The Expression Theory Again 16

In this chapter I discuss a version of the Expression Theory of art. My aim

is not to dwell on the objections faced by this version of the theory, though
the criticisms it invites are both obvious and fatal. Rather, my concern is to
explain the theory’s attractiveness. Or perhaps I should say that my aim is to
explain away the prima facie attractiveness of the theory, for my approach is
not a sympathetic one. The initial plausibility of the theory, rather than hinting
at a novel but important truth lying at the theory’s heart, arises instead from
a natural but mistaken characterization of the relationship between artists’
feelings and the expressive properties or powers of the works of art they
create.

Many views have gone under the name ‘‘Expression Theory’’. Three types
of so-called Expression Theory are not relevant to my discussion. I am not
here concerned with attempts to define the meaning of ‘‘art’’ in terms of the
expression of emotions (see Tolstoy 1962). Nor am I concerned with views
like Sircello’s (1965, 1972), the point of which is to insist that expressive
properties, qualities, features, or powers can be predicated truly of works of
art. And I am not interested in views like Elliott’s (1967) that claim there
need be nothing odd or aesthetically illegitimate in a person’s responding
emotionally to works of art. Positions of the last two types rightly testify
that art is expressive of emotion in a way that typically evokes an emotional
response in its audience.
The version of the Expression Theory with which I am concerned is one
that explains art’s expressiveness as arising from artists’ expressing their

First published in Theoria, 52 (1986): 146–67; reprinted with the kind permission of Theoria.
242 The Expression Theory Again
concurrent emotions or feelings in the production of art. The emotions read
off from works of art are recognized and responded to as emotions felt
by the work’s creator at the time of its creation. In its expressiveness, an
artwork reveals its creator’s feelings and is responded to as doing so. The
emotions expressed in an artwork, rather than being consciously and coolly
designed by its artist at a time of calm concentration, are somehow poured or
discharged into the artwork during its production.1 In this view, artists express
emotions, feelings, moods, or attitudes in their works, as against expressing
ideas, suppositions, or beliefs.2 In the theory here under consideration, the
expression of emotion in art is not to be usefully compared to the expression
of thought in words, though some theorists might talk loosely of art as a
‘‘language’’ with which artists ‘‘communicate’’ with their audiences.
It might be objected that the version of the Expression Theory that I
have chosen to discuss is an unacceptably crude example of the theory.
More sophisticated accounts anticipate and attempt to avoid the powerful
difficulties faced by the theory I have characterized. To this objection I reply
as follows: the version of the theory I discuss is its ur-form; other stories are
elaborations on this proto-theory in that they attempt to preserve its spirit
while modifying it to meet the difficulties that threaten it. It is not unfair of
me to concentrate on the ur-theory because my concern does not lie with
the objections it faces and so does not lie with the success or otherwise of
attempts to meet those objections. I am interested in the undoubted appeal of
the proto-theory. My aim is to show that appeal to be spurious. Indirectly,
then, I hope also to show that the desire to preserve the spirit of the ur-
theory—the desire that motivates the quest for replies to the objections faced
by the ur-theory—is misguided.

II

Very briefly, the obvious objections to the Expression Theory are these: it is
not common for most artists to work creatively under the duress of emotion.
So, as a general account of the creative process, the Expression Theory is
mistaken. Nor does it fare better as an account of the process involved in the
production of artworks that are expressive of emotion. Artists are no more
likely to feel emotion in the creation of expressive works than in the creation

