Section 1 The Position and Function of Emotion in Art
First, what is emotion.
Emotion is a subjective reflection of whether objective things meet their own needs and purposes. Its connotation is:
First, emotion is the form of people's reflection on objective things, the root of emotion, and the reflection of emotion on objective things.
"Learning can be done" but "born for no reason"
Second, emotion is the form of people's reaction to whether objective things meet their own needs and purposes.
Perceptual reflection is different from scientific reflection;
Scientific reflection is a reflection of the nature and laws of objective things. If this is a panda, it is big Wolf.
The reflection of emotions is a response to the relationship between objective things and subjects. When objective things meet the needs and purposes of the subject, they produce the feeling of love, and vice versa. For example, cute pandas and hateful gray wolves.
Third, emotion is a subjective reflection of objective things.
Because different people have different needs and purposes, and the same person has different needs and purposes at different times, they can have different feelings about the same thing.
Fourth, because people's needs and purposes have different levels, there are also high and low emotions.
The psychological experience that only meets the physiological needs and purposes of the subject is called emotion, which is a low-level emotion. The psychological experience that can meet the needs and purposes of the subject society is a kind of advanced emotion.
Second, the position of emotion in art.
(1) Emotion is one of the essential features that all arts must possess, and it is indispensable.
Art is a reflection of social life, but any reflection of social life can't be absolutely objective and neutral. People reflect social life with emotions of joy and sadness, hope and despair, love and disgust.
A work of art is often loved or disliked because of its theme, but this view is not entirely correct. The fundamental reason for liking or hating a work of art is the emotion conveyed through the theme. Such as Rubens' Portrait of the Painter's Son and Diu Lei's Portrait of the Painter's Mother.
(2) Emotion is one of the boundaries between artistic image and non-artistic image.
Illustrations in animal and plant textbooks are purely objective imitations without feelings, so they are non-artistic images, such as Picasso's illustration of Buffon's natural history "Hens and Chickens"; The images of animals and plants in works of art contain human emotions, so they are artistic images, such as Picasso's Little Rooster.
Although the words written by ordinary people are images, if they are only symbols of thought and language, they can only be non-artistic images without emotion. The essential difference between it and characters in calligraphy art is that the latter expresses people's feelings.
Zong Baihua said: "People will smile when they are happy and make sad sounds when they are sad. This inner feeling can also be expressed in China's calligraphy, just like in poetry and music. "
The ancients said: "The book, the trace of the heart is also." He also said: "The heart is not right, and the word of the chair is oblique; If the ambition is not harmonious, the book will be overwhelmed. "
Chen Yi, a calligrapher in the Ming Dynasty, once said in The Essentials of Hanlin Reform: "There are differences between joys and sorrows. Happiness is harmonious and appropriate, anger is rough and dangerous, sadness is depressed and condensed, and happiness is flat and beautiful. Emotions are important and words are shallow and changeable. "
Third, the role of emotion in art.
(1) Emotional deformation in artistic image creation.
Under the influence of emotion, any artistic image will be deformed according to the purpose, or increased or decreased, or exaggerated and strengthened, or deleted and weakened. For example, Picasso's Little Rooster.
What is the effect of transsexualism when artists create artistic images?
First of all, emotion allows artists to observe deformed objects. Gombrich said: "There are no impartial eyes in the world."
Secondly, emotion makes the artistic image inevitably change the image of objective things.
For example, Su Shi painted bamboo regardless of bamboo knots, saying, "Since bamboo is born, why not live one by one?" Shi Tao said, "There is nothing in the world that cannot be abolished." Because Su Shi wants to express an open-minded and detached feeling, Shi Tao expresses an unyielding ambition. Once the feeling of interest changes, the artistic image created will also change. Shi Tao later met Kangxi twice and called him a "real master". He never painted bamboo again and said, "Nothing in the world can be abandoned like bamboo."
(2) The dynamic role of emotion in creating artistic images.
Emotion is the direct driving force of artistic creation, and all art is the expression of emotion. Artists always convey their feelings to others. Without emotion, there is no emotional communication, and there is no art.
Tolstoy said: "Art originated from the fact that in order to convey the feelings one has experienced to others, he reawakened these feelings in his heart and expressed them with some external signs." He also said: "Arouse the feelings I have experienced in my own heart. After arousing this emotion, I use words to convey this feeling with actions, lines, colors, sounds and images, so that others can feel the same feeling-this is an artistic activity. Art is a kind of human activity: a person consciously uses some external symbols to convey his feelings to others, and others are infected and experienced by these feelings. "
Guo said in Lin Gao Quan Zhi: "What is the purpose of a gentleman loving his husband's landscape?" Yuan Qiu nourishes elements, which are always there; Chunshi is proud, it will always be happy; Fishing firewood is secluded and often suitable. "
Emotional motivation as artistic creation can be divided into two categories:
"Lack of sexual motivation" is a feeling caused by some kind of deficiency in life on the basis of the imbalance between subject and object. What the subject needs is what the object lacks.
