Expressive Communication

Five Principles of Expressive Communication
How Art can contribute to the communication of social movements
In the context of assisting in the communication of social movements, there exists a space for the inclusion of Art as a form of directed communication, as a compliment to the traditional uses of language, and as a medium for specifically communicating emotion and creating empathy. It is an opportunity to reach beyond the traditional use of rhetoric as a linguistic method of communicating emotion.

It is generally accepted that language is the traditional domain of communication, whether that be through the use of words or signs. “By means of language we can conceive the intangible, incorporeal things we call our ideas, and the equally inostensible elements of our perceptual world we call fact.” (Langer 21) Communication through a combination of “audible or visible words”, and in such a form that is understood by others, is what Susan Langer describes as discourse. To this pattern of discursive form, I would add the area of Semiosis, and by doing so; acknowledge other image-based signs as elements of language and discourse.

Language as it is described here is clearly indispensable to communication generally. Within social movements, it enables an audience to better understand another’s feeling and personal position regarding a given subject. The poster with the raised fist describes symbolically the emotion of anger or empowerment, the image of the hungry child can convey an idea of sadness or desolation, and the words in a magazine article can explain the emotional state of the author or his subject. While these examples contribute to a greater understanding and sympathy in an audience, they do not create empathy. By this I mean they can feel for the individual but they can’t know what it is that the individual feels.

Language is generally limited in its ability to generate that kind of empathy, but where it does occasionally succeed we call it Art. Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Whereas by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by art he transmits his feelings.” To better understand what is meant by a work of art we can turn to Susan Langer who said it’s “an expressive form created for our perception through sense or imagination, and what it expresses is human feeling”. Tolstoy took this idea further by suggesting that for something to be truly considered Art an audience must be “infected by these feelings and also experience them.” (63) The existing distinction is that while language is descriptive in nature, Art is expressive. Language and Art are both forms of communication but their nature and impact are different.

If we accept this distinction and seek to utilise artistic expression as a form of communication, we need to understand the effective means for doing so. We need a set of principles for how to make Art express emotion. This immediately presents a problem, and with it the opportunity to reveal our first principle in expressing emotion through Art, what I’m calling expressive communication.

Edward Bullough, in an approach to understanding aesthetics and expression, has looked at the need for a kind of psychological distance in order for something to be considered Art. In terms of intention he presents an interesting problem for Art as directed communication. “Distance” he writes, “is obtained by separating the object and its appeal from one’s own self, by putting it out of gear with practical needs and ends” (371), or as R.G. Collingwood writes, “the means-and-ends, or technique, terminology […] is not applicable” when creating Art, for while “there is certainly here a directed process, […] the end is not something foreseen or preconceived” (111). That being the case, an Artist cannot plan to communicate a particular idea or even feeling with regard to a social movement or anything else, which brings us to our first principle of expressive communication.

Expression must come from within, and reveal itself through the process of creation; it cannot be premeditated. This lack of premeditation is also one of the factors that make artistic expression valuable within a larger communication approach. There is an implied emotional honesty that engenders trust, allowing the audience to expose themselves to the emotion. This is in contrast to rhetorical communication, which, while often very effective as a persuasive tool, is typically viewed with a degree of suspicion.

Another problem exists where art is performed in isolation or with only limited perspective. Though not premeditation, its result is essentially the same; it tends to restrict free expression by placing parameters on it.

“If [the artist] decides to express only the emotions that pass current within the limits of that little society, he is selecting certain of his emotions for expression. The reason why this inevitably produces bad art is that, as we have already seen, it can only be done when the person selecting already knows what his emotions are.” (Collingwood 121)

In other words this isolation or limited perspective, which Collingwood described as “the curse of the Ivory Tower”, runs counter the first principle, which says that expression must reveal itself through the process of creation. Therefore, the second principle of expression is that the artist must avoid the constraints of the Ivory Tower. Instead they must bring all their experiences of perception and emotion to a work of art, not restricting it in space, time or notion.

Artists must take care that the emotion they communicate is actually expressed and not contrived. The earlier example of the poster with the raised fist may help elucidate this. As a rhetorical tool for communication this image may be very effective. It is visually a metaphor for shouting and effectively represents the emotion of anger, but it’s a contrivance and a rant. When an artist rants it cannot be considered Art as, rather than expressing emotion, it is describing emotion. A painting that is a rant may be of value in its descriptive form, or as a tool for persuasion, but in this context it is not Art, it is rhetorical communication.

