a hard-boiled San Francisco detective might behave. When one solves one’s
problem by making the work as one wanted it, then that is achieved expres-
sion in Croce’s sense.”^92 Here too the expression thus achieved is intransitive,
in the sense that it is a quite particular expression, achieved in just this
successful arrangement of materials, not the expressionofsomething that
might be displayed or embodied otherwise. Our interest in achieved expres-
siveness is an interest in this singular, virtuoso success.
While it rightly emphasizes the importance of virtuoso work to the
achievement of artistic expressiveness, the working of materials view is
unable to account easily for the fact that emotions are centrally among the
things that works of art are said to express. To revert to Sircello’s examples,
we do say that Brueghel’s painting is ironic, or Prokoviev’s theme is witty.
What is expressed is centrally a subject’s emotions and attitudes. The
working of materials view here overlooks the importance of a subject’s point
of view–achieved by the artist in the work and proffered to the audience for
participation–in the experience of expression in art. But then–as the
working of materials view rightly emphasizes–not just any instancing of a
point of view or any unburdening will suffice either, in order for there to be
artistic expression. The coherent working through of materials does matter.Emotions and contemporary psychology
Recent theorists have attempted to develop more explanatory theories of
artistic expression, especially of the expression of emotion by pure or abso-
lute instrumental music, by drawing on and developing systematic empirical
theories of emotion. Emotions in general are now understood to consist of at
least some of the following components: (i) a qualitative feeling present to
consciousness, (ii) behavioral propensities or dispositions, (iii) a belief or
judgment about the occasioning object of emotion, and (iv) physiological
states initiated by the object of emotion. Different theories of emotion
emphasize the role of one of these components more than the others.
Stephen Davies, working in the broad tradition of Goodman’s analysis of
expression, has developed a primarily cognitive or judgment-based theory.
Expressive works of music, according to Davies, need not arouse any emo-
tional state in the listener (though they may), nor need they be produced by a(^92) Colin Lyas,Aesthetics(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), p. 102.
104 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art