1
Such an account accords with a common view of artistic inspiration; see Osborne (1977).
2
This distinction does not deny that emotions inevitably have a cognitive content. Philoso-
phers who discuss the cognitive content of emotions include Bedford (1957), Kenny (1963), and
Tormey (1971).
 The Expression Theory Again 243
of non-expressive works. Moreover, when they are emotionally moved and
see themselves as pouring their emotions into their creations, artists may fail
to create artworks that are expressive.
Beyond objections on empirical grounds such as those just mentioned,
the main line of critique makes a conceptual point against the Expression
Theory. It notes that the theory supposes that the expressiveness of a process
is transmitted to the product that has its genesis in that process; the theory
assumes that the expressiveness of an action will be apparent in traces left
by that action. Such suppositions are neither true in general nor true in the
particular case of an artist’s creating a work of art. The Expression Theory
wrongly claims that the expressiveness perceived in artworks stand to their
artists’ feelings as the expressiveness of those artists’ tears stand to their
feelings of sadness. But it is not the case that artists’ feelings can be read off
their artworks just as they might be read of their tears; the expressiveness of
works of art is not appropriately to be seen as a direct and visible sign of their
artists’ feelings.3
I mention in passing a further objection that seems to me to be unwarranted.
This notes that the Expression Theory does not explain why artists’ expressing
their feelings in their art should be valued as the expressiveness of art is valued
(Todd 1972). But this matter lies beyond the theory’s immediate remit. The
theory purports to explain what it is for art to be expressive and there is no
reason to expect that explanation also to make obvious why it is that we
attach value to the expressiveness of art as we do. Anyway, it is not difficult
to see how the theory might be developed to meet the objection: perhaps the
creation of art is specially suited to the expression of important or highly
specific feelings that are not easily amenable to description or to other forms
of communication.

III

As a prelude to considering the appeal of the Expression Theory, it is necessary

to distinguish between different types of emotional expressiveness that I call
‘‘primary’’, ‘‘secondary’’, and ‘‘tertiary’’. Subsequently I argue that the appeal
of the Expression Theory comes from its recognizing that we respond to art
as if art is like a primary expression of emotion, yet it fails to appreciate that
art can be only a secondary or tertiary expression of artists’ feelings.

3
See Bouwsma (1950), Hospers (1955), Khatchadourian (1965), and Tormey (1971: ch. 4
and app.).
244 The Expression Theory Again
Some emotions have characteristic forms of expression that I call ‘‘pri-
mary’’. Sobbing, for example, is a primary expression of sadness and like
emotional states. Primary expressions occur unintentionally and unreflec-
tively. Indeed, these forms of expression may not be easy to mimic consciously
and, where it is known that they are deliberately adopted, they are seen usually
to be merely pretended and not to be expressive of genuine emotions. Because
they are not consciously contrived or adopted, these are forms of expression
into which one falls or to which one gives way. Sad people need not weep
and need not always feel like weeping when they are sad, but sometimes they
must feel like weeping when they are sad, and if they do not then weep
it is because they control the impulse to weep that goes with and is partly
constitutive of sadness. The control and suppression of primary expressions
of emotion may be intentional, though their occurrence or tendency to occur
is not. Where one’s sadness is extreme, a sob may be wrung from one by the
force of one’s feelings and in spite of an intention not to show one’s feelings.
Primary expressions are not expressive in virtue of being intended as such.
Instead, they are expressive in themselves of the emotions to which they stand
as primary expressions.
Primary expressions of emotion might reasonably be characterized as
‘‘natural’’, but this would not be to deny that they are shaped by learning or
conditioning. ‘‘Ouch’’ or ‘‘ow’’, uttered unthinkingly under circumstances in
which the utterer had been caused sudden and unexpected pain, are primary
expressions of that pain. But speakers of French under the same circumstances
give primary expression to their pain by saying ‘‘ouf ’’, and speakers of other
languages use other vocables for the primary expression of sudden pain. Even
the ways we smile or weep might be subtly shaped by cultural practices that
differ from group to group.
Because they are not adopted intentionally and because they betray ‘‘inner’’
states, there are respects in which primary expressions of emotion are like
symptoms (the spots of measles) or natural signs (the smoke that indicates
the presence of fire). In pursuing this comparison, one might come to doubt
that expressiveness is a notion that applies appropriately to what I have called
‘‘primary expressions’’. Spots signify, symptomize, or betray the presence
of measles, but they do not express measles. So, is it wrong to regard tears
as expressing sadness? Some proponents of sophisticated versions of the
Expression Theory argue that the answer to this question is yes because
they wish to move away from the idea that art is expressive as tears are,
and in doing so they demote tears from their apparent status as expressions
of feeling. These writers distinguish between the mere venting of emotion
 The Expression Theory Again 245
and the expressing of emotion and they dismiss what I have called ‘‘primary
expressions’’ as mere ventings.4
Pursuing the analogy with symptoms and natural signs as far as this
conclusion seems to be absurd, however.5 Only philosophers (and only a few
of them) would feel uncomfortable in regarding tears as expressive of grief
under the appropriate circumstances.
By the ‘‘secondary’’ expression of emotion, I mean behaviour that issues
from the emotions felt, but that could not be seen as expressive by someone
lacking (independent) knowledge of the agent’s intentions or circumstances.
Secondary expressions of emotion can be intentional, though they need not
be. Unlike primary expressions, they are not constitutive of the emotions
to which they give expression. It is because they are not constitutive of the
emotions to which they give expression that independent knowledge of the
intentions or circumstances is required by those who appreciate those actions
as expressive.
An example of a secondary expression of a person’s emotion would be that
of a woman who throws herself into the activity of designing and building a
house at a time of grieving for a dead husband and in response to that grief.
Knowing her intentions and circumstances, one might describe the act of
building the house as an expression of her grief—as her coming to terms with
her grief, or burying or turning her back on her grief, or dissipating the force
of her grief in action, or creating a private memento of her loss, or giving her
grief time to subside, and so on. These are, admittedly, attenuated uses of the
notion of expression, but it is not unapt to talk of such activities as expressing
the woman’s grief. Notice that, while the actions and the house itself are
expressions of grief to those who understand their motivation, we would not
usually say that the actions or the house are expressive in themselves of grief.
We would say that grief is expressed through rather than in them. This locution
acknowledges the fact that their expressiveness depends on their being seen
to result from certain intentions or circumstances.
Of course, while the secondary expression of emotion is free expression in
being largely unconstrained by conventions and rules, it is not so free that just
any behavior might become a secondary expression of grief, say, merely as a
result of the agent’s intending that it be such. If the woman mentioned above
hit the high spots with a young man on her arm, intending (as we happen to