“The artist never rants. A person who writes or paints or the like in order to blow off steam, using the traditional materials of art as a means for exhibiting the symtoms_ of emotion, may deserve praise as an exhibitionist, but loses for the moment all claim to the title of artist.” (Collingwood 122-123)

As Susan Langer writes, “a work of art expresses a conception of life, emotion, inward reality. But it is neither a confessional nor a frozen tantrum” (26). The rant can be seen as a contrivance of emotion rather than the true expression of emotion itself and as such, should be avoided by the artist. This is the third principle of expressive communication.

The concept of Art as anti-realistic is another area that deserves attention when considering expressive communication. For Bullough, “to say that Art is anti-realistic simply insists upon the fact that Art is not nature, never pretends to be nature and strongly resists any confusion with nature.” Art is not about imitation as Aristotle had theorised, and it is not the idealisation of nature. (377)

“To imitate nature so as to trick the spectator into the deception that it is nature which he beholds, is to forsake Art, its anti-realism, its distanced spirituality, and to fall below the limit into sham, sensationalism or platitude.” (378)

This is what Bullough calls under-distancing. It is the failure to create Art as a result of getting too close to the ordinary, the usual, or the banal. In the context of artistic expression as communication we can see how this under-distancing might impede the audience’s experience of emotion and hence the creation of empathy. It is for this reason that social movements should avoid encouraging literal representation and why the use of anti-realism is the fourth principle of expressive communication.

For the fifth and final principle of expression as communication we can look back to the early writings of George Santayana and his notion of the sublime. In the context of communicating for social movements this is perhaps the most difficult of our five principles to accept, and yet it is specifically about accepting the uncomfortable. Santayana described “the liberation of self by the consciousness of evil in the world, the Stoic sublime.” This notion alone is approachable but the difficulty lies in accepting that, as individuals, we may find liberation in the consciousness of evil as it is experienced or suffered by others.

“Terror makes us withdraw into ourselves: there with the supervening consciousness of safety […] comes the rebound, and we have that emotion of detachment and liberation in which the sublime really consists. […] We try to understand how the expression of pain could sometimes please. It can please, not in itself, but because it is balanced and annulled by positive pleasures, especially by this final and victorious one of detachment. If the expression of evil seems necessary to the sublime, it is only as a condition of this moral reaction.”

The idea that we might detach ourselves from the fear of a tempest storm and thus experience the sublimity of its expression is reasonable, but to experience “positive pleasures” in a detachment from the suffering of others is clearly disturbing. Yet if we overlook Santayana’s use of the term pleasure, it may be possible to imagine the sublimity of our own respective security and maybe even consider the existence of a subconscious exaltation through secure detachment. Still, it may seem difficult to imagine our last principle as the acceptance of the sublime. In fact it is more than this, the fifth principle of expressive communication is that Art should, where appropriate, embrace the Stoic sublime. While Santayana wrote of the consciousness of the audience he did not address the very important contribution of the conscience, and it is this, which gives the Stoic sublime its power to communicate emotion so effectively. It is the ability of the audience to reflect upon their own stoicism in the face of suffering that elevates the sublime expression to one of empathy, it is the realisation that when one of us suffers we all suffer.

Leo Tolstoy wrote, “If men lacked this other capacity of being infected by [A]rt, people might be almost more savage still, and above all more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.” (63) In presenting these five principles of expressing communication, I have sought to create a space where Art not only plays a role in the communication of social movements, it actually contributes uniquely in its ability to express emotion and generate empathy. When considered and used effectively, these guiding principles should help to ensure that the power of artistic expression uniquely contributes to communicating the emotions associated with social justice.
 Bibliography
Bullough, Edward. “Psychical Distance,” A modern Book of Esthetics. An Anthology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston: 1973
Collingwood, R.G. “Expressing Emotion and Arousing Emotion,” The Principles of Art. London: Oxford University Press, 1978
Langer, Susan K. Problems of Art. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1957
Santayana, George. “The nature of Beauty,” A modern Book of Esthetics. An Anthology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston: 1973
Tolstoy, Leo. “The Communication of Emotion,” A modern Book of Esthetics. An Anthology. Holt, Rinehart and