Running Head: PSYCHICAL DISTANCE
Psychical Distance
Psychical Distance
SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Running Head: PSYCHICAL DISTANCE
The Evolution of Psychical Distance as an Aesthetic Concept
Gerald C. Cupchik
University of Toronto
Abstract. The problem of psychical distance refers to the
relationship that a person has with an aesthetic object or work.
Two basic traditions can be distinguished which have played a
meaningful role in describing the underlying processes. The British
Empiricist and Enlightenment traditions established the idea that
the real objective properties of aesthetic works engage viewers and
evoke feelings of pleasure. The Romantic tradition placed a greater
emphasis on interpretive activity in recipients who willingly
suspend disbelief and temporarily enter the fictive worlds of
poetry and drama. Writing in the early 20th century, Edward
Bullough produced the idea of psychical distance which combines
both personal involvement and an awareness that the object or event
is a cultural artifact. As the 20th century unfolded, we witness
the death of the aesthetic object as such and the emergence of a
view which accommodated artists, aesthetic artifacts, and receivers
as open-ended and interacting systems. The complementary role of
the realist and constructivist viewpoints is emphasized.
Keywords: creation, reception, cultural and aesthetic artifacts,
aesthetic distance
INTRODUCTION
Cultural psychology is challenged to understand the
complementary processes of creation and reception, and the
aesthetic objects or artifacts that link them. Seeing artifacts as
aesthetic objects requires a different attitude than is evident in
everyday perception. Mundane perception is action oriented and
involves the identification of useful objects even when they are
depicted symbolically in artworks. In aesthetic perception, the
sensory qualities of an object are valued in and of themselves, and
the two kinds of information, symbolic and sensory, can be viewed
relationally, expressively, and metaphorically. Our conception of
creators and audiences who stand in relation to these artifacts is
also of necessity complex. People can be viewed as minds engaged in
an effort after meaning (Bartlett, 1932; see Rosa, 1996) and/or as
bodies whose perceptual mechanisms, viscera, and nervous systems
are affected by the aesthetic object, artifact, or event. Of
course, both the object and the person exist against the dynamic
background of changing cultures and roles, one that was present in
the context of creation and others that shape the context of
appreciation.
In a social sense, there are three possible relationships
involving persons and creative cultural artifacts. First, there is
the relationship of the creator to the artifact. Second, there is
the relationship of the recipient or audience to this work, and
third there is the potential for communication between creators and
recipients mediated by the artifacts. These relationships have to
do with the communication of ideas and feelings through creative
works. Intimacy and distance, which are important qualities of
social relationships, also apply to aesthetic reactions. Personal
involvement has traditionally been characterized in terms of
psychical distance. Qualitatively, psychical distance reflects the
non-utilitarian attitude that a person must adopt as a precondition
for an aesthetic episode to occur. Quantitatively, psychical
distance reveals the relative closeness that a person feels toward
an aesthetic artifact or event as a consequence of interacting with
it.
The origins of the concept of psychical distance can be traced
back at least to the 18th century where the contrasting Lockean and
Leibnitzian (Allport, 1955) traditions of Content and Act
psychology (Boring, 1950), respectively, affected aesthetic theory.
British Empiricists, like John Locke, favored a realist position
according to which sense data convey the properties of objects in
the everyday world. Taste Theorists, such as Lord Shaftsbury,
defined beauty as Unity in Multiplicity, a formal property of
artworks that could also be discerned through sensory input. The
Leibnitzian and Kantian approaches shaped the holisitic thinking of
German Idealists like Schilller (1795) for whom aesthetic
perception represented a way of relating to things that harmonized
both thought and feeling, and involved the whole personality (see
introduction to Bullough, 1957). The German scholar August Wilhelm
Schlegel and the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge also
focused on individuals stressing the willing suspension of
disbelief and acts of imagination in response to poetry and drama
(Burwick, 1991). The main goal of this paper is to show that the
processes implied by aesthetic distance (a content oriented
concept) and willing suspension of disbelief (an act oriented
concept) are complementary and, when integrated, provide a
comprehensive account of aesthetic engagement.
ART OBJECTS AND THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDEPhilosophers working
within the epistemological framework of British Empiricism
maintained that a proper aesthetic attitude was needed for the
appreciation of art and literature (see Fenner, 1996). Lord
Shaftesbury (1671-1713; actually the third Earl of Shaftesbury,
Anthony Ashley Cooper) introduced the concept of disinterestedness
whereby the aesthetic object is approached in and of itself and
without regard for any practical purpose that it might serve. This
attitude was a precondition for appreciating the absolute
properties that defined aesthetic beauty, defined as Unity in
Multiplicity. The Moral Sense, a taste (i.e., quality) faculty,
would then enable viewers to immediately discern beauty in the same
direct way that physical properties like color were perceived.
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) extended Shaftesburys ideas from a
Neo-Platonic to a relational realist viewpoint. While acknowledging
that beauty was a real property of objects that could be perceived
either correctly or incorrectly, he emphasized relations between
the object and the perceiver. The locus of judgment was therefore
grounded in the observer whose internal sense faculty could
discriminate uniformity amidst variety. In addition to a
disinterested attitude, the sense of taste was a function of a
practiced eye and therefore experience could facilitate aesthetic
judgment.
The new aesthetics of the Enlightenment stressed manipulating an
audiences imagination and emotions in contrast with the
rhetorical-allegorical style of the humanist and baroque tradition
(Schneider, 1995, p. 82). This could be accomplished by selecting
subject matter that represented universally shared natural and
social worlds and no assumptions are made about the need for
recipients to possess specialized knowledge in order to appreciate
the work. Images should be guided by strict mimesis, the controlled
imitation of nature (Schneider, 1995). The goal of art was to
create an illusionist style of representation in which the natural
world, governed by laws of causality, could be faithfully and
immediately apprehended by the senses in a single glance. This
visualist criterion associated an objective representation of the
world with sight so that the aesthetic event, as if it were the
thing itself, would link a person with the familiar world
(Schneider, 1995, p. 83). Addison (1762-1719) stressed the value of
the visual sense (and especially landscape painting) as a source of
aesthetic pleasure both in terms of direct sense impressions and
subsequent recollections (Addison, 1963). French neoclassicism
emphasized the importance of the three unities of time, place, and
action in determining dramatic illusion and the evocative power of
a play (Burwick, 1991). This rationalist attitude applied to both
painting and poetry, which already embodied a painterly sensuality
and could guide the persons intuition toward insight.
Richard Payne Knight (1786), the late 18th century scholar,
offered an associationist account of illusion in theatre as a kind
of passive response (see Burwick, 1991) in which the audience
responds in sympathy with increasing emotional stimulation until
the reason surrenders to the force of the passions (Burwick, 1991,
p. 222). Knights perspective substitutes associational response for
aesthetic engagement and consequently, the mimetic and reflexive
excitement of the drama becomes virtually irrelevant (Burwick,
1991, 207). Audience members remain at a distance from the
unfolding drama: Fiction is known to be fiction, even while it
interests us most (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 207). Knight also
analyzed aesthetic reactions in terms of pleasure and pain
responses to sensory stimulation. The example given was of a
persons response to the vaulted roof of a Gothic cathedral that is
supported by slender columns. If the person suspects that the
columns are not sufficient, then ideas of weakness and danger may
be experienced. This is an excellent example of how associations
can shape the experience of aesthetic events and is an application
of British Empiricist ideas.
IMAGINATIVE MENTAL ACTIVITY AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCEA Tale of
Two Schlegels: Johann Elias and August Wilhelm
Johann Elias Schlegel (1719-1749)
Johann Elias Schlegel was a playwright involved in theatre
management whose experiences shaped his analysis of dramatic theory
and aesthetics in general (Wilkinson, 1945). Schlegels theorizing
was always grounded in the facts of his own experience rather than
in some abstract model. He was seen as kindly, yet slightly aloof,
humane and tolerant, yet fastidiously discriminating (Wilkinson,
1945, p. 50), but he rebelled against the ideas of Gottsched, his
conservative and powerful professor in Leipzig. Rather than working
from a priori rigid principles, as Gottsched did, Schlegel favored
an exploration of established great works of literature to
determine their underlying structural properties and effects.
