In his 1908 essay, Abstraction and Empathy, Worringer offers a further refinement of physchological approaches to aesthetics and art that tended to center on empathy alone. Whereas other philosophers, like Vernon Lee and Theodor Lipps, claimed that empathy was the projection of the ego into an artwork -- as in "losing oneself in the work" to enjoy, to be at one with its vicarious imitation of nature's vitality, Worringer added an opposing notion, abstraction, to account for the withdrawal of the ego from nature's incomprehensible complexity to the safe haven of regular, static, ideal geometry. Worringer concluded that both approaches are fundamental to self affirmation and enable what he called "self privation", empathy being the projection of self (metaphorically and as-if the other) and abstraction being the escape from the "arbitrariness of organic existence" to ideal, permanent form (metaphorically, and as if the immutable and perfect).
Worringer was not only contributing to the philosophy of aesthetics, he was also offering coherence to the fracturing art concepts of the 20c. He recognized that the rules of artistic imitation based on skill and faithful rendering of nature -- and the canonic Western tradition -- were being strongly affected by a new psychologial expressiveness that led to a broad "naturalism" as well as by the influences of Oriental traditions and even primitive traditions of geometric patterning and abstract symbols. thus Worringer was explaining the new style, the new contemporary scene. Worringer had enormous influence on the later developments in art and aesthetics. The critical examination of much 20C art would be hobbled without his concepts. There are analogous approaches in art criticism in the work of Camille Pagila, for example, who uses the terms Dionysian and Apollonian that correspond to empathy and abstraction, respectively. Today we might find problems with Worringer's mutually exclusive empathy and abstraction, however much they unite in his notion of self-privation. New neuroscience claims an entangled feedback looping for our thinking that makes polarities like Worringer's impossible, as Damasio does in conflating reason and feeling, or as Lakoff and Johnson do in conflating brain and mind. Further, whereas Worringer chose imitation and empathy as clearly fundamental to human nature, and beyond art he is less assertive about the impulse for abstraction, which in his hierarchy of mind, is a retreat from empathy, new neuroscience shows that people born blind, thus without any visual experience, can draw fundamentqal geometic patterns they "see". Research seems to confirm that our fundamental cognition is made up of such simple patterns -- but still patterns infused with empathy. At any rate, there is much to admire in Worringer's essay. Personally, I think artists have not yet fully explored the aesthetic potentials of a fully integrated empathy-abstraction style that fuses the polarity and thus reveals the paradox of art. It's only possible in make-believe, as-if, metaphor, and the meaninglessness of form in itself. WC --- On Fri, 7/3/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > From: [email protected] <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy > To: [email protected] > Cc: [email protected] > Date: Friday, July 3, 2009, 8:37 AM > The conclusion you present is wrong. > Aristotle's 'imitation' has a broader > application . It is accepted fact among serious > philosophers. > Boris Shoshensky > To: [email protected] > Subject: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy > Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 16:36:06 GMT > > Worringer tells us that "it is necessary to agree on > this, that the instinct > of imitation, this elementary need of man, stands outside > of aesthetics in > the proper sense and that its satisfaction has in principle > nothing to do > with > art." --- which he tells us "is created out of > mankind's psychological > needs, > the highest happiness" > > Whereas Aristotle asserted that wrote that "to learn gives > the liveliest > pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; > whose capacity, > however, of learning is more limited" -- and that is > Aristotle's explanation > for the universal pleasure felt in things imitated. > > > So, it looks like what we have, here, is a profound > difference of opinion. > > I'm inclined to agree with The Philosopher, because > I'm really not sure how > to draw the line between imitation and what Worringer > calls "naturalism" or > " > the expression of organic vitality" > > And I'm doubting that Aristotle would have made that > distinction, either. > I.e. -- one sort of man (the ordinary kind - of limited > knowledge) is pleased > by an imitation of ordinary things, while another > kind of man (the > philosopher) is pleased by an imitation of things that only > a philosopher > might be able to notice. > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Come clean with a brand new shower. Click now! > http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxSDIDDfzF79agcQFQspfDG3z > jfiT6chWyEsLrEbjJ0cUNLLhKsXFO/
