I don't know. Beauty is subjective. Two people might look at the same thing and be moved in entirely different ways--I think that happens all the time. If the author is expressing emotion through the art, then perhaps there's more of an overlap between what the artist and viewer feel, but if the point of mimesis is to faithfully reproduce the subject I think the reactions would be nearly as varied as the reactions people would have to the subject itself.
There's definitely some truth to that. I've noticed in recent decades extremely diverse people can have things to talk about because they're all familiar with some of the same things, like movies or music. Let's say I'm at an airport and there's a group of Asian people who hardly speak any English, but one of them is wearing a Terminator t shirt. I can say "I'll be back!" and they'll understand exactly what I mean. Assuming they understand my words. They might all smile and laugh and say "Yes, yes—I'll be back! Arnold!" That might be the extent of the conversation, but if not for the movie, we would probably have had nothing in common to interact about.
I don't agree. Even if I did, I don't think the emotion expressed from the artist and viewer necessarily have to be the same.
But you would all be able to appreciate the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa! I'm pretty sure I have read comments by you about the universal human condition... am I recalling incorrectly?
But humans have the same emotions. We all feel amusement, anger, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, relief, sadness, satisfaction, surprise.... A work of art infects the viewer with emotion.
We have the same emotions, but we don't feel the same emotions with respect to the same things. I may see beauty where someone else experiences revulsion. If the artist and viewer are not experiencing the same thing, I'd argue there's no real 'connection' between the two of them.
Agree. Not all art connects with everyone. But if it has the potential to connect with one, it is art. Imagine a writer writes a book filled with emotion. It gets deep inside the characters and their emotional journeys are there, on the pages. But no-one ever reads it. Is it still art?
But it isn't just a simple matter of the same emotions. We experience them in subtle combinations. Reading a novel or watching a movie (time-based art) would produce something like a symphony of various emotions. It might well produce largely the same emotions in different people. But some people for instance don't really experience empathy or feel anything for others, and we all have different capacities and tolerances for various emotions. I've been in a movie theater where at some of the most touching moments some people laugh out loud. Or for instance an emotion might be expressed a little too strongly, and for more sensitive people it comes across as melodrama, while for less sensitive people it might feel powerful and subtle. There's no way two people experience works of art identically. For that to be possible, we'd all have to be identical, and fortunately we're not. Now if all you mean is that the same basic emotions are felt by a large number of people, then sure. But not at all in the same mix, with the same intensities, or in the same proportions. Just look at movie reviews for the same movie by different reviewers. You'll quickly realize people don't see or expeirence the same thing when looking at the same piece of art. In fact this is the 'Rashomon' effect. It's a movie by Akira Kurosawa about a rape and murder. There's a trial afterwards, and each witness saw things very differently. It's also the five blind men who felt different parts of the elephant and each thought it was something totally different. We react to different parts of a painting or a movie. Some people might get caught up in a red splotch in one corner of a painting and see it representing anger, while someone else doesn't even notice that, but is fascinated by the delicate rendering of the trees. While someone else hates that kind of tree because their son fell out of one and broke his pelvis. People are not simple, identical input devices that process everything in exactly the same way. I absolutely loved Alien. I tried talking about it to an online friend, and lo and behold, he has epilepsy and the flashing red light scene made him suffer a seizure. He hates the movie.
If this is the kind of corner you’re backing yourself into using Tolstoy’s definition, it might be better to discard it. Wouldn’t this also mean that a thing could exist as art only intermittently—as long as someone is emotionally connected with it, it’s art, but not when no one’s thinking about it? That seems a bit arbitrary. Ultimately I don’t think that arguing about the definition of art does anybody the least bit of good—the big problem is when people are hypocrites and pretend to like things that they don’t actually like just because it’s fashionable. That just rips the entrails out of the whole idea of art as a really vital or important endeavor. You’re supposed to like it. Some of the teachers at a fundamentalist protestant school that some of my cousins went to got themselves down this ridiculous rabbit hole of definition, and actually hosted a debate once about whether Thomas Kincaide’s paintings constitute art. One of them genuinely believed that it didn’t, for some reason. I think what they were really arguing about is whether it’s good art, and that’s something you can have a discussion about. I don’t care what art “is”—really, it’s whatever people want it to be. The question is whether it’s good or not. What other discussion really matters? You can’t say what the hell art really is in a way that’s not at least quite vague.
I understand all this. Agreed. Not all art will affect all people in the same manner. But if it affects no-one, it is not art.
Is the perception of beauty synonymous with emotion? I think that’s a gross conflation of two different things. I think pure emotion is an insufficient (even unintentionally cynical) way of describing one’s encounter with the transcendent, and if art were really primarily about connecting in some way with the artist I wouldn’t care about it at all. Screw the artist, man. I don’t care about that guy. Godard was a total asshole by many accounts—I don’t want to connect with him when watching his movies.
In Tolstoy's time, I might've disliked the term"sincere" as much as I currently dislike the term "authentic."
Listen, "connection" is an extremely vague abstraction when you use it this way. Obviously I am "connecting" with Godard by virtue of the fact that I'm watching a movie he made--but you could say that I'm already "connected" with Godard all the time by virtue of our common humanity. That's as far as I'll go with this: Godard and I are both human beings, which is why I'm able to enjoy his art in the first place. But whatever "connection" really occurs with the departed soul of Godard (or whatever?) when I watch his movies is trivial. Art isn't really biography on a fundamental level. There's no enduring spiritual link between an artist and his creation that carries over to the audience. I really don't think there is.
It’s an interesting topic of discussion. I rarely see anyone make practical use of a definition of “art” for other than gatekeeping, however.
Listen? Lol, okay I'm listening! Just like you listened to Godard. He spoke to you through his movies and you listened. It was communication. I sure never said anything about "connections with departed souls" or "enduring spiritual links." I don't know where you got that from. And I don't know what biography has to do with any of this.
Does an artist have their audience in mind when creating a piece of art? As a writer, do you have your audience in mind when you create?
When I look at some paintings I don't really get emotions out of them, but what I do get is some really amazing choices in design and color and rhythm and contrast etc—the elements of design. And in all forms of art I get ideas as well as emotions. Some extremely deep and subtle thoughts about how people sometimes interact, or about certain places and times, or various other things. There's a blatant surface level where just about anybody will get the same thing from a work of art (the Mona Lisa is a smiling woman, enigmatic, beautiful, from the Renaissance era—those hands are amazing). But the real artistry of it is at a much deeper level, where we couldn't even begin to discuss what's happening, or even to articulate it coherently. This is exactly why people make art. I'm sure there are many other reasons, but as I said earlier, one reason is because you have something to express that can't be done in explanatory words. When someone gets really good at an art form, they can express things unconsciously, things they're not remotely aware of on the surface, or only vaguely aware of. And some of us can pick that stuff up too, vaguely, though not so the conscious mind in all its shallowness could notice.
