On Jul 2, 2009, at 1:28 PM, Frances Kelly wrote:
In any event, the essay is well mentioned in the 1972 book "Psychology of the Arts" by Hans and Shulamith Kreitler in regard to space and distance and symbol. They attack the theory for wrongly attempting to classify art according to whether works evoke a feeling of empathy or apathy,
Did they use those two terms? or is that a bit of your wordplay? Worringer most emphatically did not assert that the impulse to abstraction sprang from some lack of energy for empathy, from lassitude or ennui or whatever. He said it came from a fundamental anxiety or fear of the world. BTW, he based some of his ideas on the works of Theodor Lipps (1851-1914), a German philosopher interested in art and aesthetics, who developed a theory of artistic or aesthetic empathy, which influenced Worringer (who cites Lipps several times by name in his essay).
and for fantastically speculating about the psychical origins of abstraction in art.
Is this the Kreitlers again, or you? Why "fantastical"? This conveys far more than a disagreement with W's notion of the source of abstraction: it conveys outright scorn of that idea.
They do however applaud the theory for emphasizing abstraction as a sound albeit illusory means for introducing law into chaos, and positing control over complexity, and offering relief to tension, and allowing prediction into the unknown, and situating the self as master of a brute world.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected] http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