Subject needs peace, love, happiness, value, knowledge, achievement, understanding and prosperity, and objective life is the opposite of subject life. Han Yu said: "Everything is unfair, and people's words are also. If you have to, his songs are thoughtful, and his crying is pregnant. All the voices of the export department are fair! "
Such as Lu You's Hairpin Phoenix and Scar Literature. Engels said, "Anger makes a poet."
"Abundance motivation" is an emotion based on the balance between subject and object. What the subject needs, the object will have.
The subject needs peace, love, happiness, value, knowledge, achievement and understanding, and the object also has these things to arouse people's joy, optimism, self-esteem and self-confidence.
Such as Meng Jiao's After Graduation and elizabeth barrett browning's Sonnets. Lu Xun said: "Creation is always rooted in love."
(3) The touching role of emotion in art.
An essential difference between art and philosophy and social science is that philosophy and social science express rationality, so it convinces people with rationality; Art expresses emotion, so it affects people.
Section 2 The Essence of Artistic Emotion
First, artistic emotion is the emotion of pursuing freedom.
From a social point of view, human emotions can be classified into two categories:
The emotion of pursuing freedom: it includes not only the emotion of conquering and transforming nature and getting freedom from the oppression of nature, but also the emotion of opposing exploitation and tyranny and getting freedom from social oppression.
The emotions that stifle freedom include the joy of destroying nature and environment to gain huge profits, and more importantly, the emotions that enslave and oppress others in the social field to obtain satisfaction.
There is indeed an emotion that stifles freedom in works of art, but it is not "singing bad", but exposing, criticizing and denying this emotion, that is, indirectly affirming the emotion of pursuing freedom from the opposite side.
In a word, the emotion of artistic expression is the emotion of pursuing freedom, not the emotion of killing freedom. Pursuing freedom is the fundamental nature of artistic emotion, and other characteristics of artistic emotion are derived from it.
Second, artistic emotion is a personal emotion containing social and historical content.
Whose feelings are the works of art expressing? There is a lot of controversy abroad.
The first view is that art is the expression of personal feelings, and art is the expression of artists' inner feelings. Artists can only create touching works of art if they gather their emotions and finally burst out through the brush.
Schoenberg said: "Only when a work of art conveys the emotional agitation in the author's heart to the audience can it produce the greatest effect and arouse the emotional agitation in the audience." Expressing emotions is essentially expressing yourself. He added: "In fact, there is only one biggest goal that artists strive to pursue, and that is to express themselves."
The second view holds that artistic emotion is not an artist's personal emotion, and artistic expression is not self-expression.
Susan Langer said: "Pure self-expression does not need art form." "A crying child releases much more emotion than a musician's personal emotion, but when people step into a concert hall, they don't expect to hear a sound similar to a child's wailing."
Indeed, artistic feelings cannot be attributed to personal feelings for two reasons:
First, the emotions expressed in art are not all personal feelings.
For example, Shakespeare shows the feelings of kings, princes, slaves, soldiers, girls, conspirators and other characters. Did Shakespeare have so many complicated feelings at the same time?
Second, personal feelings are not necessarily artistic expressions.
Susan Langer said that artistic emotion is not an artist's personal emotion, but a universal emotion of human society; It is an abstract thing divorced from everyone's emotion, or a concept about emotion.
The problem is that abstract things that are divorced from everyone's specific emotions are called human emotions or emotional concepts, just like fruits that are divorced from such abstract things as apples and pears, they do not exist at all. How do you express art?
The emotion expressed by art is an emotion containing social and historical content. For example, children crying for sugar are purely personal feelings and cannot be expressed as art; The child's mother was killed by fascism and cried, which is an emotion with social and historical content and can be expressed as art.
This kind of emotion is not completely detached from the abstraction of personal emotion, but is linked with personal emotion, more precisely, it is a part of personal emotion. As Li Yu said.
In a word, artistic emotion is not only an emotion with profound social and historical content, but also an individual-specific emotion. In other words, artistic emotion is an individual emotion with social and historical content.
Third, artistic emotion is the emotion that people experience again.
When revealing the essence of art, Tolstoy said, "It is an artistic activity to arouse the feelings that you have experienced in your heart, and after arousing this feeling, convey this feeling with actions, lines, colors, sounds and images expressed in words, so that others can experience the same feelings."
Art can only express the feelings that have been experienced, but not the feelings that have been experienced immediately or instantly.
Reason:
First, understanding feelings is a process.
