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The expression of ideas or feelings is the showing of them through words, actions, or artistic activities. See full entry for 'expression' Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary .
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Cultural and artistic expression provides a principal avenue...
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Artistic expression is the process of conveying emotions, thoughts, and ideas through various forms of art, including visual arts, music, dance, theater, and literature. It serves as a powerful means for individuals to communicate their unique perspectives and experiences, often reflecting cultural and social contexts.
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- Art as expression
- Expression in the creation of art
The view that “art is imitation (representation)” has not only been challenged, it has been moribund in at least some of the arts since the 19th century. It was subsequently replaced by the theory that art is expression. Instead of reflecting states of the external world, art is held to reflect the inner state of the artist. This, at least, seems to be implicit in the core meaning of expression: the outer manifestation of an inner state. Art as a representation of outer existence (admittedly “seen through a temperament”) has been replaced by art as an expression of humans’ inner life.
But the terms express and expression are ambiguous and do not always denote the same thing. Like so many other terms, express is subject to the process-product ambiguity: the same word is used for a process and for the product that results from that process. “The music expresses feeling” may mean that the composer expressed human feeling in writing the music or that the music when heard is expressive (in some way yet to be defined) of human feeling. Based on the first sense are theories about the creation of art. Founded on the second are theories about the content of art and the completion of its creation.
The view that “art is imitation (representation)” has not only been challenged, it has been moribund in at least some of the arts since the 19th century. It was subsequently replaced by the theory that art is expression. Instead of reflecting states of the external world, art is held to reflect the inner state of the artist. This, at least, seems to be implicit in the core meaning of expression: the outer manifestation of an inner state. Art as a representation of outer existence (admittedly “seen through a temperament”) has been replaced by art as an expression of humans’ inner life.
But the terms express and expression are ambiguous and do not always denote the same thing. Like so many other terms, express is subject to the process-product ambiguity: the same word is used for a process and for the product that results from that process. “The music expresses feeling” may mean that the composer expressed human feeling in writing the music or that the music when heard is expressive (in some way yet to be defined) of human feeling. Based on the first sense are theories about the creation of art. Founded on the second are theories about the content of art and the completion of its creation.
The creation of a work of art is the bringing about of a new combination of elements in the medium (tones in music, words in literature, paints on canvas, and so on). The elements existed beforehand but not in the same combination; creation is the re-formation of these pre-existing materials. Pre-existence of materials holds true of creation quite apart from art: in the creation of a scientific theory or the creation of a disturbance. It applies even to creation in most theologies, except some versions of Christian theology, in which creation is ex nihilo—that is, without pre-existing matter.
That creation occurs in various art mediums is an obvious truth. But once this is granted, nothing has yet been said about expression, and the expressionist would say that the foregoing statement about creation is too mild to cover what needs to be said about the process of artistic creation. The creative process, the expressionist wants to say, is (or is also) an expressive process, and for expression something more is necessary than that the artist be creating something. Great care must be taken at this stage: some say that the creation of art is (or involves) self-expression; others say that it is the expression of feeling, though not necessarily of one’s own feeling (or perhaps that and something more, such as the feeling of one’s culture or of one’s nation or of all humanity); others say that it is not necessarily limited to feelings but that ideas or thoughts can be expressed, as they clearly are in essays. But the distinctively expressionist view of artistic creation is the product of the Romantic movement, according to which the expression of feelings constitutes the creation of art, just as philosophy and other disciplines are the expression of ideas. It is, at any rate, the theory of art as the expression of feelings (which here shall be taken to include emotions and attitudes) that has been historically significant and developed: art as specially connected with the life of feeling.
When people are said to be expressing feelings, what specifically are they doing? In a perfectly ordinary sense, expressing is “letting go” or “letting off steam”: individuals may express their anger by throwing things or by cursing or by striking the persons who have angered them. But, as many writers have pointed out, this kind of “expressing” has little to do with art; as the American philosopher John Dewey said, it is more of a “spilling over” or a “spewing forth” than expression. In art at least, expression requires a medium, a medium that is recalcitrant and that artists must bend to their will. In throwing things to express anger, there is no medium—or, if one’s body is called the medium, then it is something one does not have to study to use for that purpose. It is still necessary to distinguish a “natural release” from an expression. If poetry were literally “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” as William Wordsworth said, it would consist largely of things like tears and incoherent babblings. If artistic creation can plausibly be said to be a process of expression, something different from and more specific than natural release or discharge must be meant.