4 See Dewey (1934: 60–1), Collingwood (1963: 121–4), and Ducasse (1929, 1964). Hare

(1972) gives a good summary of Ducasse’s views. Alston (1965) and Tomas (1952), who are not
expression theorists, also distinguish between venting and expressing.
5
Wollheim (1966–7) and Tormey (1971: 98–102) recognize the point.
246 The Expression Theory Again
know) that this be a secondary expression of her grief, we would not judge her
action to be such an expression unless there were something special about the
circumstances. We would deny that her actions are at all expressive of grief
and would dismiss her ‘‘intention’’ as no more than a pious hope. Indeed, we
might be inclined to doubt that she feels any grief.
Tertiary expressions of emotion differ from secondary expressions in that,
through their use of conventions and rituals, they permit the audience to
become aware of the agent’s intentions through its experience of what she
does or makes rather than via independent sources. That is, the conventional
nature of her actions or of their product is such as to make clear the agent’s
intentions as regards the expressiveness of her actions or their products.
Of course, it is a condition for tertiary expressiveness that the use of those
conventions be both intentional and sincere. So, if a woman built (instead
of a house) a mausoleum dedicated to the memory of her dead husband,
that mausoleum would be a tertiary expression of her grief provided she was
sincere about her feelings in expressing them this way. The commissioning
of mausoleums is a conventional expression of grief. And note that, in virtue
of the conventional nature of this form of expression, the woman mentioned
need not design and build the mausoleum for herself. She can commission the
design and its execution, taking interest neither in the progress of the design
nor in its execution, without this undermining the status of the mausoleum as
an expression of her grief. She cannot in the same way commission others to
give primary expression to her grief by crying on her behalf. (The tears of pro-
fessional mourners give tertiary, not primary, expression to the grief of those
who purchase them.) Indifference is evidence of insincerity where a claim to
secondary expression is concerned, but need not be in the case of tertiary ex-
pressions. The expressiveness is carried forward by the conventions in the case
of tertiary expressions in a way that is not possible for secondary expressions.
Once the conventions are established, they can be misused to present the
appearance of an expression of grief where none is felt. Thus, a cynic who
has loathed her husband and rejoices in his death might, as an expensive and
private joke, commission a grand mausoleum dedicated to his memory. Be-
cause the established conventions can be used insincerely as well as sincerely,
they can be employed to lie, to stretch the truth, for ironic effect, and so on.

