Joachim Noller

 

How "present" are aesthetic feelings?[1]

 

Translation: Philip Marston

 

If we look for the buzzwords which dominate the debate on aesthetics at the turn of the millennium, then one of them which is at the cutting edge must be "presence"[2]. It seems to have left its footprint everywhere not only in aesthetics, but also in philosophy in general. But it cannot be our task here to present the full spectrum of thinking along these lines; as the chapter heading implies, our discussion will focus on one particular theme: does the presence theory help to understand aesthetic emotionality, can it also claim to represent a valid current approach in thinking about musical feelings? Our aim - if it is not already being far too presumptuous - is to sketch an outline for an answer to these questions; the route we must take to get there is, as so often, a labyrinthine one.

Especially in the field of aesthetics, "presence" is frequently contrasted with "representation". Indeed, it sometimes seems that the function ascribed to the attribute of being "present" is even the antidote to the alleged threat posed by the representation of something, in which the thing represented is merely substituted by artistic means, whether through being depicted or in some constellation of symbolic signs. One consequence of this is that the concept of representation oscillates between different aspects, so that it is subjected to a storm of criticism from all sides: if we are to believe this, it is representation which creates a dependency of art on the thing it represents, representation is a capability which, however, has been lost by modern art, representation also always means self-portrayal, and thus imposes a certain hierarchy of power, and last but not least, representation is always followed by interpretation, which is only accessible to the reader in subtexts formulated in words, thus generating a flood of language material which takes on a life of its own. These are - as rough headings - just a few of the characteristics of that hazardous substance we call representation. Representation means depicting something which is not itself there. Could we not perhaps avoid these dangers by laying the emphasis on all those "objects" which are "there" in the work of art and do not have the function of acting as proxy for something which is absent?

But what is the object of such "presence", what can be legitimately regarded as being present, what is quasi sufficient unto itself and does not betoken something else outside itself? We could cite the explanations of the theorists here, but then it immediately occurs to us that artists in the twentieth century attempted to give an answer to these questions decades before the philosophers. Might not so-called abstract art and painting be assessed as embodying an aesthetic of presence, and thus understood in a way which would, even today, cast new light on them? The conventional function of depicting things was dispensed with there, attention was focused on the materials, the colours, on that which was "there" and - at least we could advance the opinion - did not point towards something which was not there. This includes the way in which paint was applied, it includes the form, which does not represent anything in a conventional sense, but nevertheless shows an affinity with similar forms of our reality. Meanings and allusions to possible interpretations are hinted at, but they are no longer beholden to the representat­ive function in the traditional sense.

Let us take as an example the painter Willi Baumeister (1889-1955), who opposes the intrinsic forces dwelling in the artistic expressive resources themselves to the ancient purpose of depicting reality in his pamphlet Das Unbekannte in der Kunst. The artist follows a vision, or at least sees himself as doing so, "but the work begun under this lodestar develops autochthonous forces of its own in the process of being created, and these grow in intensity. Within the process of the artistic act there is accordingly a tipping point at which the vision intersects with the shaping of the form in such a way that a reversal of the two intensities becomes apparent. The effect of the vision diminishes in proportion to the burgeoning formal energies"[3]. Thus it appears at first sight that the artist is representing his inner vision, as though the finished artistic product fully and wholly represents this vision (in this sense, an abstract painting would also be representational art). But while this process is already underway, something else breaks through: something which cannot be really programmed by the artist; it is circumscribed as a sort of force-field, which acts to shape the form and which grows in intensity during the act of artistic creation. In another place he writes: "the essence of every significant artistic phenomenon lies in the breaking through of ever new forms, which are the invisible constituent shapes of the world of visible appearances"[4]. The result of this force-field, the formal constellation mentioned above, is not reserved exclusively to the work of art, since these are shapes which belong to every aspect of our world, but in the work of art - and that is its task - they become accessible to the senses (i.e., cross the threshold of perception to make us aware of them). Art takes part in a play of forces, and the way in which it does it only differs from other areas of reality in its degree of intensity. The relationship between art and the world (the ancient problem of mimesis) is here characterized not by representation, but by participation[5].

 

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There is a ubiquitous tendency in the aesthetic theories of the twentieth century to question whether art is capable of representing things at all; and this is directly linked with a highly critical appraisal of the semantic potency of artistic forms. Those who cast doubts on the artistic representation of the world will hardly be willing to grant the claim of art to capture the meaning of the world. This line of thought can cul­minate in total nihilism, which sees in contemporary art only the apotheosis of intellectually ennobled absurdities. In any case the connection persists, even without such pessimism: those who focus on the problems of the quality of representation cannot exclude the level of meaning from consideration.

