expression of emotion from“mere discharge”^66 of it, and he distinguishes
artistic expression, which involves the working of materials employed as a
medium of art in order to achieve clarity in feeling toward objects, from
artificial expression, which is insincere and employs preconceived means to
ends (as in advertising and propaganda), and from artful expression, which is
a matter of craft and social grace. The idea that through artistic expression
we unburden ourselves of confusion in feeling and achieve a genuine, indi-
vidualized understanding of how one“really feels” about some difficult
matter is plausible and attractive. It has affinities with Aristotle’s conception
of catharsis, and it seems to describe well one thing that many artists try to
do. James Joyce inUlyssesis surely working out for himself and inviting us to
discover with him how stretches of life in Dublin on June 16, 1904, may be
felt about–with justthismixture of excitement, disgust, frustration, and
acceptance. Paul Cézanne in the Mont Sainte-Victoire series is articulating
and embodying his own feelings for that inhabited and natural landscape and
enabling us to see and feel with him.
Despite its attractions, a number of questions can be raised about this
view. Is all centrally successful art successful through expressing and inviting
feeling in this way? Conceptual art and Dada seem colder, more austere, even
where they are ironic and witty. More crucially, does the notion ofindividual-
ized understandingof emotion make sense? Joyce, for example, is describing
scenes and incidents about which it is appropriate to feel in certain ways.
What makes his feeling–and ours in following him–distinctly individual?
Would not another set of scenes and incidents that are largely similar, but
not identical, rightly inspire the same feelings? Furthermore, does the notion
of thelightening,alleviation,oreasement^67 of oppressed consciousness that
Collingwood takes to occur through expression make sense, without refer-
ence to the kind ofaesthetic pleasurethat is achieved in successfully working
the materials of a medium? Perhaps Collingwood is confusing an aesthetic
satisfaction in artistic working with the discharge of emotional oppression.
Most crucially, Collingwood’s emphasis on the psychodynamics of the
expression of emotion seems to make expression toobiographicala phenom-
enon. Was Beethoven in the grip of a singular melancholy passion in writing
the Appassionata sonata? His care, displayed in his notebooks, in working
(^66) Dewey,Art as Experience, p. 62.
(^67) See Collingwood,Principles of Art, pp. 110, 117 for these terms.
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