He believed that the difference between reality and art was not
governed by the choice of subject matter (Wilkinson, 1945), nor was
pleasure a function of subject matter because even ugliness could
be a topic for art. The treatment is what determines whether a work
is original and gives pleasure, which indeed is the most important
function of art. Each art form has a distinctive medium with which
the artist works and one cannot reject a particular medium on the
ground that it does not exist in everyday life. Thus, one cannot
reject verse as a medium in drama on the premise that people dont
normally speak that way, and similarly one cannot reject sculpture
for not being colored. Aesthetic experience is shaped by order and
not by the subject matter or the medium as such. If the subject
matter evokes excessively strong emotion that seizes the
imagination, then the hidden order cannot be discerned.
Johann Schlegel was against any conception of drama which
emphasized its ability to trick the spectator through the senses
and emotion into believing that the event on the stage is real. He
held that we have an element of detachment but this can be
understood as a reaction against the use of crude naturalism with
intent to deceive (Wilkinson, 1945, p. 78). Theatre reflects the
social realities and historical traditions of its audience but at
the same time can enhance social awareness. By selecting critical
moments in life and expressing them in carefully fashioned
dialogue, the playwright exposes the hidden workings of a
characters mind. The author can provide motives to account for
actions as they unfold in a play to a greater degree than is
available in daily life. Probability must be available within the
framework of the drama itself because the unity of action is more
important than the unities of time and place. In short, by
providing a meaningful context to account for action, the author
brings coherence and meaningfulness to the audiences
experience.
August Wilhelm Schlegel ( 1767-1845)Following Kants influence,
scholars in the Romantic tradition, such as August Wilhelm
Schlegel, grounded aesthetic illusion in imagination rather than in
emotion (Burwick, 1991, p. 193). Writing in the early 19th century,
Schlegel described the ways that illusion is shaped by events on
the theatrical stage. He countered the Neoclassical principle that
powerful dramatic illusion was created by the unity of time, place,
and action, treating it as a waking dream, to which we voluntarily
surrender ourselves (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 194). Schlegel
proposed the very modern idea that reality and illusion actually
coexist. The reality of the dramatic dialogue is that the text is
written; the illusion is that dramatic dialogue is spoken
spontaneously (Burwick, 1991, p. 201). Illusion is sustained by the
very knowledge of the artifice underlying its seemingly spontaneous
dialogue. The acceptance of a dramatic work as real is not
determined by probability but depends on the appearance of truth to
the senses (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 210). Even the impossible
might be accepted so long as the grounds for impossibility are left
out of the circle of our comprehension or are cleverly veiled from
our attention (p. 210). When illusion overcomes the spectators,
they overlook the secondary matters, and forget the whole of the
remaining objects around them (p. 210). Schlegel not only included
audience participation as an important aspect of theatre but added
that their awareness of participating in sustaining an illusion
contributes to the overall aesthetic process. However, critics who
are obsessed with the realism of details suffer from a prosaic
disbelief or lack of faith that disrupts engagement and reveals a
deficient imagination.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
critic and poet, extended Wilhelm Schlegels account of aesthetic
illusion, placing a greater emphasis on the role of will in
adopting an aesthetic attitude. He described aesthetic illusion as
the product of a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment,
which constitutes poetic faith (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,
1817/1983, cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 221). Coleridge was also
interested in the delusional states that result from taking drugs
like opium with which he himself experimented. His image of a
person as half-waking, half-sleeping in the aesthetic experience
reflected this dual concern, but was endemic to 18th century
criticism and evident in the writing of Erasmus Darwin, Charles
Darwins grandfather, among others.
Coleridge objected to mechanistic models proposed by
associationists like Knight because they treated the mind as
passive. Instead, he emphasized the logic of the imagination rather
than the reception of sensation. Imagination provides a basis for
the fluid continuity of conscious experience. Henri Bergson (1920)
later provided a comparable description of states of pure duration
in consciousness: Pure duration is what the succession of our
states of consciousness becomes when our ego drifts through life
and refrains from drawing a distinction between the present state
and previous states (p. 75; translated from the French in Fraisse,
1963, p. 70). Chiari (1992) interprets Bergsons internal duration
as nothing less than the continuous life of memory prolonging the
past into the present, regardless of any awareness in the present
of a clear, ceaselessly growing image of the past (Chiari, 1992, p.
256). Further, Fraisse (1963) infers that, in the experience of
internal duration, our thoughts and even more our emotions fuse
together in perfect harmony (p. 70). This subjective unity detaches
experience from the exact stimuli corresponding to it and a search
for these stimuli would destroy the state of fusion (p. 70). In
drawing a link between Coleridge and Bergsons notion of the
internal duration, Haeger (1992) states that Coleridge argued
strenuously for a causal relationship between thought and
consciousness that derives the former from the latter (p. 99). This
bottom-up model suggests that unified consciousness and not
analytical thought is the ground and source of aesthetic
experience.
This juxtaposition of imagination versus thought was expressed
in Coleridges comparison of children and adults in their response
to the familiar literary themes of artifice and reality. Whereas
children can readily suspend this distinction, adults are used to
executing comparative judgments. This makes it more difficult for
them to use their imagination and accept the fictive as real when
reading a story, or a representation as the transaction itself when
viewing a play. Adult audience members experience an antagonism
between what they know (rational awareness that a play is a play)
and what they feel (a sympathetic emotional response to the
dramatic action); the simultaneity of artifice and illusion (see
Burwick, 1991, p. 197) to which Wilhelm Schlegel alluded. Excessive
rational analysis can therefore get in the way of aesthetic
absorption. It is for this reason that adults must learn to
willingly suspend disbelief and set aside comparative judgments as
to whether or not events in a work correspond faithfully to the
everyday world.
The antipathy that Romantic scholars felt toward mimesis was
reflected in Coleridges treatment of the distinction between copy
and imitation. While a copy merely mirrors and reproduces, an
imitation reveals the conscious artistry involved (Burwick, 1991,
p. 209). The copy is a mere replica of the real, reflecting the
accidents of the moment. In imitation, imagination creates an
ideal, through a combination of a certain degree of dissimilitude
with a certain degree of similitude (cited in Burwick, 1991, p.
212). Thus, Shakespeare did not merely copy a character, but rather
developed a character by imitating the psychological veracities
discovered through meditation (Burwick, 1991, p. 211). Whereas a
landscape painting might be seen as a copy, stage scenery involves
an analogon of deception (see Burwick, 1991, p. 209). Proper
aesthetic illusion implies that the spectator avoids the everyday
tendency to judge and compare, but instead accepts the selected
elements present in imitation as facilitators of illusion.
Aesthetic pleasure for the spectator derives from knowing that the
scene represented was unreal and merely an illusion (cited in
Burwick, 1991, p. 213). In this way, recognizing the difference
between similitude and dissimilitude, between reality and artifice,
produces a sense of delight in the spectator.
According to Burwick (1991), Coleridges faith in the logical
coherence of illusion (p. 224) was a substitution for the classical
precepts of representative and probable (p. 224) addressed by
Horace and Aristotle. The notion of being representative implies
some kind of typicality or familiarity of the poetic reference
which makes it accessible to the reader. Too strong a departure
from the representative into excessive individualization and
novelty makes the poetic reference seem alien to the reader. In
Coleridges analysis of poetic faith and the logic of the
imagination, unwanted particularization disrupts the illusion of
verisimilitude;..the copy intrudes upon the imitation (Burwick,
1991, p. 225). The ideal is to achieve a balance between the
generic and the individual. The generic makes the character
representative and symbolic, therefore instructive because it is
relevant to all people. The individual, on the other hand, gives it
living interest; for nothing lives or is real, but as definite and
individual (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 226). Achieving this balance
is the goal of every poet, and part of suspending personal judgment
during aesthetic episodes involves having confidence in authorial
judgment. It is this confidence that fosters the willing suspension
of disbelief. We experience aesthetic pleasure when the improbable
is willingly accepted as probable, and imitation offers us just the
right amount of Difference from reality.