Theorists who have embarked on such paths of thought, but wish to escape from their dead-ends, do not content themselves with proclaiming everything to be "non-sense", avoid aggravating the negative denial of semantic relevance by involving it in a dialectic process and thus relativizing it, juxtaposing it with a different category as a foil to it, and this is not infrequently subsumed under the generic heading of "presence". Thus Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht speaks of a tension between presence and meaning, of the "oscillation between presence effects and meaning effects"[6]. Presence effects are conceded above all to music; the author tries to communicate such perceptions, e.g. when he writes of "the almost excessive, exuberant sweetness that sometimes overcomes me when a Mozart aria grows into polyphonic complexity and when I indeed believe that I can hear the tones of the oboe on my skin"[7]; when one listens to music, it is the presence dimension which is dominant, although "at the same time it is true that certain musical structures can evoke certain semantic connotations"[8].

But what does this dimension consist of? There is supposed to be a level here which does not work via understanding, interpreting a work, attributing a meaning to it, rather "there is nothing edifying in such moments, no message, nothing that we could really learn from them": Gumbrecht underlines the exclusive nature of very special moments of "lived experience (ästhetisches Erleben)", "moments of intensity", which are quite remote from all ordinary experience in our everyday lives (compare the words used by Baumeister)[9]. And "it makes sense to hope that aesthetic experience may help us recuperate the spatial and the bodily dimension of our existence" or at least it may help to "prevent us from completely losing a feeling or a remembrance of the physical dimension in our lives"[10]. Again and again it is emphasized, not only by Gumbrecht, that presence effects have a body effect, which activates awareness of one's own body and the corresponding sense of self. With some theorists, such ideas subscribe to conventional materialistic thinking, but not in Gumbrecht, who resorts to terms such as epiphany and Eucharist (the "presence" of the body of Christ in the communion bread and wine) to describe that extra-ordinary plane of experience, and in doing so introduces spiritual elements into his argument. It is an experience of the body which is obviously not "sufficient unto itself". And so we see that the question is still not settled: what do presence effects really consist of, how can we capture them in words and make them concrete (although "capturing" them may possibly be restricted here to only providing hints).

Baumeister and Gumbrecht both speak of a particular "intensity". We might ask what constitutes this intensity as a property of the work of art, but it seems that this is a difficult question to answer. What does seem to be verifiable, however, is the effect of such intensity in the psyche of the recipient, meaning an intensity which is manifested in the aesthetic response to the work. "Just like colours, the form too engages with certain zones of excitation in the observer. […] Non-representational compositions, in a way, are a parallel to a Bach fugue or a Mozart concerto, in fact to all pure music. Human feelings are not prescribed and fixed in advance in them as they are in a song weighed down by its cargo of meaning, to which we are supposed to surrender ourselves. The feelings and emotions in formal art (in music and painting) are developed independently by the listener or the observer"[11]. The new abstract art, which no longer works with the traditional means of representation can - so Baumeister asserts - be demonstrated to exert a different kind of emotional effect. As soon as presence effects come to bear, then, they generate a different culture of the feelings. And Gumbrecht, as a scientific observer of cultural phenomena, couches his argument in different terms, but the tenor is the same. What is designated here in the abstract as intensity can be pinned down to a definable feeling; expressis verbis, a renewal of the experience of the body in space is aimed at, whereby the space which opens up is first and foremost an emotional space: aesthetic experience "may give us back at least a feeling of our being-in-the-world, in the sense of being part of the physical world of things"; and "what this answer to the question about the effect of aesthetic experience is pointing to can also be described as an extreme degree of serenity, composure, or Gelassenheit"[12]. This seems to hint at a specific ethical purpose which, while it is not in the least obtrusive, is nevertheless there: indeed, the opening up of such emotional spaces may even, it seems, initiate a cathartic process.

 

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As we know only too well, new paradigms tend to be defined less by describing their own characteristics than by demarcating them off from their predecessor model, whatever that was. In our case, it is liberation from patronizing cognitive domination which is called for. "The emotional value or the impression of a colour form should not be hastily reframed in a concept"[13], writes Baumeister, feelings should not be dis­sipated in the process of interpreting and explaining them. Gumbrecht draws a clear line of separation here by contrasting presence and meaning effects - a distinction which, while it may be intended dialectically, seems rather to present them as antagonists. What we "miss in a world so saturated with meaning, and what therefore turns into a primary object of (not fully conscious) desire in our culture, are […] phenomena and impressions of presence"[14]. If presence therefore enables an emotionality free from cognitive overload, this conception turns the direction taken by the psychology of emotion in recent decades on its head: was there not a so-called cognitive revolution in the twentieth century when at least the mainstream of scientific thinking switched over to defining emotions primarily via the cognitive functions, when emotionality became just another cog in the mechanisms for interpreting the world? The thinking in presence philosophy seems to challenge this tendency, indeed, in some of its statements to reverse it: feeling is to be wrested back from the compulsion coercing the intellectual who concerns himself with art or culture to pull everything into the light of consciousness.