IV

How does the version of the Expression Theory that is under discussion
categorize the expressiveness of art? In maintaining that the expressiveness
 The Expression Theory Again 247
of art stands to the artist’s feelings as his tears stand to his felt sadness,
the Expression Theory analyzes the expressiveness of art as primary. And
the appeal of such a view is obvious. Emotions are expressed in primary
expressions, whereas usually they are expressed only through secondary or
tertiary expressions, and our experience of the expressiveness of art locates
the feeling in it.6 Moreover, the expressiveness of art moves its audience
in a way primary but not secondary or tertiary expressions of emotions
do. Secondary and tertiary expressions of emotion are indirect, mediated,
often formalized types of expression and, as such, they distance the audience
from the emotions expressed through them. Accordingly, secondary and
tertiary expressions of emotions seem not to call for an emotional response
from others. By contrast, primary expressions of emotion confront others
directly with the force of the person’s feeling, and emotional indifference
in the face of primary expressions of emotion is difficult to maintain and,
anyway, not appropriate usually. Such indifference might rightly be seen as
callous, for example. Similarly, the expressiveness of works of art seems to
present emotions directly to their audiences and that expressiveness is highly
evocative of emotional responses from members of the audiences. Emotional
indifference to art’s expressiveness might properly be seen as evidence of a
lack of appreciation and understanding.
Nevertheless, art seems clearly not to be a primary expression of emotion.
The expressiveness of works of art usually is consciously contrived by artists.
This suggests that, as expressions of artists’ feelings, artworks are secondary
or tertiary. But even in those (comparatively rare) cases in which the artist
creates an expressive artwork in an unreflective creative frenzy brought on
by his emotions, still there are obvious grounds for hesitating to consider
the work as a primary expression of his feelings. Primary expressions are
partly constitutive of and not merely concomitant with the emotions they
express.7 This is why one must teach children the meaning of emotion-
words in connection with the occurrence (or depiction or description) of their
primary expressions. But the expressiveness of works of art seems to be no
more than concomitant with the artist’s feeling, even where the emotion
expressed in the artwork is the same emotion as that felt by the artist. Unlike
expressiveness that is primary, the expressiveness of the artwork would not be
destroyed were we to learn that the artist had felt nothing during the work’s
creation or that the artist had deliberately contrived the work’s expressiveness.

6 Casey (1971) provides a phenomenological description of this experience.

7
See Wollheim (1964, 1966–7) and Tormey (1971: 29–32, 47–50).
248 The Expression Theory Again
That the expressiveness of art lacks the intimate link with felt emotion that
characterizes primary expression is evident in the fact that one could not
teach the meaning of emotion-terms to a child if one’s examples all were
examples of art in which emotions are expressed (as opposed to examples of
art in which persons are represented or described as giving expression to their
feelings).
A further respect in which the expressiveness of art differs importantly from
the primary expression of emotion deserves comment. As the Expression
Theory rightly observes, both the expressiveness of art and the primary
expression of emotion are highly evocative of emotional responses, but the
Expression Theory fails to note a crucial difference in the emotions evoked.
The emotional response called forth by a primary expression of emotion (or
by a representation of such) rarely mirrors the expressed emotion; rather, the
response is suited to the character of the emotion expressed. Sadness invites
a compassionate response, wretchedness calls for pity, anger summons fear,
and so on.8 By contrast, the emotions expressed in art (as opposed to the
emotions depicted or described in art) often call forth mirroring responses.9
Sad music tends to evoke sadness; happy music tends to make people feel
happy. This suggests that we do not respond emotionally to art as a primary
expression of artists’ feelings.
No doubt it is objections such as these that have led to revisions of the
proto-theory I have been discussing. Two ways of defending the theory
recommend themselves. They both aim still at explaining the expressiveness
of art in terms of the connection between that expressiveness and artists’
feelings, yet both deny that this connection is like the one holding between
an emotion and its primary expression. According to the one view, art is a
secondary or tertiary expression of the artist’s feeling and the feeling that is
experienced by the audience as in the artwork is the one felt by the artist.
According to the other, art is a secondary or tertiary expression of the artist’s
feeling and the feeling that is experienced by audience members as in the
work of art is a projection of their own emotional reaction to the work of art
viewed as an expression of the artist’s feeling.10 In either case the departure
from the ur-theory is likely to be accompanied by ‘‘reminders’’ that emotions