In sum, Coleridge was against the naturalist and realist idea
that the goal of stagecraft was to create an external illusion that
would both deceive and engage the spectator. Foakes (1990) has
underscored the idea that Coleridge transferred the illusion from
the stage and its scenery to the mind of the spectator. But Foakes
added that audiences arrive at the theatre with expectations
derived from prior knowledge and accept certain conventions
regarding their relationship with the actors, the play, and so on.
The willing suspension of disbelief begins at the box office
(Foakes, 1990, p. 227). Accordingly, dramatic illusion is
an activity of mind on the part of spectators, who, having
willingly entered a special place for play-acting in the acceptance
of a range of possible rules and conventions, yield for a limited
time to an emotional and intellectual involvement with what takes
place on the stage, filling out in the imagination the inevitable
incompleteness and artifice of the representation, while always
remaining aware of the action as play and as distinct from life
outside the theatre (ibid, p. 228).
He notes that breaking the stage-illusion is one way of
stimulating the audience. One can therefore appreciate experimental
theatre, happenings, and surround cinema as attempting to break the
bounds of convention and reawaken the senses and experiences of the
spectators (Casebier, 1971).
John Deweys (1859-1952) Modern Account of Aesthetic
ExperienceDeweys book Art as Experience reaches back to
Romanticisms concern with imagination and experience, and forward
to a broader systemic treatment of complementary processes in
creation and reception that achieve a harmony between the structure
of the person (artist or viewer) and the work. His main
contribution was to describe experience as a whole that carries
with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency...
...Because of continuous merging, there are no holes, mechanical
junctions, and dead centers when we have an experience (p. 353).
Both artists and recipients have common experiences as an aesthetic
episode unfolds. Between the poles of aimlessness and mechanical
efficiency there lies those courses of action in which through
successive deeds there runs a sense of growing meaning conserved
and accumulating toward an end that is felt as accomplishment of a
process (p. 355). The process continues until a mutual adaptation
of the self and object emerges and that particular experience comes
to a close (p. 359). From Deweys perspective, adaptation represents
a resolution of the problem of aesthetic distance, one in which
intellectual and emotional harmony bonds a person to the work,
thereby establishing an optimal degree of distance.
Dewey understood the active and complementary relations between
artistic (i.e., doing) and esthetic (i.e., undergoing) processes
that are grounded in experience. Doing and perceiving are
integrated one within the other. Because An experience has pattern
and structure... The action and its consequences must be joined in
perception. This relationship is what gives meaning. (p. 359). And
further, nothing takes root in mind when there is no balance
between doing and receiving (p. 360). The very urge to paint
completes an experience for the artist: Without external
embodiment, an experience remains incomplete (p. 365). Something
that is artistic also presupposes a prior period of gestation in
which doings and perceptions projected in imagination interact and
mutually modify one another (p. 365). The real work of an artist is
to build up an experience that is coherent in perception while
moving with constant change in its development (p. 364). This led
Dewey to conclude: ....because the artist is controlled in the
process of his work by his grasp of the connection between what he
has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the
artist does not think as intently and penetratingly as a scientific
inquirer is absurd (p. 360).
Reception, too, is not seen as a passive act. The distinction
between recognition and perception is fundamental. Recognition is
perception arrested before it has a chance to develop freely (p.
365). In recognition we fall back, as upon a stereotype, upon some
previously formed scheme (p. 366). In arousing the old, it limits
consciousness of the experience that is had (p. 366). Reception
involves surrender (p. 366) and is a process consisting of a series
of responsive acts that accumulate toward objective fulfillment (p.
365). In order ...to perceive, a beholder must create his own
experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to
those which the original producer underwent.... Without an act of
recreation the object is not perceived as work of art (p. 367). The
observer must be like the artist who selected, simplified,
clarified, abridged and condensed according to his interest and go
through these operations according to his point of view and
interest. In both, an act of abstraction, that is extraction of
what is significant, takes place. In both, there is comprehension
in its literal signification - that is, a gathering together of
details and particularly physically scattered into an experienced
whole (p. 367).
EDWARD BULLOUGHS CONCEPT OF PSYCHICAL DISTANCEBackground
The modern treatment of aesthetic distance derives from Edward
Bulloughs (1912) seminal article titled Psychical distance as a
factor in art and an aesthetic principle. His paper offered a
psychologically oriented integration of the Empiricist and Romantic
intellectual traditions. A cursory examination of his personal
background accounts for this synthesizing disposition. In a
biographical preface to an edited collection of three papers by
Bullough (Bullough, 1957), Elizabeth Wilkinson tells us that he was
a linguist, born in 1880 in Switzerland of English and German
parentage. The cultural diversity of his family background led to
expertise in modern European languages as well as Chinese.
Wilkinson concluded that his appreciation of diversity in cultural
perspectives, both with reference to the cultural backcloth of a
people (p. xxv) as well as to works of art and literature, saved
him from the anachronistic crudities, the local and historical
parochialism, which are a blemish on much criticism and aesthetics
(p. xxv). He was a founding member of the British Psychological
Society, conducted research on color appreciation at the Cambridge
Psychological Laboratories, and was elected to the Chair of Italian
at Cambridge University a year before his untimely death in
1934.
Bullough was ahead of his time in his critical reflections on
the experimental method and was skeptical about using the
stimulus-response approach for the study of aesthetic process.
Experiments in the isolated context of a laboratory can only
provide some sense for the elements of aesthetic experiences. As a
foreshadowing of Heisenbergs principle, Bullough said to be asked
in the midst of an intense aesthetic impression whether one likes
it, is like a somnabulist being called by name (p. 108). The onus
of interpretation always lies with the experimenter who must
appreciate the complementary relationship of the simple to the
complex and vice-versa. He was against the idea of reducing
everything to a single principle to account for aesthetic
preferences. Like the Romantic philosophers, he argued that The
aesthetic fact is a distinctive mode of consciousness (Bullough,
1957, p. xxvii). A more sophisticated model was therefore needed to
distinguish between beauty and agreeableness in the study of
aesthetic judgment and preference.
Wilkinson (1945) has suggested that the idea of aesthetic
distance could be traced to Schillers treatment of loingment, the
notion that poets should not write in the moment of strong emotion
but, rather, in the tranquility of distancing recollection (cited
in the introduction to Bullough, 1957, p. xxxv). Bullough (1912)
appears to have transposed this concept from the poetic to the
aesthetic domain. His theorizing was very much in tune with other
ideas expressed in the early 20th century. In his very first
publication titled Mind and form, Bullough (1904) expressed the
gestalt principle that art is formation (Gestaltung) which reveals
an inward life. The German Aktualgenese (perceptual mircogenesis)
school similarly believed in the "intrinsic structuredness of
perception" and empirically examined how a coherent (i.e.,
meaningful) gestalt emerges over time as perception progresses
toward conception (see Flavell & Draguns, 1957).
Bulloughs work complements that of Lipps (1903-1906/1962) who
formalized the concept of Einfhlung, or empathy, which contrasted
with Worringers (1905/1953) more detached account of Abstraktion,
and Wolfflins (1950/1915) description of the psychological
processes underlying the linear (e.g., Neoclassical) versus
painterly (e.g., Baroque) dimension of artistic style. The Russian
Formalists (Shklovsky, 1917/1988) also argued early in the 20th
century that perception in everyday life becomes automatic and
habitual, and the goal of aesthetic devices is to defamiliarize
perception, to reawaken it through novelty. In all these theories
and approaches, formal properties of the stimulus, be it an artwork
or a persons emotional experience, interact in an orderly way with
a persons experience, as if shaping or giving form to it.