Emotion is both the motive force and the object of art, and artists can't understand the moment when emotion comes into being.
Second, people can only understand emotions with calm reason, but not with excited emotions.
Understand emotions and don't indulge in them. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "I don't think it is appropriate to write poetry when the feelings are strong, otherwise the sharpness will be too exposed and the beauty of poetry will be stifled."
The time process from personal feelings in life to re-experiencing artistic feelings is not only a process of detecting and understanding feelings, but also a process of refining and concentrating feelings. There is no art without personal feelings, and there is no art without personal feelings.
Eliot said: "The poet's task is not to discover new emotions, but to use ordinary emotions, and when this emotion is injected into poetry, it expresses that completely unrealistic emotion. ..... This is the concentration of a lot of experience, and these experiences are not experiences at all for real people, but new things produced in the process of concentration. "
The qualitative difference between personal emotion in life and re-experienced emotion in art;
First, the personal feelings in life are rough, simple and dull, while the feelings experienced again are refined and concentrated.
Second, personal emotions in life have "trivial personal desires" (Engels). The so-called "avoiding emotions" is not the avoidance of all emotions, but the avoidance of such emotions. The emotion experienced again is an emotion with profound social and historical content, and it is an emotion that is free from "trivial personal desires". This kind of emotion is neither a copy of personal feelings nor an abandonment of personal feelings, but a concentration of personal feelings.
Fourth, artistic emotion is the only emotion that is integrated with thought.
Tolstoy said: "People use language to convey ideas to each other, and people use art to convey feelings to each other."
Plekhanov thinks there are two mistakes:
First of all, language not only expresses thoughts, but also expresses emotions. For example, poetry uses language as a tool.
Second, art not only expresses emotions, but also expresses ideas. "Not abstract, but vivid image. This is the most important feature of art. "
The relationship between thought and emotion in art is: integration.
Thought is like salt, emotion is like water. When salt is dissolved in water, you can taste it, but the pure salt has disappeared.
The reason is:
First, cognition and emotion are inseparable.
Thought comes from the understanding of the objective world. When people understand the nature and laws of objective things (that is, thoughts), they will inevitably feel the relationship between objective things and subjects (that is, emotions).
Lenin said: "Without' human feelings', there will never be anyone's pursuit of truth."
Second, thoughts dominate and restrict emotions.
In the huge system of social consciousness, thoughts are high-level and high-level social consciousness, and emotions are low-level and low-level social consciousness. Thoughts guide emotions, dominate and restrict the nature and direction of emotions; Emotion contains thoughts. Only in this way can we produce emotions containing social and historical contents and become emotions of artistic expression.
Naked thoughts divorced from emotion, such as Pythagoras theorem, cannot be expressed as art; Naked emotions divorced from thoughts, such as the crying of babies, cannot be expressed as art.
Different arts have different ways to integrate thoughts and emotions. In romanticism and western modernist art, emotion overwhelms thought; In realistic works, thoughts overwhelm emotions.
Fifth, artistic emotion is a kind of aesthetic emotion with super utility.
Satisfying the practical value of eating, drinking, housing and transportation is called utilitarianism. The emotions generated by the satisfaction of food, clothing, housing and transportation are called utilitarian emotions. Emotions that do not meet the actual needs of eating, drinking, housing and transportation are called super-utilitarian aesthetic emotions.
Superutilitarian aesthetic emotion is not unrelated to utilitarianism;
First, from the historical process, "looking at things from a utilitarian perspective precedes looking at things from an aesthetic perspective."
Second, from the social point of view, non-utilitarian emotions are based on utilitarianism.
The object that arouses aesthetic emotion must be something useful to people, not something harmful. We will have a sense of beauty in the face of harmonious and symmetrical patterns, because it is beneficial; But the cobra with the same pattern will not have aesthetic feeling because it is harmful.
Sixth, artistic emotion is an unspeakable emotion.
The fundamental reason why artistic realm can't be expressed is that artistic emotion can't be expressed.
As for the reasons why artistic emotion cannot be expressed, Susan Langer said, "What is to be expressed is not lofty, sacred or mysterious ideas, but the logical incompatibility between the existing form of emotion and the form of reasoning language, which makes it impossible for any accurate emotion and emotional concept to be expressed in the logical form of written language."
In other words, the root cause lies in the "non-correspondence" between emotion and language, which is manifested in:
First, the emotion to be expressed by art is the specific situation of emotion rather than the concept of emotion; Language can only express the concept of emotion, but not the specific situation of emotion.
The emotion to be expressed by the second art is the individual and special emotion produced in a specific situation, rather than the generality and general characteristics of emotion; Language can express the same and general characteristics of emotions, but it cannot express individual and special emotions.