8 This remains essentially true where it is not possible for the response to be acted on or for the

response to affect the emotional context. So, films of the suffering of victims of the concentration
camps call forth compassionate and pitying responses though the responders know perfectly well
that the people filmed are now long past suffering anything.
9 See Hospers (1955), Davies (1980, 1983a), and Osborne (1983).
10
Defenders of ‘‘emotionalism’’ include Hepburn (1960–1) and Nolt (1981). For general
criticisms see Hospers (1955) and for a critique of Nolt’s view, see Stecker (1983).
 The Expression Theory Again 249
cannot be in art (except metaphorically), and that ‘‘real’’ expression (such as
is found in art) is to be contrasted with the mere venting of emotion.
The first of these accounts clearly faces difficulties. Because the audience
does not usually require knowledge of the artist’s intentions beyond what
is provided by the artwork before being able to appreciate the work’s ex-
pressiveness, artworks presumably should be tertiary rather than secondary
expressions of their artists’ feelings.11 But in cases where the work undeniably
is a tertiary expression of the artist’s feelings, this fact seems to be irrelevant
to an aesthetic appreciation of it. Fauré wrote his Requiem on his father’s
death and (given that his sincerity is not in doubt) it is a tertiary expression of
his grief. But it is coincidental that his feelings are given tertiary expression,
as opposed to the emotions of some other who commissioned the Requiem
from him. And because we would regard the feelings of the person who com-
missioned an artwork as not relevant to its appreciation, so Fauré’s giving
tertiary expression to his grief in writing the Requiem is a matter of aesthetic
irrelevance. So, even in those cases where it is at its most plausible, the first
theory ‘‘explains’’ the expressiveness of art at the cost of making that expres-
siveness apparently incidental to the work’s appreciation as art. Artists may
(sometimes) give tertiary expression to their emotions in creating artworks,
but this fact seems not to explain (as the Expression Theory is supposed to
do) how artworks are expressive in themselves or how expressiveness in art
is aesthetically and artistically relevant.
The expressiveness of art that is central to its appreciation seems not to
be conventional as are tertiary expressions of emotions. I concede that there
is an element of convention that plays a part in determining the expressive
properties of any work of art. That is, I allow that the expressiveness of a
property is in part dependent on the categorization of the artwork in which it
is instantiated (see Walton 1970). And I accept that the expressiveness of a
property may depend on the range of properties chosen by the artist for her
use.12 But the conventions involved here seem not to be of a quasi-linguistic
variety that have as their point the revelation of a meaning intended by the
utterer. They seem more like the conventions that operate with respect to
primary expressions of emotion in that they map the ranges of tolerance

