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preserve and extend access to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
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ART AS EXPRESSION AND SURFACE
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88 HENRY DAVID AIKEN
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ART AS EXPRESSION AND SURFACE 89
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90 HENRY DAVID AIKEN
III
Since the power of music rests largely in the sounds themselves as they appear
to the auditory sense and imagination, it is music, more than the other arts,
which renders initially plausible the conception of aesthetic experience as mere
sensuous 'surface' or 'appearance.' At first glance, it may seem possible to
4There are, of course, other senses of the term 'expression,' as used in modern aesthetic
theory, which are not definable solely in terms of emotional excitation. Although this
latter use of the term is, I think, primary, particularly as employed in musical and literary
criticism, there are other uses of 'expression' which it is of capital importance to distinguis
clearly from this primary use. Perhaps the most important of these is the sense in which,
for example, one sometimes speaks of a certain face as 'expressive.' Here the 'expressive
object is simply understood as the visible or audible sign of emotion.
Recognition of the signs of emotion in an object of art is one thing, however, and it
capacity to evoke emotion in the observer is quite another. There is nothing, however, i
the concept of 'expression' in the former sense which qualifies it to be regarded as intrinsi
cally aesthetic. There are manyworks of art which in noway signify or represent emotiona
states, while, on the other hand, some objects of art which are very expressive in this sense
remain uninteresting.
Once the distinction between these two senses of 'expression' is noted, it becomes ap-
parent that there is no need to search for some recondite symbolic power in works of art to
account for their emotional effect. Nor is there any reason to be mystified because works
which are very expressive in our second sense sometimes leave us cold. Music, for example,
is perhaps the most expressive or moving of all the arts in its capacity to capture instan-
taneously a mood and to transport us immediately into a world of precise but immaterial
feeling. Yet music has not proved an effective medium, on the whole, for representing or
symbolizing feelings.
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ART AS EXPRESSION AND SURFACE 91
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92 HENRY DAVID AIKEN
present 'object' of feeling in the sense mentioned earlier in this paper. Prall
seems to mean both (a) and (b), and sometimes (c) as well.7 But if so, it may
be replied that one may be conscious of the 'object' of one's feeling, that is, of
that which arouses it, without at the same time being immediately aware of the
feeling itself as a distinct qualia. The perception of emotion is a different
perception from the perception which arouses or 'embodies' it; and one may be,
and often is, so absorbed in the object itself that, although one may be very
moved, one may not know this until afterward. I would say of emotion what
Professor Perry says of interest, namely, that while it "cannot exist without
cognition, it can and does exist without cognition of itself."8
Unquestionably, then, the concept of 'surface' is insufficient as a defining
attribute of the aesthetic field. Aesthetic experience, both cognitively and
emotionally, continually overflows the limits of perceptual surface. The reason
for this, as in the case of 'expression,' is simply that our interest in the aesthetic
object itself goes beyond its immediately presented surface or aspect.
'V9
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ART AS EXPRESSION AND SURFACE 93
11 The disinterestedness which Kant and others have regarded as the hallmark of the
aesthetic attitude is different from that which characterizes the moral attitude. The moral
attitude is disinterested in the sense of 'impartial,' while the aesthetic attitude is disin-
terested in the sense of being directed to the object itself rather than to its ulterior purposes.
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94 HENRY DAVID AIKEN
Before concluding, I should like to call attention to the light which the present
theory sheds upon the relation of aesthetic experience to morals and the good
life. Conceived in terms of interest which is perpetually renewed and sustained
by the satisfaction which it provides, aesthetic experience may be seen as a kind
of microcosm of well-being itself. It thus provides an instance of what the moral
consciousness envisages as its own goal or end. The experience of great art is
a kind of foretaste of what life itself ideally might be, in which desire is con-
tinually renewed and satisfied in experience itself, and in which no longing is
unrequited, and no act is submitted to merely for the sake of some ulterior thing.
There is also present in the higher forms of aesthetic experience an aspect of
dedication and devotion similar to that which characterizes the moral, with
this difference: the aesthetic attitude is motivated not by a mere effort of will
or the promise of some ulterior happiness, but, rather, arises naturally and
gratefully from a consciousness of happiness already possessed.
At the same time we must not confuse the quite legitimate moral significance
of aesthetic experience described above with the 'art for art's sake' aestheticism
of writers who, like Pater, would make out of the arts themselves a regimen for
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ART AS EXPRESSION AND SURFACE 95
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