Processes Underlying Psychical Distance
Bulloughs distinctly phenomenological approach to experience
treated the notion of psychical distance as an outlook, a metaphor,
a space that lies between our own self and such objects as are the
sources or vehicles (p. 89) shaping our affections, defined as
bodily or spiritual reactions involving sensation, perception,
emotional states or ideas. In the intellectual lineage of the
British Empiricists, though more Continental in sensibilities, he
saw distance as transforming the experience, say of fog, in the
first instance by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear
with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand outside
the context of our personal needs and ends (p. 89); then, by
looking at it objectively, as it has often been called, by
permitting only such reactions on our part as emphasise the
objective features of the experience, and by interpreting even our
subjective affections not as modes of our being but rather as
characteristics of the phenomenon (p. 89). Bulloughs own poetic
account offered a phenomenological description of fog as the veil
surrounding you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring
the outline of things and distorting their shapes into weird
grotesqueness; and so on (p. 88). In other words, the qualities of
our experience are projected onto the stimulus, in this instance,
the physical phenomenon of fog.
Bulloughs psychological analysis of the working of Distance
acknowledged that it is not simple, but highly complex (p. 89). It
has both a negative inhibitory aspect - the cutting out of the
practical side of things...- and a positive side - the elaboration
of the experience on the new basis... (p. 89). The distanced view
of things is not, and cannot be, our normal outlook....and the
sudden view of things from their reverse, usually unnoticed side,
comes upon us as a revelation, and such revelations are precisely
those of Art (pp. 89-90). As such, Distance provides the much
needed criterion of the beautiful as distinct from the merely
agreeable (p. 90) and offers a unique synthesis of traditional
opposites; subjectivity-objectivity, idealistic-realistic,
sensual-spiritual, personal-impersonal, and
individualistic-typical. Distance is therefore one of the essential
characteristics of the aesthetic consciousness (p. 90) and of the
contemplation of the object (p. 91).
Distance should not be understood to imply an impersonal, purely
intellectually interested relation... On the contrary, it describes
a personal relation, often highly emotionally coloured, but of a
peculiar character (p. 91) because the practical side is filtered
out. In his model of the interaction between people and aesthetic
works or events, Bullough made reference to the antinomy of
Distance. On the one hand, we need some degree of predisposition in
order to appreciate the appeal of a work. He articulated a
principle of concordance to account for variations in taste whereby
the success and intensity of a works appeal stands in direct
proportion to the completeness with which it corresponds with our
intellectual and emotional peculiarities and the idiosyncracies of
our experience (p. 92). As applied to appreciating drama, the
principle involves achieving the greatest concordance or
resemblance with his own experience - provided that he succeeds in
keeping the Distance between the action of the play and his
personal feelings (p. 93). The same principle applies to the artist
who will prove artistically most effective in the formulation of an
intensely personal experience, but he can formulate it artistically
only on condition of a detachment from the experience qua personal
(p. 93). The central principle is therefore the same for both
viewers and artists: the goal is maximal involvement without
excessive self-absorption; utmost decrease of Distance without its
disappearance (p. 94). This is Bulloughs main theoretical
contribution to the study of aesthetic distance.
The next modern innovation of Bullough was to treat distance as
a matter of degrees which is a function of the nature of the object
but also varies in accordance with the individuals capacity for
maintaining a greater or lesser degree (p. 94). Persons also differ
in their habitual measure of Distance and the same individual
differs in his ability to maintain it in the face of different
objects and of different arts (p. 94). Bullough introduced the
concept of a Distance-limit, that point at which Distance is lost
and appreciation either disappears or changes its character (p.
95). Two extreme conditions can be observed in relation to
Distance; under-distancing and over-distancing. Under-distancing
occurs when the subject matter is crudely naturalistic, harrowing,
repulsive in its realism and over-distancing takes place when the
style produces the impression of improbability, artificiality,
emptiness or absurdity (p. 94).
The more evocative the theme (e.g., by referring to organic
affections or sexual matters), and the more mundane its reference
(e.g., to topical subjects occupying public attention at the
moment), the higher the probability of pushing the bounds of
aesthetic distance and evoking everyday, practical, and personal
responses. However, even the most personal affections, whether
ideas, percepts or emotions, can be sufficiently distanced to be
aesthetically appreciable (p. 95). Artists and authors are
distinguished by their ability to achieve this distance, rising
above practical and problematic import and turning problems of the
moment into dramatically and humanly interesting situations.
Indeed, the fact that the artist can achieve greater aesthetic
distance regarding feelings, sensations, and situations, compared
to the average person, have often quite unjustly earned for him
accusations of cynicism, sensualism, morbidness or frivolity (p.
95).
Distancing the subject matter sufficiently to rise above its
practical problematic import (p. 95) is a matter of the viewers
perspective and can also be facilitated by the manner of
presentment or style of the work. The medium can affect psychical
distance, sometimes hindering and at other times facilitating it.
Thus, the fact that living human beings are vehicles of dramatic
art is a problem faced by theatrical performances that encourage
under-distancing. Dance is even a stronger lure to under-distancing
because its animal spirits are frequently quite unrelieved by any
glimmer of spirituality, a very 19th century moral evaluation. This
viewpoint is further revealed in the comment that The whole
censorship problem..may be said to hinge upon Distance; if every
member of the public could be trusted to keep it, there would be no
sense whatever in the existence of a censor of plays (p. 97). For
sculpture, the human form in its full spatial materiality
constitutes a similar threat to Distance (pp. 97-98). An inability
to realise the distinction between sculptural form and bodily shape
by people with Our northern habits of dress and ignorance of the
human body have enormously increased the difficulty of distancing
Sculpture,.. (p. 98).
Distance is decreased to the extent that subject matter reminds
us of our everyday lives. Style serves to attenuate this rush
toward familiarity and possible digression away from the work into
personal reminiscences. In idealistic Art, which commemorates
religious, royal or patriotic functions, artists can use
exaggeration of size (i.e., monumentality), extraordinary
attributes (i.e., combinations of human and animal features), or
conventionalized gestures and expressions to distance figures in
the subject matter of an artwork and make them stand out.
Similarly, fairy-tales and tales of strange adventures were
invented to satisfy the craving of curiosity, the desire for the
marvellous, but by their mere eccentricity in regard to the normal
facts of experience they cannot have failed to arouse a strong
feeling of distance (p. 102).
With a sense for the immediacy of perceptual experience,
Bullough observed: The mere realism of foreshortening and of the
boldest vertical perspective may well have made the naive Christian
of the 16th century conscious of the Divine Presence - but for us
it has become a work of Art. (p. 103). Similarly in tragedy, it is
largely the exceptional which produces the Distance of tragedy:
exceptional situations, exceptional characters, exceptional
destinies and conduct.....The exceptional element of the tragic
figures -- ...is their consistency of direction, a fervour of
ideality, a persistence and driving-force which is far above the
capacities of average men (p. 103). Because of Distance, real
tragedy..truly appreciated, is not sad....it is the homage to the
great and exceptional in the man who in a last effort of spiritual
tension can rise to confront blind, crowning Necessity even in his
crushing defeat (p. 104).
In drama, various features of stage-presentation enhance the
sense of Distance: the general theatrical milieu, the shape and
arrangement of the stage, the artificial lighting, the costumes,
mise-en-scene and make-up, even the language, especially verse (p.
104). One factor that creates Distance for sculpture is its lack of
color, and interestingly, pedestals serve to place a work in a
space of its own and remove it from our own viewing space. Factors
that contribute to Distance in paintings are: the
two-dimensionality and framing of pictures, the fact that neither
their space (perspective and imaginary) nor their lighting
coincides with our (actual) space or light (p. 105), the reduction
in scale of represented objects, and most importantly, unification
of presentment effected by such qualities as symmetry, opposition,
proportion, balance, rhythmical distribution of parts,
light-arrangements, in fact all so-called formal features,
composition in its widest sense (p. 105). The visibly intentional
arrangement or unification, must by the mere fact of its presence,
enforce Distance, by distinguishing the object from the confused,
disjointed and scattered form of actual experience (p. 106). Style
therefore serves a dual role. A high degree of finish reduces
Distance and makes a work more accessible, while salient stylistic
qualities remove the work from the everyday world. Thus, when is
comes to themes of sensuality in Art, Distance serves to
spiritualize, purify, and filter them.