11 Tormey (1971: 117–20) makes the point against the view that art may be analyzed as (in my

terms) a secondary expression of artist’s emotions, but he has little to say about the possibility of
artworks’ being (in my terms) tertiary expressions of emotion. Sircello (1972: ch. 2) argues that
art is best understood as (in my terms) a tertiary rather than a secondary expression of emotions,
moods, and attitudes.
12
See Gombrich (1969: ch. 12, 1963; Tomas (1952). Wollheim discusses Gombrich’s position
in Wollheim (1964; 1966–7; and 1980: sections 28–31).
250 The Expression Theory Again
within and against which individual elements are naturally expressive. (So,
across a range in which red is naturally brighter and jollier than violet, green
is bright in the context of a range the scope of which extends from violet to
green and is dull in the context of a range the scope of which extends from
red to green.) To the extent that the expressiveness of primary expressions
is taught, being dependent on a range of alternatives that is determined at
least in part by cultural factors, then primary expressions of emotion are
conventional. But that kind of conventionality is unlike the ordinary, arbitrary
kind of conventionality that characterizes tertiary expressions of emotion.13
The conventions of primary expressions serve merely to structure elements
in a way that reveals the potential for expressiveness that is natural to them,
whereas the conventions of tertiary expression are arbitrary in that they can
be neither apposite nor inapposite. And it is the very arbitrariness of tertiary
expressions that encourages the audience to look through and beyond them
to the intentions and emotions to which they give expression. Whereas and
by contrast, the aesthetically relevant conventions of art focus the audience’s
attention on the intrinsic properties of the artwork, rather than directing
their attention beyond the artwork to other matters (Davies 1983a). In
summary: art may be no less conventional than is the use of language that has
communication as its aim, but the conventions of art, unlike those regulating
communication, serve to reveal the contextual significance of elements and
not, instead, to reveal the intentions that motivated their arrangement.
The second of the views mentioned above, according to which the ex-
pressiveness of art is a projection of the audience’s response to the artist’s
secondary or tertiary expression of emotion, is also subject to objections.
The notion of projection seems to be implausible, both because it fails to
accommodate the possible (and common) mismatch between what is felt and
what is expressed and because it provides no (obvious) way of distinguishing
between appropriate and inappropriate responses occasioned by the artwork.
More to the point, this second view of artistic expressiveness fails much
as the first one does. The second view explains the expressiveness of art
as a projection of the audience’s response to a secondary or tertiary act of
expression performed by the artist. Now, unless this approach can describe
the artist’s act of expression as relevant to the artwork’s appreciation, it
cannot also characterize the audience’s emotional response as aesthetically

13
The view that the contents of a work of art might be explained entirely by reference to
artists’ conventional uses of materials and media has been attacked by Baxter (1983). And
whether or not the social place of art can be defined in terms of conventions also is a matter of
debate; see Lord (1980) and Peggy Zeglin Brand (1982).
 The Expression Theory Again 251
or artistically relevant. So, this second revision of the proto-theory must deal
with the difficulties that face the first revision, as well as with those that apply
specifically to it.
The two most obvious ways of attempting to defend the ur-theory appar-
ently fail. They might be successful in explaining one respect in which art
can be expressive, but not in explaining how recognition of this expressive-
ness is relevant and important to the work’s appreciation as art. Neither the
ur-theory nor its improvements proves to be adequate. The attractiveness of
the ur-theory lies, I have suggested, in its recognizing that we respond to the
expressiveness of artworks as if that expressiveness is primary and in its noting
that artists are responsible (if anyone is) for the expressiveness of their works
of art. The attempts at revising the theory fail to clear all objections from the
theory’s path and cannot explain the aesthetic and artistic appropriateness of
audience responses to artists’ acts of expression.
I now recapitulate the main points of the argument so far: the Expression
Theory is right in seeing the expressiveness of art as aesthetically significant but
wrong in seeing the expressiveness as a primary expression of artists’ feelings.
It is right to observe that an audience’s response to the expressiveness of art is
more like a response to a primary than to a secondary or tertiary expression
of feelings. And it is right to acknowledge that the artist is responsible, if
anyone is, for the expressiveness of the artwork. Its failure lies in its attempt
to marry these observations. Of course, art can be used by artists to express
their feelings, though the evidence suggests this is not common. Where
art is so used by artists, usually the artworks created must be understood
as secondary or tertiary expressions of their artists’ feelings. Art that is
expressive in this way need not be expressive in itself, and a concern with art
as a secondary or tertiary expression of feelings is a concern leading away
from rather than toward the expressiveness in the work. So, revisions of the
ur-theory that are more convincing in explaining how artworks express their
artists’ emotions fail nevertheless, because they cannot justify the aesthetic
and artistic relevance of the type of expression that they characterize.

