Frances to Michael... The exact wordplay used by Kreitler specifically in regard to the Worringer theory are empathy and distance, but the terms empathy and anxiety are further used generally by Kreitler in addressing all such psychical approaches to art that are also dyadic or polemic. My use of the term apathy for distance and also for anxiety was merely my shorthand for the Worringer apathy caused by distance and anxiety that Kreitler held Worringer saw evoked when abstract artworks were engaged. This theory of a feared psychical source for abstraction in art was deemed by Kreitler to be a fantasy. On the other hand, the theoretic effect of artistic abstraction to be a way of control as given by Worringer was however held by Kreitler to indeed be more successful.
Michael wrote... 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.