In the end, Art serves to balance the interplay of the
individual and the typical. While the typical or abstract
counteracts under-distancing by limiting concreteness in art and
emphasizing the generally social, the individual opposes
over-distancing by bridging to the personal. Finally, Bullough
argued against the fundamental principle of hedonistic aesthetics
that beauty is pleasure. This is of course the main principle of
experimental aesthetics, both classical (Fechner, 1876) and modern
(Berlyne, 1971, 1974), which holds that moderate levels of
complexity produce the greatest pleasure, and thereby affirms the
idea that the beautiful is also the agreeable. Bullough argued,
instead, that the agreeable is non-distanced pleasure (p. 108).
While the agreeable is felt as an affection of our concrete,
practical self (p.108), the aesthetic experience is focused on the
object. It is psychical distance that also keeps us from simply
responding to the agreeableness of colours as warm or cold,
stimulating or soothing, heavy or light. Instead, colors are seen a
kind of personality; colours are energetic, lively, serious,
pensive, melancholic, ...etc (p. 110). Bullough concluded that the
aesthetic state has a two-fold character in which we know a thing
not to exist, but accept its existence (p. 113).
Distancing and Empathy
Bullough was clearly aware of the similarity between his notion
of psychical distance and the concept of Einfhlung as expressed by
various writers of that era, Lipps, Witasek, and Volkelt - when he
said that Distance is essential to the occurrence and working of
empathy (p. 117). According to Lipps' (1903-06/1962) analysis of
Einfhlung, or empathy, according to which we spontaneously imitate
an expressive person or object and the resulting kinaesthetic
senations produce an experience of the emotional state itself. We
then attribute a comparable emotional state to the stimulus through
a process described as feeling into. Kreitler and Kreitler (1972)
pointed out that this requires the active participation of the
observer who must be ready to experience the emotion (p. 269).
Thus, Lipps and Bullough fall into the long tradition reaching back
at least to Kant, Wilhelm Schlegel, and Coleridge which stresses
the active role of the observer in imaginatively constructing
meaning.
A practical adaptation of the emphasis on interpretive activity
was proposed by Frank (1939) in his classic paper on projective
techniques. He argued that a field (object or experience) with
relatively little structure provides the individual with an
occasion to project... his way of seeing life, his meanings,
significances, patterns, and especially his feelings (p. 403). The
results are constitutive as when the subject imposes a structure or
form of configuration (Gestalt) upon an amorphous, plastic,
unstructured substance such as clay, finger paints...; or they may
be interpretive as when the subject tells what a
stimulus-situation, like a picture, means to him; or they may be
cathartic as when the subject discharges affect or feeling upon the
stimulus-situation and finds an emotional release that is revealing
of his affective reactions toward the represented
stimulus-situation... (p. 403). But projection does not necessarily
produce objects of aesthetic value because the person lacks
distance and does not meaningfully contemplate the medium
itself.Philosophical Commentary and Criticisms of Bullough
Philosophers who study aesthetic attitude or experience all
quote from Bulloughs (1912) seminal work, but their citations focus
on isolated concepts related to aesthetic distance. They fail to
grasp the fact that Bullough was offering a distinctively
psychological theory of process and not just the isolated concept
of psychical distance. Fenner (1996) offers a modern rendering of
the related notion of aesthetic attitude and continues the
disposition of empiricist philosophers to distinguish between
object and subject. Accordingly, an aesthetic object is any object,
or event, that is the focus of an aesthetic experience (p. 8). An
aesthetic attitude is intentionally adopted to facilitate the
spectators having of an aesthetic experience (p. 4). Thus, there
are aesthetic properties in an object or event which, when
discerned, give rise to an aesthetic experience. Beardsley (1982)
adopted five criteria to describe the aesthetic character of
experience, including object directness (attention to phenomenally
given qualities and relations in the object), felt freedom
(regarding the results of the experience), detached affect (a sense
of emotional distance that enables spectators to rise above even
negative emotions elicited by a work), active discovery (exercising
constructive mental activity), and wholeness (an enhanced sense of
personal integration resulting from the encounter).
The notion of aesthetic attitude has been subject to extensive
debate among philosophers. George Dickie (1964) argued that the
aesthetic attitude is a myth and criticized the very words used to
describe its boundary conditions. The core of Dickies critique was
aimed at the dual concepts of distance and distinterest. The
question is: Are there actions denoted by the phrase to distance or
states of consciousness denoted by being distanced? His answer was
grounded in personal anecdote.
When the curtain goes up, when we walk up to a painting, or when
we look at a sunset are we ever induced into a state of being
distanced either by being struck by the beauty of the object or by
pulling off an act of distancing? I do not recall committing any
such special actions or of being induced into any special state,
and I have no reason to suspect that I am atypical in this respect
(p. 57).
In a further attempt to demonstrate that there is nothing
distinctive about aesthetic attention, Dickie described a
playwright watching a rehearsal or an out-of-town performance with
a view to rewriting the script (p. 59) and stated:
The playwright might enjoy or be bored by the performance as any
spectator might be. The playwrights attention might even flag. In
short, the kinds of things which may happen to be playwrights
attention are no different from those that may happen to an
ordinary spectator, although the two may have quite different
motives and intentions (p. 59).
This critique does not demonstrate an appreciation for the
complex problems faced by creative writers and the importance of
shifting between engaged experience and detached judgment while
working through a piece.
Dickie concluded that being in an aesthetic attitude reduces to
attending closely to a work of art and this is all that is left
after the aesthetic attitude has been purged of distancing and
distinterested (p. 64) as operative concepts. Adopting a dismissive
attitude toward this equation, which he deemed vacuous, Dickie
concluded that if the definition has no vices, it seems to have no
virtues either (p. 64). An aesthetic attitude is viewed, in more
recent times (p. 65), as a way of lowering prejudices against
artistic styles. While of no theoretical value for aesthetics, it
may have therefore practical application. This microscopic (i.e.,
analytical) analysis of language might appear clever but without a
meaningful and in-depth analysis of process it appears somewhat
trite and while Dickie may play formally with the distance and
disinterest concepts, his own appreciation of attentional processes
lacks subtlety.
Dickies (1973) final critique of the idea treated aesthetic
distance as a voluntary action that is necessary for experiencing
the state of mind termed aesthetic consciousness as if it were a
hypnotic state of mind. He argued that Bullough and others who
adopted the aesthetic attitude viewpoint were overly committed to
the belief that people are generally concerned with the reality of
things (p. 18). Dickie simply does not believe that being
distanced, and therefore insulated from everyday practical
concerns, is a necessary condition for aesthetic appreciation. He
believes that people dont have to suspend practical activity
because any person who is in his right mind (p. 22) knows that
watching a play in a theatre is not a practical activity.
Dickies analysis holds that devices which supposedly encourage
aesthetic distance, such as frames or raised stages, are signals
which remind us of conventions governing particular art situations
rather than a special psychological force which restrains
spectators (p. 25) or a special mental state so delicate that the
least external pressure destroys it (p. 27). We almost always have
a background awareness of something external to a work (p. 27) and
neither it nor momentary distractions necessarily interfere with
appreciation (p. 27). If concerns with external things distract a
person from the work then that person is out of relation with the
work or not attending to it, and there is no need to speak of
states of being under-distanced. In short, there is no necessary
conflict between aesthetic appreciation and practical concerns (p.
26) and no reason to think that a psychological force to restrain
either action or thoughts occurs or is required in the ordinary,
non-desperate case of aesthetic experience (p. 28). This critique
is comparable to that offered by behavioral psychologists, such as
Duffy (1941), for whom there is no need to posit special states
such as emotion; one model of behavior stressing situational or
conventional cues is sufficient. But it also draws our attention to
the role of social conventions in shaping attitudes toward
aesthetic events.
