002). Blood and beauty. But Is It Art? An Introduction to Art Theory (p. 4). Oxford University Press.
Freeland, C. (2002). Cognition, creation, comprehension. But Is It Art? An Introduction to Art Theory (pp. 149, 166, 172-173, 175). Oxford University Press.
Freeland, C. (2002). Cultural crossings. But Is It Art? An Introduction to Art Theory (pp. 64, 77). Oxford University Press.
Hume, D., & Millar, A. (1757). Of the Standard of Taste. In Four dissertations: I. The Natural History of Religion. II. Of the Passions. III. Of Tragedy. IV. Of the Standard of Taste (p. 229). Essay, Printed for A. Millar, in the Strand.
Jung, C. G. (2014). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 16: Practice of Psychotherapy (Vol. 16) (p. 158). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (2014). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation (Vol. 5) (p. 213). Princeton University Press.
Osorio, D., & Vorobyev, M. (1996, May 22). Colour Vision as an Adaptation to Frugivory in Primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://sci-hub.se/10.1098/rspb.1996.0089
Ramachandran, V. S., & Hirstein, W. (1999). The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies , 15–51.
Scruton, R. (2009). Beauty (p. 128). Oxford University Press.
Tuv, J. O., & Hösel , J. (2023, February 15). Jannik Hösel on How He Taught Himself to Paint and His Take on the Role of Symbols in Storytelling . Cave of Apelles. https://youtu.be/6atoJEs39fs?t=3131 (52:10 - 53:09).

Cover image: The Creation of Adam (Detail), 1512, Michelangelo.

Criticising the Kitsch Critics

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 22:02:48 GMT

Criticising the Kitsch Critics

[Kitsch] is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money – not even their time.

—

Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch , 1939

The concept of kitsch is one critiqued frequently in the work of Roger Scruton as one of the major maladies of the modern art world; in his words, he viewed kitsch as fundamentally “not an excess of feeling but a deficiency. The world of kitsch is in a certain measure a heartless world, in which emotion is directed away from its proper target towards sugary stereotypes, permitting us to pay passing tribute to love and sorrow without the trouble of feeling them.” (Scruton, 2009, p.191) This in many ways bears great resemblance to Greenberg’s critique, viewing kitsch as something that does not demand anything of its viewer, and has “no message of its own, in which all the effects were copied and all the emotions faked.” (Scruton, 2009, p.189) This latter criticism is one perhaps most frequently aimed at kitsch— namely, that the feelings of both the artist and the viewer are artificial or faked.
The most compelling aspect of Scruton’s argument against kitsch is that of the falseness specifically of sentimental feelings— ones which are directed not at the purported object of sentimentality, but rather the subject who is feeling the emotions. It is an essentially egoistic experience, and denies people the full humanness of life and the arts. The kitsch object is “a fantasy object, deprived of objective reality, made pliant to a subjective need, and roughly discarded when the going gets tough. He is, from the beginning, only an excuse for an emotion […] and will find himself quickly replaced in his lover’s affections when the script requires it.” (Scruton, 2005, p.36) The object of sentimental feeling is in some way perverted by being made a means to an (emotional) end by the subject. Sentimentality, therefore, along with cynicism, are “two ways in which things of value are demoted to things with a price.” (Scruton, 2005, p.32) The latter point is what I will address next in an attempt to defend kitsch: the position which comprises a large part of the hostility against kitsch, namely one of cynicism. For this, I draw upon excerpts from Robert Solomon’s 1991 essay, On Kitsch and Sentimentality .

Solomon, in comparing the seemingly kitsch Bouguereau to the ‘real’ art of Degas, contrasts two quotes from the artists: “Bouguereau himself writes, ‘I see only the beautiful in art ... art is the beautiful. Why reproduce what is ugly in nature?" (Cf. Degas: ‘I show my models deprived of their airs and graces, reduced to the level of animals cleaning themselves.’)” (Solomon, p.5) Perhaps both these views go too far in opposite directions, respectively “one dealing in sugary dreams, the other in savage fantasies.” (Scruton, 2009, p.192) However, there is a seeming double standard (in critics of kitsch, but also in all modern art) in the hostility towards idyllic beauty, but openness to exaggerated ugliness. Lucian Freud, for example, is often praised for his ability to paint life ‘as it is,’ but it is in fact an exaggeratedly ugly version of humans which he chooses to depict— the worst angels of our nature. It would seem that the art world has endless room for the degradation of humanity to its basest aspects, but not the elevation to its most lovely (albeit, perhaps, in the case of kitsch, in a not entirely sophisticated manner).
In an excerpt from a catalog of the art exhibit, the gallery writes that “‘novice viewers rarely speak of the Bouguereau's features and aesthetic qualities. Instead, they use it as a springboard to dreams of the future or nostalgic memories of the past. More advanced viewers are soon bored.’” (Solomon, p.4) In this vignette, we can see how even supposedly ‘low’ art can be meaningful to the viewer, even if this is through their own imagination or nostalgia— where other ‘fine art’ can engage and challenge, and still ultimately leave the viewer completely untouched, being forgotten in minutes. In contrast to the rationalist views on emotional experience, or models of ‘psychical distance’, Solomon argues that the experience of our emotions allow us to “edit a scene or a situation in such a way that it matters to us. ” (Solomon, p.12) Putatively kitsch art may therefore hold much deeper meaning to the viewer than is first assumed; when one hears of “easy emotions” in relation to kitsch art, one wonders if this shallowness of feeling is not reflective of the critic rather than the art; and when it comes to “faked emotions,” the question arises whether these critics honestly believe that the emotions that arise from a Rockwell or Bouguereau painting are more faked than those allegedly evoked by a Pollock or Basquiat.

