The Psychology of Beauty by Ethel D. Puffer (good non fiction books to read TXT) 📕

has, presumably, a merely physiological effect on the visual mechanism.

 

I believe, however, that the justification of this apparent heterogeneity, and the basis for explanation, is given in the reduction of all elements to their lowest term,—as objects for the expenditure of attention. A large object and an “interesting” object are “heavy” for the same reason, because they call out the attention. And expenditure of effort is expenditure of attention; thus, if an object on the outskirts of the field of vision requires a wide sweep of the eye to take it in, it demands the expenditure of attention, and so is felt as “heavy.” But what is “the expenditure of attention” in physiological terms? It is nothing more than the measure of the motor impulses directed to the object of attention. And whether the motor impulse appears as the tendency to follow out the suggestions of motion in the object, all reduces to the same physiological basis.

 

It may here be objected that our motor impulses are, nevertheless, still heterogeneous, inasmuch as some are toward the object of interest, and some along the line of movement. But it must be said, first, that these are not felt in the body, but transferred as values of weight to points in the picture,—it is the amount and not the direction of excitement that is counted; and secondly, that even if it were not so, the suggested movement along a line is felt as “weight” at a particular point.

 

From this point of view the justification of the metaphor of mechanical balance is quite clear. Given two lines, the most pleasing arrangement makes the larger nearer the centre, and the smaller far from it. This is balanced because the spontaneous impulse of attention to the near, large line equals in amount the involuntary expenditure to apprehend the small, farther one.

 

We may thus think of a space to be composed as a kind of target, in which certain spots or territories count more or less, both according to their distance from the centre and according to what fills them. Every element of a picture, in whatever way it gains power to excite motor impulses, is felt as expressing that power in the flat pattern. A noble vista is understood and enjoyed as a vista, but it is COUNTED in the motor equation, our “balance,”

as a spot of so much intrinsic value at such and such a distance from the centre. The skillful artist will fill his target in the way to give the maximum of motor impulses with the perfection of balance between them.

 

It is thus in a kind of substitutional symmetry, or balance, that we have the objective condition or counterpart of aesthetic repose, or unity. From this point of view it is clearly seen in what respect the unity of Hildebrand fails. He demands in the statue, especially, but also in the picture, the flat surface as a unity for the three dimensions. But it is only with the flat space, won, if you will, by Hildebrand’s method, that the problem begins. Every point in the third dimension counts, as has been said, in the flat. The Fernbild is the beginning of beauty, but within the Fernbild favorable stimulation and repose must still be sought. And repose or unity is given by symmetry, subjectively the balance of attention, inasmuch as this balance is a tension of antagonistic impulses, an equilibrium, and thus an inhibition of movement.

 

From this point of view, we are in a position to refute Souriau’s interesting analysis<1> of form as the condition for the appreciation of content. He says that form, in a picture for instance, has its value in its power to produce (through its fixation and concentration of the eye) a mild hypnosis, in which, as is well known, all suggestions come to us with bewildering vividness. This is, then, just the state in which the contents of the picture can most vividly impress themselves. Form, then, as the means to content, by giving the conditions for suggestion, is Sourieau’s account of it. In so far as form—in the sense of unity—gives, through balance and equilibrium of impulses, the arrest of the personality, it may indeed be compared with hypnotism. But this arrest is not only a means, but an end in itself; that aesthetic repose, which, as the unity of the personality, is an essential element of the aesthetic emotion as we have described it.

 

<1> La Suggestion en l’Art.

VI

There is no point of light or color, no contour, no line, no depth, that does not contribute to the infinite complex which gives the maximum of experience with the minimum of effort and which we call beauty of form. But yet there is another way of viewing the beautiful object, on which we touched in the introduction to this chapter. So far, what we see is only another name for HOW we see; and the way of seeing has proved to contain enough to bring to stimulation and repose the psychophysical mechanism. But now we must ask, what relation has meaning to beauty? Is it an element, coordinate with others, or something superposed? or is it an end in itself, the supreme end? What relation to the beauty of form has that quality of their works by virtue of which Rembrandt is called a dreamer, and Rodin a poet in stone? What do we mean when we speak of Sargent as a psychologist? Is it a virtue to be a poet in stone? If it is, we must somehow include in our concept of Beauty the element of expression, by showing how it serves the infinite complex. Or is it not an aesthetic virtue, and Rodin is great artist and poet combined, and not great artist because poet, as some would say? What is the relation of the objective content to beauty of form? In short, what place has the idea in Beauty?

