Search

The problem discussed in this paper arises from the emotional experience of Liss Eriksson's The Couple (figs. 1, 2 and 3). The discussion of the impression of tenderness and close contact between two people is in the main based on comparisons, even though internal characteristics of the work are also taken into account. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of choices of alternatives which consciously, or possibly unconsciously as well, play a part in experiencing the emotional qualities of a work. The examples from earlier periods begin with a presentation of a series of solutions to the problem of depicting the meeting between Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem. The intellectualism of Giotto (fig. 7) and his emphasis on the spatial function of the bodies is presented with examples from the religious art of the late Middle Ages (figs. 4, 5 and 6) which suggest a continuum from a discursive reading to the simultaneous experience of the artistic symbols. This moves into the area of the profane with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride (fig. 8) in which the gestures and other aspects of body language are discussed in relation to spatial problems and problems of light. Solutions from the works of Edvard Munch and Auguste Rodin are presented in which, against the background of differing personal and artistic concerns, the physical union of the bodies is one of the aspects emphasized strongly (figs. 9 and 10). In his publicly commissioned sculpture The House Liss Eriksson's starting point was Giacometti's Palace (1933). The version of the Couple which formed part of this work was later developed into the equally public work The Couple, a synthesis of ideas from The House, but now compressed and concentrated to the presentation of the two persons themselves, in close spiritual and physical union. The article concludes with discussion, now with a widened frame of reference, of the role played by choice in experiencing the emotional dimensions of The Couple. With the help of quotations from Björn von Rosen, the poet and artist, and Robert Musil, for instance, the absurdity of reconstructing unambiguous connections between formal structure and emotional experiences is emphasized. Only to a certain degree can the area of experience be rationalized. The inadequacy of language when it comes to the communication of this subtle content is illustrated, moreover, also with the introductory quotation from Joseph Brodsky, a reminder that can also be addressed to those who interpret pictures, "You do not dissect a bird to discover the source of its song; what you should dissect is your own ear.» In other words the aim of this discussion is to show that the emotional dimensions of a major work of art, despite the difficulties, should not be withheld from the rational analysis of art criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intense debate in the last decade on the nature of knowledge and the position of epistemology in cognitive psychology, cybernetics etc. has revived the old questions about aesthetic experience as comparable or contradictory to discursive forms of information as well as the question of the essential differences between art criticism and art history. Just as an experiment the author has analysed the epistemological premises of the well-known program for iconographical analysis that Panofsky formulated 1939 in his "Introductory" to Studies in Iconology. Panofsky is one of the very few art historians whose model for scientific investigation has been relevant for other humanistic disciplines. He is also one of the very few art theorists who has articulated a didactic instruction for the interested layman as well as for the scholar on how to reach valid historical knowledge. These were the prime reasons for examining his system. Other researchers, e.g. Gombrich, Arnheim, Riegl, Wölfflin, would have become objects for the same kind of analyses, but their methodologies are neither as explicit or as elaborated as Panofsky's system really is. The author does not focus on the three-step-investigation model (i.e. in the revised version of 1955: pre-iconographical description, iconographical analysis, iconological interpretation) that forms the second and the most well-known part of the iconographical method, but on the first and the third parts (concerning the object and the equipment of interpretation) and the comments by Panofsky to these and to their fundaments in everyday experiences and elementary visual perception. Panofsky never used the word "aesthetic" in his model and we could rather describe his system as a method of "making" aesthetic expressions intellectual and discursive. By the analysis it will be clear that Panofsky modelled his system on the classification categories of the analytical philosophy and that he used a terminology that placed him in a philosophical tradition as opposed to the traditions of aesthetic theory. Panofsky might have got some inspiration to his broad-minded epistemological premises by the common-sense philosophy of G. E. Moore; at the same time we can state that he was also indebted to the older idealistic tradition, which will be traced in his use of concepts like "synthetic intuition". In his sceptical attitude to the behaviouristic premises of the formal analysts the later Panofsky argued in a manner reminding of Potter—though Panofsky's argumentation still was characterised by a somewhat idealistic exaggeration as when he called them "insectolarists", as in Meanings in the Visual Arts 1955. Perception + interpretation were the basic concepts in Panofsky's theory. By the controlling principles based on history of tradition Panofsky furthermore profiled his theory in analogy to classical epistemologies—and to the natural sciences—by seeking the empirical corrective of our knowledge. Though Panofsky was not that sophisticated as a practical philosopher as we might have expected, his ambition to define what kind of general knowledge our cultural connotations will be based on, is well worth of being honored by modern hermeneutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]