One view of emotional expression in art is that it is preceded by a perturbation or excitement from a vague cause about which the artist is uncertain and therefore anxious. The artist then proceeds to express feelings and ideas in words or paint or stone or the like, clarifying them and achieving a release of tension. The point of this theory seems to be that artists, having been perturbed at the inarticulateness of their “ideas,” now feel relieved because they have “expressed what they wanted to express.” This phenomenon, indeed a familiar one (for everyone has felt relieved when a job is done), must still be examined for its relevance. Is it the emotion being expressed that counts or the relief at having expressed it? If the concern here is with art as therapy or doing art to provide revelations for a psychiatrist, then the latter is what counts, but the critic or consumer of the art is surely not concerned with such details of the artist’s biography. This is an objection to all accounts of expression as process: how is any light at all cast upon the work of art by saying that the artist went through any expressive process or through any process whatever in the genesis of it? If the artist was relieved at the end of it, so much the better, but this fact is as aesthetically irrelevant as it would be if the artist had committed suicide at the end of it or taken to drink or composed another work immediately thereafter.
Another problem should be noted: assuming that artists do relieve their oppressed states of mind through creating, what connection has this with the exact words or score or brushstrokes that they put on paper or canvas? Feelings are one thing, words and visual shapes and tones are quite another; it is these latter that constitute the art medium, and in them that works of art are created. There is doubtless a causal connection between the feelings of the artist and the words the artist writes in a poem, but the expression theory of creation talks only about the artist’s feelings, while creation occurs within the art mediums themselves, and to speak only of the former is not to tell anything about the work of art—anything, that is, that would be of interest other than to the artist’s psychiatrist or biographer. Through what paroxysms of emotion the artist passed does not matter anymore, insofar as one’s insight into the work is concerned, than knowing that a given engineer had had a quarrel with a friend the night before beginning construction on a certain bridge. To speak of anything revelatory of works of art, it is necessary to stop talking about the artist’s emotions and talk about the genesis of words, tones, and so on—items in the specific art mediums.
The expressionists have indeed brought out and emphasized one important distinction: between the processes involved in art and in craft. The activity of building a bridge from an architect’s blueprint or constructing a brick wall or putting together a table just like a thousand others the artisan has already made is a craft and not an art. The craftsperson knows at the beginning of the processes exactly what sort of end product is wanted: for example, a chair of specific dimensions made of particular materials. A good (efficient) craftsperson knows at the beginning how much material it will take to do the job, which tools, and so forth. But the creative artist cannot work in this manner: “Artists don’t know what they are going to express until they have expressed it” is a watchword of the expressionist. They cannot state in advance what a completed work of art will be like: the poet cannot say what words will constitute the completed poem or how many times the word the will occur in it or what the order of the words will be—that can be known only after the poem has been created, and until then the poet cannot say. Nor could the poet set about working with such a plan: “I shall compose a poem that contains the word the 563 times, the word rose 47 times,” and so on. What distinguishes art from craft is that the artist, unlike the craftsperson, “does not know the end in the beginning.”
- John Hospers
Artistic expression refers to the diverse ways in which individuals convey their thoughts, emotions, and perspectives through various art forms. This concept encompasses the intention behind the artwork and the techniques used to communicate ideas, making it a fundamental aspect of creativity.
By exploring the fundamentals of artistic expression, embracing experimentation, and staying true to your unique perspective, you can unlock the full potential of your creative vision and embark on a fulfilling artistic journey. 🌟
Many kinds of psychological state can be expressed in or by works of art. But it is the artistic expression of emotion that has figured most prominently in philosophical discussions of art.
Artistic expression refers to the way individuals convey their thoughts, emotions, and experiences through various forms of art, such as music, visual arts, literature, and performance.