Thirdly, the language describing emotion is poor, rough and simple, while the actual situation of emotion is concrete, rich, delicate and complex. In terms of quantity, there are different levels of emotions. In terms of quality, different kinds of emotions cross and penetrate each other. Language can only express the strongest and most prominent part of emotion.
China talked about "emotion, sorrow, fear, love and evil desire" and "seven emotions" in ancient times. Feng Te, the founder of modern structuralist psychology, put forward the "three-dimensional theory of emotions", which holds that the basic nature of emotions has only three aspects: pleasure and unhappiness, concentration and quietness, tension and relaxation.
Poetry is an emotional art as well as a language art, but it does not describe "any kind of accurate emotion", but compares emotion with other things, arouses readers' association and imagination, and makes the receiver realize the emotion that the poet wants to express. The language in poetry, like any artistic language, shows an emotional realm that can only be understood but not expressed. If the receiver is not good at association and imagination, he will know nothing about the emotion to be expressed. The genius of the poet lies not in the accurate description of emotion, but in arousing the association and imagination of the receiver.
Section 3 Artistic Expression of Emotion
First, emotional expression.
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of emotional expression: natural emotional expression and artistic emotional expression. There is a difference between the two in principle.
The natural expression of emotion includes: venting emotion, arousing emotion and describing emotion.
The artistic expression of emotion is not emotional venting.
Emotional venting is a natural expression of anxiety.
The similarity between the two is that they are both external manifestations of inner feelings.
Their essential difference lies in:
[If! Support list] First,? [endif] vent your emotions only for yourself, not for others; Expressing emotions is a means of communication between people, using their own emotions to influence others.
[If! Support list] Second,? [endif] Venting emotions are generated with the inner feelings and disappear with the disappearance of inner feelings; However, expressing emotion is the discovery, creation, arrangement, organization, exploration and processing of emotion until it condenses in works of art.
[If! Support list] Third,? [endif] Venting emotions is like a rainstorm, and there is no place for reason and thought; But expressing emotion melts reason and thought into emotion.
The artistic expression of emotion is not to arouse emotion.
Arousing emotions means arousing and accepting the emotions you once had.
The similarity between the two is that they both have a clear purpose.
The essential difference between the two is that expressing emotion is the emotion that the performer once had, while arousing emotion is not necessarily the emotion that the evocator once had.
Collingwood said: "A person who evokes emotions is not necessarily moved by himself in the way of moving the audience;" He has a completely different relationship with the audience and actions, just as doctors and patients have a completely different relationship with drugs, one is to prescribe drugs and the other is to take drugs. On the contrary, a person who expresses his feelings treats himself and the audience alike. He clearly expressed his feelings to the audience, which is exactly what he did to himself. "
The artistic expression of emotion is not to describe emotion.
Describing emotions is a statement of one's own emotions.
The similarity between the two is that they are both the transmission of inner feelings.
Their essential difference lies in:
[If! Support list] First,? [endif] The concept of * * * is used to describe emotions. Collingwood said that its fundamental feature is that "description is a conceptual activity", and emotions are expressed by the image of personality.
[If! Support list] Second,? [endif] Describing emotion is the direct expression of emotion, and expressing emotion is to transform emotion into image and express image as image. For example, use "sentimental since ancient times, more comparable, snubbing Tomb-Sweeping Day." Where did you wake up tonight? Yang Liuan Xiaofeng is dying, which means "I want to die!"
To sum up, the essential difference between artistic expression and natural expression of emotion lies in
First, the means of emotional artistic expression is imagery, which is the main feature of artistic expression.
[If! Support list] Second,? [endif] Emotions expressed in art are delicate, rich and complex, while those expressed naturally are rough, simple and simple.
Third, the emotions expressed by art are not absolutely the same, but different and full of personality characteristics. Different people show the same emotion and have personality characteristics.
Second, the symbolic expression of emotion.
Susan Langer said: "Art is the creation of symbolic forms of human emotions." A symbol is "something that can mark something different from him through some self-evident or established tradition or through some language rule." At the same time, "as a symbol, it is easier to feel and grasp than what is expressed", "a symbol always expresses its meaning in a simplified form, which is why we can grasp it."
There are two symbols:
Inference symbol: composed of language, it expresses the essence and relationship of things and states one's thoughts and feelings.
Expressive symbols: composed of lines, colors and blocks, express emotions and transform people's emotions into visible and audible images. The expressive symbol is an artistic symbol, and art is a expressive symbol system.
Artistic symbols are the unity of stability and variability, clarity and fuzziness. Because of its stability and clarity, people can understand the emotions it conveys through symbols; Because of its variety and ambiguity, people will not find symbols boring and lose their charm.
In ancient times, grass was a symbol of villains, and "wildfires won't devour them, they will be tall again in the spring breeze" is a symbol of modern revolutionary forces.