Alan Casebier (1971) took on Dickies early challenge to the
concept of distance, arguing that there are many more types of
distance and non-distance cases than he considers (p. 72). He cited
a number of examples that go beyond the narrow definition of
distance as focused attention and considered as unwarranted Dickies
assumption that distance implies inattention to the aesthetic
object. With reference to Orson Welless film Citizen Kane, he
described an historian who might focus his attention on its
historical accuracy and be concerned with its external relations to
American history. A second example involved an hypothetical friend
of William Randolph Hearst who attends closely to the film but
considers it to be an intentional slur, as did many who saw it as a
parody of the famous publishers life. A third viewer, a film maker,
might also consider practical external relations between the visual
and auditory qualities of the film and film-craft. Still a fourth
observer might be drawn away from the film by a series of
remembrances triggered by the apparent similarity between her own
marital situation and that of Kanes first wife. While this viewer
might digress away from the film, the others are variously involved
in attending in conjunction with different forms of contextualizing
the work. Thus, one can be both personally involved in many
different ways while maintaining a certain aesthetic distance.
SYSTEMS THEORY AND THE DEATH OF THE AESTHETIC OBJECTThe
Aesthetic Work as an ObjectIn the early part of the 20th century,
New Criticism maintained that the properties and structures of
literary works could be formally and objectively analyzed in much
the same way as physical objects in daily life (e.g., T.S. Eliot,
1932/1975). By accomplishing this, literary criticism could have
the same standing as scientific investigation, an achievement
indeed during the era of the Vienna Circle and its positivist
doctrine (Cupchik, & Leonard, 2001). The same idea could also
be found in formalist art criticism (e.g., Clement Greenberg,
1946/1957) which sought to preserve the sanctity of modernist High
Art in the face of an encroachment by Popular (i.e., Low) Art and
Mass Media (Benjamin, 1967). One might argue that the desire to
preserve the aura (Benjamin, 1967) of an original work of art
extends, on the one hand, the cult of genius begun in the
Renaissance when artworks were first signed, and on the other hand,
the need to preserve the High Art object as a thing which could be
privately owned or hung in a public art gallery as an embodiment of
cultural and financial value. Monroe Beardsleys (1958/1981) highly
concrete description of a painting by Renoir (Three Bathers) as an
aesthetic object exemplifies this material perspective. He
described it as an oil painting on canvas, executed in 1892,
containing some lovely flesh tones, that is located on a wall in
New Yorks Metropolitan Museum, and is worth a great deal of
money!
The Aesthetic Work as a SystemThe death of the aesthetic object
as a thing, in the mid-20th century, can be traced in part to
information theory which dealt with the simultaneous presence of
symbolic and purely sensory qualities in visual, musical, and
literary creative works. Moles (1958/1968) wanted to show the role
that information theory plays in the mechanisms of perception and
more particularly of esthetic perception (p. 4). His focus was on
aesthetic messages, be they musical, visual, or polydimensional
(e.g., cinerama), and on the channel which conveys a message from a
transmitter to a receiver (p. 7). A message is a finite, ordered
set of elements of perception drawn from a repertoire and assembled
in a structure, the elements of which are defined by the properties
of the receiver (p. 9). The information that is transmitted along
these channels is conceptualized as a quantity and can thereby be
measured and related to human perception and behavior.
My concern here is not with the application of an engineering
metaphor to the world of aesthetics which has received due
criticism (Green & Courtis, 1966/1969). Rather, it is to show
the value of treating an artwork in an abstract manner as a
multilayered event. Moles stated that Within the same material
message, there is a superposition of several distinct sequences of
symbols. These symbols are made of the same elements grouped in
different ways (Moles, 1958/1968, p. 129). According to the
information theoretic viewpoint, subject matter and style emerge
from the same basic material elements (e.g., dabs of color)
organized in different ways. At a basic level, relations among
physical/sensory elements of the medium distributed in space (e.g.,
dabs of color) convey aesthetic information that defines artistic
style. These same elementary properties also group to denote
objects, people, settings, and events at the higher symbolic level
of semantic organization.
The multilayering concept in visual aesthetics can also be
analyzed in terms of figure and ground relations. The figural part
of a work, its subject matter, conveys semantic information, while
the ground of the work encompasses its style and transmits
syntactic information (Berlyne, 1971, 1974). A comparable view of
the multileveled nature of the aesthetic work was also expressed at
a slightly later time period by Gestalt oriented theorists
(Arnheim, 1986; Kreitler & Kreitler, 1972). Arnheim (1986)
underscored the application of Gestalt laws to visual shapes
possessing structural unity rather than those which are piecemeal
or atomistic. Accordingly, ...every Gestalt is generated by a
two-way process operating downward from the comprehensive structure
of the whole and at the same time upward from the structures of the
constituent subwholes (p. 283). These "subwholes" or "isolable
sections of contexts".....while clearly influenced by the context,
retain considerable independence and by their conspicuous presence
enrich the structural interaction of which the perceiver becomes
aware (p. 283). This implies that a meaningful hierarchy should be
viewed in terms of "stepwise dependencies" among segments. A part
is a Gestalt embedded in a larger context. A whole, more often than
not, is also a part of a larger context, which, however, is being
ignored, with or without justification (p. 284). The central point
here is that meaning is always dependent on context both within and
without the work and these contexts can be hierarchically
structured thereby setting the stage for depth as a fundamental
property of aesthetic meaning and involvement.
Kreitler and Kreitler (1972) applied a comparable Gestalt
analysis in clarifying what it is in the contents and structure of
works of art which makes it the carrier of such a multiplicity of
meanings and significations whose wholeness persists in the face of
a variety of multileveled integrations (p. 294). Multileveledness
is
the capacity of a work of art to be grasped, elaborated, and
experienced in several systems of connects potential meanings, each
of which allows a meaningful, clear, comprehensive, and sometimes
even autonomous organization of all the major constituents of the
work of art (Kreitler & Kreitler, 1972, p. 295).
However, regardless of whether the different levels complement
one another, they represent hierarchically more comprehensive
meanings, remain autonomous, or tend to fuse within the framework
of a more general conception, each level affords a view of the
whole, without impairing the wholeness quality of the work of art,
produced by many or all of the levels together (Kreitler &
Kreitler, 1972, p. 297).
Multileveledness appears to be a joint product of
characteristics in the work of art and of certain modes of
perception and elaboration on the part of the observer (p.
297).
The Kreitlers (1972) provided a very interesting account of
relations between multileveledness and aesthetic distance looking
back over the history of the concept. A disinterested attitude, in
Bulloughs sense, eliminates practical involvement with a play, for
example, and inhibits action that would normally be called for if
the events were taking place in real life rather than on the stage.
This distancing also enhances attention to the work and intensity
of the internal experience elicited by the work. But a second
viewpoint suggests that Apparent detachment is thus a side effect
of an intense, multileveled personal involvement in the work of art
(p. 282). Thus the complexity of experience evoked by identifying
with different characters and their potentially incompatible
viewpoints is another inhibitor of action. According to the first
viewpoint, distance is a factor external to experiencing and limits
its boundaries...without reducing its intensity and degree of
personal involvement (p. 282). The second approach holds that
distance is a factor inherent in the very act of experiencing art
fully and uninhibitedly (p. 282). It is closer to the Gestalt and
constructivist emphasis on the structuring of experience, i.e., its
chainlike and multileveled nature (p. 283).
An important addition of later 20th century thought has to do
with the social role of the recipient or audience member. The
Kreitlers argue that in its early stages art seems to have been
much more closely bound up with action and participation (pp.
283-284), while the emergence of High Art was accompanied by social
codes stressing behavioral inhibition. The Kreitlers therefore tie
aesthetic distance to inhibition and conclude that the optimal
degree of inhibition can hardly be determined in isolation from the
accepted social role of the observer and on the complex system of
interactions between observer, object, and situation (p. 284).
