Notes on Interpreting Art II

Expression Theory: Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist (1828-1910), advocated this view in his famous essay, “What is Art?”. Tolstoy believed an artist’s chief job is to express and communicate emotions to an audience: 

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced and having evoked it in oneself then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so transmit this feeling that others experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art…”

Freud on sex and sublimation

Freud believed art expresses unconscious feelings—ones the artist might not even admit to having. Freud described certain biologically based desires—both conscious and unconscious—that allegedly develop in all humans along predictable paths.

“The artist urged on by instinctual needs…; he longs to attain to honour; power, riches, fame, and love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away form reality and transfers all his interest, and all his libido, on to the creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from which the way might readily lead to neurosis.”

“The artist urged on by instinctual needs…; he longs to attain to honour; power, riches, fame, and love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away form reality and transfers all his interest, and all his libido, on to the creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from which the way might readily lead to neurosis.”

An illustration of Foucalt’s views comes in the opening chapter of his 1966 book, Les Mots et Les Choses (The Order of Things), where he discussed the very famous painting of Velázquez. (Las Meninas). Foucalt interpreted the work not in terms of what was by its artist, but as exemplifying the view of its time period. Foucalt labeled this sort of cultural viewpoint an ‘episteme’.

Freeland, Cynthia. Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction.Oxford U Press: New York, 2001.

Click link for an interesting blog entry on the artwork.