Another rock slung by critics against kitsch is that it “[shifts] our attention away from the world as it is and [soothes] us instead with objects that are uncompromisingly comfortable and utterly unthreatening.” (Solomon, p.5) When people begin to talk of the world “as it is,” it brings the inevitable question: what exactly is the world, as it is ? One major outlook typical of Leftish movements, for example, is that of an oppressor-oppressed dichotomy, of unjust power and unearned privileges— for them, this is the world as it is (and this ugly ressentiment certainly manifests itself aesthetically). But this is not the world objectively as it is , and so we might then begin to speak of it as merely one way of viewing the world, and to consider what it might say about the people who view it in such a way. It is not clear that the kitsch artists are not painting the world as it is, perhaps just through a different lens. This commitment exclusively to gritty ‘realism’ is indicative of the sympathy for the particularly pernicious idea— perhaps brought on by exponential leaps in the sciences within the last centuries— that everything needs to be laid bare for the whole world, in gory detail, demystified and desiccated. Man is increasingly being deprived of, as Solzhenitsyn called it in his Harvard address, “the right not to know.” (Solzhenitsyn)
Solomon notes also that kitsch “utilizes what Kathleen Higgins calls ‘icons’ to guarantee an instant and wholly predictable emotional response.” (Solomon, p.6) This is presumably referring to images such as young children, animals, religious figures, and so on. Kitsch is often disparaged for its return to such familiar, safe, and ultimately unoriginal themes and images, but it is not entirely clear why this must be (or indeed, even usually is) a negative thing. We might consider T. S. Eliot’s remark that “not only the best, but the most individual parts” of an artist’s work “may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.” (Eliot, p.1) These are the images which evoke ancient emotional responses in their viewers— and this can, and does, have indispensable value in the human experience, and is not as egocentric as critics would have us believe. Solomon puts it well when he states, “It is not self-indulgence that motivates us to absorb ourselves in a painting and welcome the emotions it evokes. It is part of our emotional engagement in the human drama.” (Solomon, p.13) Indeed, then, what Greenberg derides as “vicarious experience,” we might call simply “empathy.”

Rockwell is a good example of an artist who is often kitsch, but not always. Works like Double Trouble for Willie Gillis — the kind perhaps most often associated with Rockwell— is almost undeniably a kitschy work, from the composition to the postures and facial expressions. In fact, even in the less ‘kitsch’ works, Rockwell’s art tends to be characterized by exaggerated expressions and staging, often leading to a cartoonish quality. It lacks depth. But in works like Saying Grace , Four Freedoms , and Second Holiday , Rockwell’s works really do convey human life and profound emotion, particularly in the faces, even in the more superficially ‘pleasant’ ones (like Freedom from Want ); and when critics criticize this element of Rockwell’s work as ‘kitsch’, one wonders if they truly believe that such loveliness does not occur in real life. Perhaps they’ve just never paid attention to it.

This is not a defense of kitsch per se, but simply an attempt to illustrate that the brush of kitsch’s critics paints in large strokes that obscure the subtleties of the affair. It seems fair to say that artists like Thomas Kinkaid, Jeff Koons, and Lisa Frank do make truly kitsch art, and that this is worth less than real art in its shallowness. However, the criticism of kitsch seems to reach far beyond this— in fact, seems to focus almost entirely on works which merely display simple beauty and delicate, pleasant emotions, and do so in the name of cynicism and the degradation of the pure and unjaded.

References

Scruton, R. (2009). Beauty (pp. 189, 191-192). Oxford University Press.
Scruton, R. (2005). Modern Culture (pp. 32, 36). Bloomsbury Continuum.
Solomon, R. C. (1991). On Kitsch and Sentimentality (pp. 3-6, 12-13). The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1111/1540_6245.jaac49.1.0001
Eliot, T. S. (1919). Tradition and the Individual Talent (p. 1).

Cover image: Freedom from Fear , 1943, Norman Rockwell.