This more complex appreciation of the structure of aesthetic
works and events was also central to an emerging movement in the
humanities emphasizing the polyvalent (Schmidt, 1982),
indeterminate (Iser, 1971), and open-ended (Eco, 1989) quality of
the interpretive process. Reader-Response theorists (Holland, 1975;
Fish, 1980) and constructivist (Schmidt, 1982) scholars in the
latter half of the 20th century stressed the idea that it is
impossible to uncover true meaning in literary and other aesthetic
works. While aesthetic conventions may govern the appreciation of
stylistic structures, it is important to appreciate the subjective
and interpretive roles of individuals and communities. It is
precisely this open-ended and multileveled nature of art and
literary works that invites deeper intellectual and emotional
examination.
Gestalt ApplicationsIser (1978) has proposed a theory of the
reading process that takes into account Gestalt principles, and
demonstrates the value of a contextualizing and systemic approach.
He described the reader as synthesizing a text into an expanding
network of connections that integrates denoted references and
contexts. In the act of reading, a person is constantly
anticipating future events in the text, while retrieving and
modifying things from memory. The fragmented quality of literary
texts challenges the Gestalt principle of good continuation by
making it difficult to build consistency. These breaks in good
continuation, which are embedded by the author in a text through
"fragmented, counterfactual, contrastive or telescoped sequence"
(Iser, 1978, p. 186), mobilize interpretive activity. It is this
"impeded quality of a text that promotes the production of
diversified interpretive images.
Meaning emerges from the grouping of these interpretations with
coherence serving as a criterion for interrelating "the polyphonic
harmony of the layered structure" (Iser, 1978, p. 175) of the text.
Relations between part and whole or "theme" and "field" is defined
in terms of "relevance" (Gurwitsch, 1964). Themes can be juxtaposed
against different contexts or "fields" in accordance with a sender
or receiver's goals, needs, etc. The notion of thematic relevance
is particularly important to the problem of multilayered meaning
because a change of context can lead to the reconceptualization of
meaning. There is a clear similarity here between Arnheims gestalt
analysis of part-whole relations in visual images and Isers account
of the search for coherence in impeded texts.
Summary and ImplicationsThe aesthetic work is no longer
conceived of in object terms in which the more or less stable
physical materiality of a painting is confused with invariance of
its meaning. But there is a link with the past. Both 20th and 17th
century scholars believed that aesthetic beauty resides within the
coherence or unity amidst the diversity of organized levels,
respectively. The emphasis placed by constructivists in the later
20th century on the interpretive role of the individual can be seen
as a return to the holistic Kantian and Leibnitzian traditions,
continued through the Gestalt and Phenomenological schools. The
same work means different things to different people under
different circumstances (Schmidt, 1982), implying that meaning
depends on the context that is brought to bear. When the context is
internal to the piece, as described by Iser, meaning will depend on
how parts of a text are seen in relation to each other. When the
context is external, it depends on the kinds of questions the
viewer is asking about the artist/author, the era in which the work
was executed, and its originality in relation to earlier styles. If
the accepted boundary of contexts is quite wide, then interpreters
can bring to bear arbitrary ones that reflect their own doctrinal
agendas, as in some Postmodern criticism.
SYNTHESISThe two dominant approaches to aesthetic distance
describe external and internal models. The Enlightenment and
Empiricist traditions emphasized realism and the ways that an
artist or playwrights carefully constructed representations of the
world could externally modulate experiences of pleasure and
excitement. This external model is based on the mundane premise
that people spontaneously engage in acts of cognition to recognize
familiar objects and universal themes from everyday life, and
generally experience feelings of pain or pleasure associated with
them. The evocative potency of the work diminishes psychical
distance in part because of the immediacy of this effect and the
fact that the locus of emotion is perceived as out there in the
aesthetic artifact or event which caused the experience in the
first place. According to this model, attachment (i.e., close
psychological distance) should be to works that evoke positive
feelings or excitement in accordance with the recipients affective
needs (Cupchik, 1995).
This concept of a work as an aesthetic object applies best if it
is approached in the context of action. The context of action is
inherently purposive in nature and involves a pragmatic attitude on
the part of the person. Approaching a work as an aesthetic object
within a context of action can imply different things. It may be
seen as a commodity with a certain monetary value to be collected
or to be given to a museum because of its tax deduction value.
Similarly, an artist can produce artworks repeatedly in a
particular style because there is a market for them. A work can be
viewed systemically in the context of action if only some of its
qualities are relevant, as in the case of a decorative piece that
fits into a particular setting. Aesthetic distance in the context
of action would then be based on the approach or avoidance value
attached to the object.
Scholars in the Romantic tradition, on the other hand, focused
on the role of the recipient in constructing an interpretation of
the meaning of a work. Acts of imagination provide an internal way
to synthesize sensory and symbolic qualities of the multilayered
aesthetic artifact or event into a coherent whole. Treating the
aesthetic work as if it were real requires a willing suspension of
disbelief (that the work is not absolutely faithful to the literal
world) and an effort at finding meaning in the piece. This applies
to artist/authors and recipients alike who, at the higher levels of
appreciation, engage both in doing and undergoing. These
Gestalt-like acts of closure also depend on the perspective (i.e.,
understanding, vision both literally and metaphorically) that
artists/authors and recipients bring to the creative works. It is
here that context (i.e., knowledge, personal and social relevance)
shapes perspective which in turn determines what is real for the
creative person and the recipient. Thus, the internal experience of
the person provides a ground for the aesthetic episode and is the
locus of the unfolding meaning and emotion. When the structure of a
work is personally, intellectually, or emotionally meaningful to
the artist/author/recipient, distance is reduced between them and
an attachment is formed.
A common framework is needed a priori in order to synthesize
these two approaches. Objects and the artifacts that denote them
have both material sensory qualities that define them perceptually
and symbolic meaning that identifies them linguistically. In
everyday cognition, there is a bias in favor of identifying useful
objects and sensory qualities are automatically discarded on route
to object recognition (Craik & Lockhart, 1972). However,
aesthetic episodes are unique because both material sensory and
symbolic qualities are attended to and merge in a unified
experience. In fact, artists and authors intentionally manipulate
sensory qualities to make them salient and reawaken our
sensibilities, thereby making us aware of the process of perception
itself. It is this process of deautomatizing perception from the
cognitive bias of everyday life that constitutes a first step in
aesthetic education.
The integration of these qualitatively different material
sensory and symbolic qualities into a coherent whole provides a
cross-modal challenge for both the artist and the audience. The
aesthetic attitude provides an opportunity for integrating sensory
and symbolic information, structure and sign, style and subject
matter, into a coherent experience without concern for its
functional value. The more representational a work, the more the
sensory qualities are subsumed within the symbolic ones to maximize
verisimilitude. The less representational a work, the more the
sensory qualities take on a life of their own in the form of a
style, and the more difficult it is to read the work unless the
underlying code of order is known. This balance between symbolic
and sensory qualities, usually referred to as subject matter and
style, affects the relative distance between the person and the
work.
The context of experience focuses on the whole encounter with a
work and is valued intrinsically. Approaching a work in the context
of experience has interesting implications in terms of treating it
as an object or as a system. Artists, particularly during modern
times, have sought to affirm the surface of an artwork as a thing
that occupies space. One reason for doing this was to eliminate
views of artworks as mirrors of, or windows onto, reality. In
modern art this was accomplished by affirming the two
dimensionality of a piece and reducing illusionary depth of space.
Therefore, it is possible to experience a work of art in its
thingness or sensory materiality. Qualities like impasto (i.e.,
thickness of surface paint) can make viewers feel like reaching out
to touch the salient surface. Thus, implied tactile qualities of a
work as an object can reduce aesthetic distance.
