I found Lessing on line but not all of it. What he begins by saying is that yelling and screaming in great pain is consistent with having a great soul, so that the reason for not showing Laocoon screaming is not because it is wrong but-because it is too ugly and it is better to take a more expressive moment,less distorted in feature. He seems to think that Winckelmann didn't think the great in soul would do any screaming,which was contradicted by several accounts by Sophocles and others of Hercules and someone else, Philoctes? suffering great pain very loudly.
-----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Dec 7, 2013 8:19 pm Subject: Re: comment invited I gotta go back and read Lessing again. The Laocoon group always struck me as wildly emotional, a great example of late Hellenistic. I've seen it, too, and was shocked that its a rather small sculpture in actuality whereas it always looks so big in photos. There has been an ongoing debate as to the real configuation of the original, since it was found with crucial pieces missing. Maybe that debate is now resolved but I do recall seeing models of at least three plausible arrangements of the original fragments. Delacroix was really engaged in trying to realize the moment of heightened emotion by implication more than expression. He wanted to take it to the point where the actual full-blast emotion would occur in the viewer (who vicariously imagines the next moment suggested by his painting) but not depicted in the actual painting. Although his Lion Hunt pictures seem to go the full way. wc ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, December 7, 2013 6:56 PM Subject: Re: comment invited Lessing is quoted as saying that the reason for the Laocoon's relatively peaceful expression was that any violence of expression would have been unaesthetic,which is some jump to a conclusion. -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Dec 7, 2013 7:48 pm Subject: Re: comment invited I always try to make something beautiful and often do, for me. I do think it's impossible to make something beautiful on demand. So, no guarantees. wc ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, December 7, 2013 6:35 PM Subject: Re: comment invited Conger wrote: But in art it's often presumed that artworks, of whatever medium, are made
as well as they can be made,
serving, presumably some higher, "aesthetic"
goal or purpose. By 'made' I
mean also 'express'. Does aesthetic experience
require a notion of the
best, of the best, aiming at the best, of the
highest order, as well is it
can be, etc., even if no one knows beforehand what
might exemplify the
best as a state of mind? It has often been said that if you try to make "something Beautiful" you won't.
