Psychology: an elementary text-book

by Hermann Ebbinghaus

A work of art may cause a pleasant feeling by inciting any of a large number of mental activities. Beyond giving pleasure it has no purpose. Choice articles of food, new clothes, a profession yielding a good income, give us pleasure through their odor, their look, through the standing they give us in good society. But they please us also, and indeed chiefly, through their purposes: we need them for our existence. Because of their purposes they do not give us pure pleasure: they make us want better food, better clothes, a better position. A work of art, on the other hand, may in some way further our life; but he who enjoys it is not aware of such a furtherance. He sees no purpose in it. He experiences a bliss of heaven, not pleasures of the world. The purpose of art consists in its own unity; it does not draw us away from where we are. It gives us rest while it keeps us active. The pleasure resulting from this kind of activity is called esthetic pleasure.

Many are the origins of art. Religion is doubtless one of them. Primitive man conceived of some of the most important of his demons as having their seats in certain species of animals. The possession of these animals gives witchcraft. But it is difficult to carry them about, and killing them is of course out of the question. Primitive reasoning then accepted an image, a picture, as having about the same effectiveness. So man came to carve such pictures on his weapons to make them stronger, to carry them hung around his neck to protect him, to make idols of his gods which he could visibly reward or punish. The pleasure of seeing these images then gave them a value separate from their religious applications. Yet pictures of the virgin and of saints still continue to be used for the earlier purpose. When thus beginning to be separated from religion, art became again attached to it; for man, enjoying pictures, offered them as presents to his gods, so that they, too, might enjoy them. The subject of representation was naturally the gods themselves, the most sublime subject known to man.

Another origin of art is play. We said that play is that mass of instincts, common to man and animals, which brings about an exercise of the capacities necessary for preservation at a time when no special purposes demand such exercise. In this absence of a special purpose consists the ultimate relation of play and art. But play is not identical with art, because it is still too serious a matter. The boy who plays robber and police is not like an actor playing the rôle of a robber. He really is the robber so far as the advantages, the freedom, and the power of a robber are concerned; and he enjoys these advantages, while the actor does not even think of them. The actor, even while playing the rôle of a king, desires to play the king, not to be the king. Play, that is, the instinctive activity of play, is intermediate between art and life, a gateway to the former.

There are still further sources of art. After having been successful in his struggle, when he has some leisure, man observes that many things which he uses as weapons, as tools, for food, and so on, are capable of giving him pleasure quite aside from their practical significance. He therefore obtains these things for their own sake. He collects brilliantly colored feathers, glittering stones and pearls. The instinctive reactions upon pleasant experiences are discovered to be pleasant themselves. They are voluntarily repeated. Thus dance and song originate. In a similar manner, from the descriptions of ordinary life, tales takes their origin. Symmetry and rhythm are discovered and become of the greatest importance for the various arts. In spite of the manifoldness of its origin and its application, we may speak of art in the singular, because all the different arts have this in common, that they give joy without serving any conscious purpose.

In every art three factors may be distinguished on which the feeling aroused in us depends: the subject-matter or content, the form, and the personal significance. If the work of art is a picture, it may represent a battle or a landscape; if a poem, the wanderings of Ulysses or the story of the Erlking; if music, a waltz or a funeral march. This subject-matter is given a particular form or structure. The twelve disciples of the Last Supper may be placed in a simple row or arranged in groups of various kinds. A church may be built in Roman or Gothic style. Meter and rhyme differ in various poems. Music may be harmonized in many different ways. All this refers to the form of art. The third factor, the personal significance, may be illustrated by the different moods which speak to us from pictures of the same subject-matter and similar form, also by the technique chosen by the painter. The picture may appear to me as an assembly of Jewish fishermen or as an historical act in which the disciples of the Lord and he himself take part.

Much could be said about all this in detail. Some important insight into the relation of the different factors can be obtained from a discussion of the first one, the subject-matter. How does the artist succeed in giving us, through his subject-matter, pleasure independent of and free from any consciousness of purpose? Two ways are open to him. The first appears most clearly in music. It consists in using contents which play no part in the world of needs. Musical tones, sung or produced by instruments, do not contribute to the preservation of man; and therefore they do not incite our desire. However, when properly combined, they are capable of arousing the most varied and intense feelings, moods, emotions. They are thus especially adapted to serve as material, as contents, of a work of art.

The second way open to the artist consists in imitation. It prevails in painting and sculpture, and one may say also in poetry. The contents of these arts, that is, the subjects described, are indeed things which arouse our desires. But the desire is cut short through imitation. Not the real things, but only descriptions of them, are furnished us. Their affective value is not diminished thereby. It is true, the feelings depending on the consciousness of purpose are lost; but the rest of the feelings attain thus a purity and intensity all the greater. We scarcely enjoy meeting a robber on the highway; on the stage or in a novel we enjoy it the more. The real rug gives me feelings of a mixed kind when I think of its price and its durability; the painted rug gives me only pleasure. Since imitation is so conspicuous in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and poetry, it has been mistaken to be the aim of our artistic activity, whereas it is only a means to an end, to the production of pleasure free from desire. To understand this still more clearly, we must give attention to three aspects of the problem of imitation.

First, imitation must be as true to nature as possible. Feelings are to be aroused. These feelings are originally attached to the real things. It is clear, then, that they will be aroused the more readily, the more similar the work of art is made to reality. A disagreement with nature causes not merely a weakening of the pleasant feeling, but an unpleasant feeling, a protest against the artist’s intentionally disforming nature or against his incapacity.

Secondly, imitation must never become a perfect duplicate of the real thing, to be mistaken for it. There must be no deception of him who enjoys the work of art, for deception would result in unpleasant feelings. Therefore we separate a picture from its surroundings by a frame, place a statue on a pedestal, let a drama be played on a stage.

Thirdly, devotion to imitation must not lead the artist to neglect the other properties of the work which make it significant for our life of feeling. A work of art is always a compromise. Nature gives us not only what is significant, but also what is insignificant or even disgusting. The subject-matter must therefore be worked over; that which is of positive value must be emphasized, even exaggerated. Nature usually presents a confusing multitude of details. Mind, for its enjoyment, needs a unitary structure made up of a multitude of details. The artist therefore must, whenever this is necessary, reconstruct nature in order to insure unity of perception. Imitation must often be adapted to special circumstances. A lion among allegorical figures as a symbol of might cannot be represented as an exact imitation of the lion of the desert. The real lion is a dangerous beast, a big cat. The symbolical lion must agree with a certain traditional style. Nature is replete with the insignificant, the individual, the momentary; mind longs for the significant, the general, the eternal. The highest art is found where the artist has been able to reach a maximum of the total effect of all the simultaneous factors.