However, it is in a systemic view of artworks that the context
of experience plays a more significant role. Experience can be
shaped by relational meaning within the sensory qualities of the
work. The overall compositional structure of a work in and of
itself shapes experience unbeknownst to the viewer (though
manipulated intentionally by the artist). This does not merely
refer to the placement of objects in a rendered scene for the
purpose of creating balance or tension. The very selection and
juxtaposition of colors according to principles of complementarity
and contrast can create the illusion of space or even of motion.
Once subject matter is thrown into the mix, experience extends to
all domains of symbolic meaning, both social and personal.
As many scholars have noted, digressions into the self through
evoked associations serve to distance the person from the work.
However, this is avoided to the extent that the viewer works to
integrate the physical/sensory and symbolic levels of meanings in
the search for coherence. Resonance between these two seemingly
disparate domains engages the viewer because structure in the
sensory domain serves as a metaphor for the symbolic. Thus, the
theme of isolation can be effectively communicated by appropriately
situating a solitary figure, but it is experienced more fully, and
metaphorically, though the creation of a highly enclosed space
(Cupchik & Wroblewski-Raya, 1998).
The work loses its object quality in the context of experience,
where it possesses both structure and indeterminacy. Thus, there is
some kind of order involving subject matter and/or style but,
because the levels have some autonomy, there are many different
ways to perceive and interpret it. The interaction with the
artist/author is governed by an attempt to bring coherence (unity
amidst diversity) to relations between the manipulated medium and
its effects in the unfolding work, while preserving maximum
uncertainty in the synthesis. A successful painting is one in which
an attempt to make a visual statement is appreciated by cognoscenti
who can work backward to uncover the evolution of the piece from
the perspective of the artist. The audience, too, tries to bring
coherence to the unfolding interpretation and accompanying
experience. But the audience members start with the whole and must
analyze the structure embedded within and only the most experienced
can readily do so. The greater the number of dimensions or levels
of the work that the audience members can discern and appreciate,
the richer their experience. The more they engage the work
interpretively, the greater will be their pleasure.
Absorption defines a condition wherein the boundaries between
the person and the aesthetic work, understood as open systems, are
minimized. It would be highest when: (1) the symbolic meaning or
perceived subject matter of the work elicits clear personal
associations in the recipient, and (2) the sensory experiences
elicited by the work give experiential form to the symbolic
meaning. Since the locus of construction is within the recipient,
the boundaries between the work and the recipient is minimized and
the experienced connection is heightened. A trade-off between
subject matter and style becomes relevant here if negative affect
is elicited. Under these circumstances, an intellectualized
attention to style reduces excessive affect and moves the recipient
to a more comfortable position relative to the work (Cupchik &
Wroblewski-Raya, 1998).
It is also important to address communal absorption in aesthetic
works which are incorporated into social or religious rituals.
While artifacts from small-scale societies are aesthetic objects
and considered collectors items by people from large industrialized
states, they are systemic virtual objects for members of the source
society. Each virtual object conveys important information about
the social structure and beliefs of the society (Layton, 1991),
while embodying dynamic and expressive qualities as well. Together
they give the work an aura, an evocative quality that both arouses
intensified consciousness of shared meanings, while providing the
soothing feelings that result from collective experiences or
happenings. Absorption thereby becomes an intersubjective cognitive
and emotional event. Scheffs (1979) treatment of ritual emphasizes
the role that it plays in catharsis, the spilling of pent up
emotions in a safe collective context. Popular culture can be seen
in a similar light as providing collective emotional associations
for people raised in a particular historical era (Cupchik &
Leonard, 2001). In essence, it makes it possible to express pent up
emotions in a subculture, and provides an affective marker for the
feelings of a generation. Stories can also be seen as raising
consciousness and moral valuation (Averill, in press). Chassidic
story-telling, for example, has used simple but engaging language
to increase peoples awareness of moral and spiritual aspects of
daily life (Buxbaum, 1994).
Detachment refers to a situation in which the context of action
outweighs in importance the context of experience. At an individual
level, it might involve the purchase of an aesthetic object based
on some criterion external to it, such as value based on market
parameters (i.e., notoriety of the artist, availability of his/her
works, and so on). Detachment can also occur even when a work is
treated systemically. Someone might experience sympathy (as opposed
to empathy) for the circumstances of situated characters depicted
in paintings, dramas, and so on, but not want to get involved, so
to speak. One could not accuse the person of failing to attend to
the play, but it simply does not have an affectively evocative
quality. This might reflect the topical nature of the subject
matter that is alien to individual members of an audience who are
unfamiliar with the issues.
Communal detachment is a phenomenon of large-scale societies and
can be attributed in part to the effects of mass media. Television
and the internet, while providing speedy and unparalleled access to
information, also provide a large-scale frame around both good and
bad events taking place in the world. This creates a sense of
detachment as one observes possible horrors at a safe and sometimes
voyeuristic distance. Thus, while media can bring us knowledge
about problems in far away lands or even in our back yards, they
also affirm our separation from them. At the same time, one cannot
put the blame on a medium in and of itself. As a complex system it
functions simultaneously at many levels. While writers,
cinematographers, costume designers, and others, might work
collectively to create aesthetic programs, they are potentially
constrained by the forces of globalization and corporate power. The
shaping of programs might work downward from the hierarchy of
power, favoring particular themes, and desiring to produce
agreeable feelings which favorably dispose people toward the
products linked with them. While new larger and more detailed
formats of films are becoming available, they temporarily serve to
attract perceptual attention. But once the novelty wears off, the
same problem prevails.
CONCLUSIONS
The two streams from which modern aesthetic theory flows are
based on different ontologies. The Empiricist view is fundamentally
mechanistic and assumes a kind of realism according to which the
structure of objects and events in the physical world do two
things. First, they operate through the equivalent of affordances
(Gibson, 1971) or constraints (Hochberg, 1986) that determine the
image experienced by viewers according to the criteria of everyday
perception and cognition. Second, they assume that these objects
and events manipulate emotion along a dimension of pain versus
pleasure, and leave memories which serve as markers for them. Not
surprisingly, the ideas of the Taste Theorists were formulated in
relation to representational paintings which provide the clearest
examples of mimesis, an attempt to copy the physical world.
Aesthetic distance reflects an awareness of the work as a cultural
artifact and is aided by the stylistic manipulation of a medium
which makes the materiality of the work salient.
The Romantic tradition is more vitalistic in its approach and is
sensitive to the organic development of the experience as
encounters with cultural artifacts unfold in time. It also
emphasizes the constructive efforts of individuals and audiences in
the search for meaning. Given that meaning is indeterminate, it is
impossible to use truth as a criterion of aesthetic appreciation.
Rather, the contexts associated with an aesthetic episode will
shape the interpretive process. Theoretical developments occurred
in relation to drama and the problem of distinguishing reality from
unreality. While the real is part of an intersubjectively shared
world, the unreal is wrapped up with hope and fantasy, both
individual and collective. Since both themes are present in
dramatic works, the audience must willingly suspend disbelief and
go along with the imitation or simulation (Oatley, 1999) of events
in the dramatic world that recreates social episodes.
Aesthetic distance helps situate the person with reference to an
aesthetic event. It involves an awareness of the event as such, be
it a painting or a performance, as different from, though
meaningfully related to the everyday world. It preserves the
aesthetic viewpoint, one in which sensory and stylistic qualities
are given a standing of equal importance with symbolic subject
matter. A willing suspension of disbelief is essential if the
person or audience is to set aside the everyday criterion of
singular referential meaning. The combination of both sensory and
symbolic meaning, provides the artist/author with an opportunity to
create new stylistic codes or meanings. The viewer or listener also
becomes engaged in a process of synthesizing meaning and this
affords the experience of both challenge and pleasure in the
interpretive process. Grounding the aesthetic experience in
culturally shared knowledge and becoming aware of the interpretive
process itself are important aspect of aesthetic episodes. Rather
than juxtaposing realist and constructivist ontologies, they should
be viewed as complementary with the framework of constructivist
realism (Cupchik, 2001).
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