In scientific thinking about music, emotional points of access were sealed off, the old truism according to which music embodies feelings seemed suppressed, although, despite being stripped of its hallowed status as high culture, it never lost its virulence. It would be a new departure for non-psychological musicology to include aesthetic experience, the entire bandwidth of affectivity, in its remit, and it could take its inspiration here from presence philosophy. From the standpoint of "old" musicology - as Ulrich Tadday emphasizes - the subjectivity and in­dividuality of the recipient "has been refused permission to testify by the allegedly objective court of aesthetic rationality"[15]. Musical meaning, however "in the first instance […] is generated in each individual act of reception"; accordingly he posits "the discursive coupling of music with the world of lived experience and reality of its recipients"[16]. We can read these lines in a manual of musical aesthetics in the chapter headed: "Situation - Media - Experience. On the Aesthetics of Presence". Admittedly, it remains to be seen how musicology not only recognizes the major role played by aesthetic experience but actually manages to incorporate it into a discourse focused on the work itself and its reception, and not only on the specific interest it may have for music psychology.

 

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Presence philosophy reinstates the value of emotionality as an autonomous category in its own right, distinguished not only by in­dependence, but also by its stance as regards anthropological relationships; thus the question arises as to what its relationship is to precisely those categories to which, from the modern standpoint, emotion is subordinated: what about physicality, which lends to thinking a firm solidity (and sometimes a coarseness) in which Gumbrecht is able, however, to discover a meaningful added value when he appeals to the example of the Christian Eucharist as an exclusively corporeal experience, in this way charging the physicality of the body effect with transcendental associations. This is my body, this is my blood, says Christ at the Last Supper with His apostles, and it is well known that the Reformer Martin Luther insisted on the actual reality of this "is", whereas others transferred what happens to a symbolic level of meaning. Is there a conception of physic­ality which could lay claim to being a radical, perhaps the most radical, form of metaphysics? Should we not perhaps read on in the Bible after the story of the Last Supper till we get to the place where the risen Christ, no longer bound within space and time, nevertheless challenges His doubting apostle Thomas to place his hands in His wounds, i.e., to verify the reality of the crucifixion by touching a body which was no longer subject to the laws of this world. Physicality in the sense of a physical/ metaphysical category which is literally "super-ordinate" practically cries out to be used as a new paradigm.

On the other hand, thinking in terms of presence is undermined by postulates of physicality which, far from emphasizing the intensity of the experience, only serve as an explanation strategy in which the emphasis on the physical is not justified as a fact of experience, but purely ideologically: a cult of the body which pays conformist lip service to the zeitgeist here replaces the cult of the soul, and with it the entire metaphor­ical imagery of inwardness which was once used to circumscribe moments of intensity. And if the body effect is admitted as a factor in this explanation strategy, then such statements can be understood primarily as an act of cognitive classification. The cognitive factor's claim to the throne is thus not yet decided. But we should sound a note of caution here, too.

After the overvaluation of the cognitive (with its far-reaching consequences for the theory of culture and art), we should avoid falling into the other extreme; its role, especially in relation to emotionality, needs to be reassessed: does not every presence effect occur within the context of a whole range of meaning effects? This also holds true for music, which is repeatedly held up as a model of an art form free of representation. If it appears in Gumbrecht's writings as if the dominant "presence" of music is, as it were, perturbed by "semantic connotations", then we must ask ourselves the question: what kind of music is thinkable without semantic connotations? Moments of intensity may elude rationalization through a content of meaning being imputed to them, but cannot be entirely free of all meaning: after all, they are also moments which emphatically "make sense".

The emancipation of the experiential factor will pose an enormous challenge for the aesthetic discourse in the future, one which it will only be possible to tackle successfully if we take all coefficients into account. May the attempt to maintain an anthropological balance[17] preserve us from reverting to the mannerisms of the "aesthetics of feeling", from succumbing reflexively to a chain reaction which leads, via the necessity to acknowledge the emotional factor and the inadequacy of language to formulate it appropriately, into becoming trapped in the stale clichés of pathos. Perhaps we should follow Baumeister's advice and refrain from trying to formulate matters too specifically in concepts? Is the claim of the humanities to scientific exactitude perhaps faced here, once again, with the dilemma of restoring the stature of a repudiated facticity while on the other hand being compelled to maintain silence about the facts themselves?