 

In the preceding the place of separate objects which have only an ideal importance has been made clear. The gold-embroidered gauntlet in a picture counts as a patch of light, a trend of line, in a certain spot; but it counts more there, because it is of interest for itself, and by thus counting more, the idea has entered into the spatial balance,—the idea has become itself form. Now it is the question whether all “idea,” which seems so heterogeneous in its relation to form, does not undergo this transmutation. It is at least of interest to see whether the facts can be so interpreted.

 

We have spoken of ideas a parts of an aesthetic whole. What of the idea of the whole? Corot used to say he painted a dream, and it is the dream of an autumn morning we see in his pictures.

Millet portrays the sad majesty and sweetness of the life near the soil. How must we relate these facts to the views already won?

 

It has often been said that the view which makes the element of form for the eye alone, in the strictest sense, is erroneous, because there is no form for the eye alone. The very process of apprehending a line involves not only motor memories and impulses, but numberless ideal associations, and these associations constitute the line as truly as do the others. The impression of the line involves expression, a meaning which we cannot escape. The forms of things constitute a kind of dialect of life,—and thus it is that the theory of Einfuhlung in its deepest sense is grounded. The Doric column causes in us, no doubt, motor impulses, but it means, and must mean, to us, the expression of internal energy through those very impulses it causes. “We ourselves are contracting our muscles, but we feel as if the lines were pulling and piercing, bending and lifting, pressing down and pushing up; in short, as soon as the visual impression is really isolated, and all other ideas really excluded, then the motor impulses do not awake actions which are taken as actions of ourselves, but feelings of energy which are taken as energies of the visual forms and lines.”<1> So the idea belonging to the object, and the psychophysical effect of the object are only obverse and inverse of the same phenomenon.

And our pleasure in the form of the column is rather our appreciation of energy than our feeling of favorable stimulation.

Admitting this reasoning, the meaning of a picture would be the same as its beauty, it is said. The heroic art of J.-F. Millet, for example, would be beautiful because it is the perfect expression of the simplicity and suffering of labor.

 

<1> H. Munsterberg, The Principles of Art Education, p. 87.

 

Let us examine this apparently reasonable theory. It is true that every visual element is understood as expression too. It is not true, however, that expression and impression are parallel and mutually corresponding beyond the elements. Suppose a concourse of columns covered by a roof,—the Parthenon. Those psychophysical changes induced by the sight now mutually check and modify each other. Can we say that there is a “meaning,”

like the energy of the column, corresponding to that complex?

It is at least not energy itself. Ask the same as regards the lines and masses of a picture by Corot. In the sense in which we have taken “meaning,” the only psychologically possible one, our reactions could be interpreted only by some mood. If the column means energy because it makes us tower, then the picture must mean what it makes us do. That is, a combination of feathery fronds and horizontal lines of water, bathed in a gray-green silvery mist, can “mean” only a repose lightened by a grave yet cheerful spirit. In short, this theory of expressiveness cannot go beyond the mood or moral quality. In the sense of INFORMATION, the theory of Einfuhlung contributes nothing. Now, in this limited sense, we have indeed no reason to contradict it, but simply to point out that it holds only in this extremely limited sense. When we see broad sweeping lines we interpret them by sympathetic reproduction as strength, energy. When those sweeping lines are made part of a Titan’s frame, we get the same effect plus the associations which belong to distinctively muscular energy. Those same lines might define the sweep of a drapery, or the curve of an infant’s limbs. Now all that part of the meaning which belongs to the lines themselves remains constant under whatever circumstances; and it is quite true that a certain feeling-tone, a certain moral quality, as it were, belongs, say, to Raphael’s pictures, in which this kind of outline is to be found. But as belonging to a Titan, the additional elements of understanding are not due to sympathetic reproduction. They are not parallel with the motor suggestions; they are simply an associational addition, due to our information about the power of men with muscles like that. That there are secondary motor elements as a reverberation of these ideal elements need not be denied. But they are not directly due to the form. Now such part of our response to a picture as is directly induced by the form, we have a right to include in the aesthetic experience. It will, however, in every work of art of even the least complexity, be expressible only as a mood, very indefinite, often indescribable. To make this “meaning,” then, the essential aim of a picture seems unreasonable.

 

It is evident that in experience we do not, as a matter of fact, separate the mood which is due to sympathy from the ideal content of the picture. Corot paint a summer dawn.

We cannot separate our pleasure in the sight from our pleasure in the understanding; yet it is the visual complex that gives us the mood, and the