Theories of Beauty
1. Beauty and Emotion
Making reference to the work of art from our artbook or discussed in our text that gives rise to the greatest emotional response in you, define the term ‘aesthetic emotion’.
According to Leo Tolstoy, art serves “to evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced and having evoked it in oneself then by means of movement, lines, colours, sounds or forms expressed in words, so to transmit this feeling that others experience the same feeling – this is the activity of art” (Class Notes 1. Theories of Beauty/Power Point, O’Brien, Dec. 8, 2016, Humber College). Emotion, therefore, appears as central expressional part of art. Since art is a human activity that recreates reality be means of external signs, feelings appear as its powerful expressional engine. Pieces of art initially refer to an artist’s feelings and, therefore, make other people live them through. Being inflicted with those feelings, recipients can experience them as well (Class Notes 3/ Power Point, O’Brien, Dec. 8, 2016, Humber College). According to Leo Tolstoy, there is an important condition that provides sincerity between an artist and his audience, which is a genuine emotion. It is essential that as soon as the spectator realizes that the artist “does not himself feel what he wishes to express – but is doing it for him the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any infection but actually repel it” (Class Notes 3). According to the theorist, genuine emotion is the most important criterion for distinguishing genuine art from counterfeit. It is important that “the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. . . If the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced it” (Class Notes 3/ Power Point, O’Brien, Dec. 8, 2016, Humber College). In addition, infection and expression are understood as two major factors of building art, but Tolstoy explains that “there is no infection if the spectator is caused merely to think of or to imagine the feeling” (Class Notes 3/ Power Point, O’Brien, Dec. 8, 2016, Humber College). Which is why these two modes should be bridged together. Applied to Tolstoy’s theory, a study of Mark Rothko, an American painter of a Russian descent (https://www.moma.org/artists/5047) , reveals a similar understanding of art. Thus, he comments on the importance of genuine emotion that is the key success to spectator’s revelation. For instance, he claims “I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between colour and form. The only thing I care about is the expression of man’s basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy and destiny” (Class Notes 3/ Power Point, O’Brien, Dec. 8, 2016, Humber College). The painter insisted on the prevalence of a painter’s worldview over the perception of a spectator claiming that “it is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way – …
