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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
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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.
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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).
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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).
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ART AS COMMUNICABLE
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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.
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ART
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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.
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