V
I have suggested that our knowledge of the creative process indicates that
artists intend their artworks to express what their works do express; that they
deliberately design the expressiveness into their artworks. The techniques by
which this is achieved might be applied automatically, their use having been
mastered in the past, or they might be applied with painstaking calculation.
252 The Expression Theory Again
(For example, Mozart often worked in the former way, Beethoven often
in the latter, and Berg sometimes in the one way and sometimes in the
other.) How, in non-technical terms, might works of art be designed to be
expressive?
First, the artist might describe or represent a person in a situation that
standardly would lead that person to feel an emotion or to act in a way
that can be understood as their giving expression to their feeling. So, for
instance, the artist might depict a weeping woman cradling in her arms
a dead, younger man, perhaps her son. Second, the artist might describe,
represent, or present material that is likely to be associated in the minds of the
audience with the occurrence of some emotion. So, for example, the picture
of the woman holding the dead man might be presented as a Pietà. Though
the attribution of properties or states to fictional people or events raises
interesting issues and it is not perhaps immediately obvious how one would
justify the rationality of emotional responses to the represented emotions of
fictional persons (Davies 1983a), these types of expressiveness are not difficult
to recognize and understand. The depicted emotions (or beliefs, attitudes,
or whatever) belong to the fictional persons who experience and may give
expression to them.
Rightly, the Expression Theory notes that these two types of expressiveness
fail to exhaust all instances of expressiveness in art. As well as describing
or representing emotion, or indicating its presence by association, artworks
express emotions, feelings, and attitudes that cannot be attributed to any
fictional (or actual) person described or represented within the work.14 An
emotion or attitude may be expressed by the work toward its propositional
or representational content. For example, the self-satisfied smugness of a
pictured person may be depicted as contemptible. Furthermore, emotions can
be expressed in works that lack propositional or representational content along
with emotional associations. For example, the last movement of Beethoven’s
Seventh Symphony is, simply, joyous. And rightly, the Expression Theory
recognizes that, in lacking an ‘‘owner’’, instances of this type of expressiveness
stand in need of explanation. The Expression Theory hopes to provide the
required explanation by arguing that the attitude or emotions thus expressed
are the artist’s. This (third) type of expressiveness cannot be explained as a
primary form of emotional expression, as the ur-theory mistakenly attempts

14
Sircello (1972) suggests this form of expression is to be understood as involving ‘‘artistic
acts’’. Some critics of the Expression Theory (for example, Todd 1972) fail to appreciate that
the Expression Theory aims to analyze only this problematic (and most important) type of
expressiveness.
 The Expression Theory Again 253
to do. Nor can it be explained as a secondary or tertiary form of expression, as
revised versions of the theory suggest, because art’s expressiveness is located
in rather than through it. If the work happens also to be a secondary or tertiary
expression of the artist’s corresponding attitude or emotion, this further level
of expression is of incidental significance only.
How, without appealing to the feelings of artists, can we account for this
artistically important kind of expressiveness? One answer can be quickly
dismissed. It will not do to suggest that art expresses sui generis aesthetic
emotions that are neither felt nor shown and so are quite unlike ‘‘real’’, non-
aesthetic emotions. It will not do because this deprives the notion of expression
of its usual meaning. In severing the connection between emotions in art and
emotions in life, this approach makes artistic expressiveness no more like the
human expression of emotions than river banks are like savings and trading
banks. And, without that likeness, the power of artistic expression to interest
and move us as it does becomes an impenetrable mystery.15
A more promising line argues that art is expressive in the way faces,
carriages, and gaits are; that is, in virtue of its physiognomic presentation of
the appearance of an emotion.16 I noted before that, where what would be
seen otherwise as the primary expression of an emotion is rightly regarded
as consciously contrived, it is no longer experienced as expressive. More
correctly, I should say that it is no longer seen as a primary expression of
an emotion that is felt by a person. Such behavior may retain an expressive
character in its appearance, even when it is consciously adopted and hence
is not a primary expression of felt emotion. In this view, works of art are
not expressive by revealing anyone’s occurrent emotions; rather, they are
expressive by means of presenting appearances of emotion.
This brief outline of an account is far from adequate as it stands. Even if we
experience artworks as no less expressive than we do human faces, it is not
obvious how music, for example, could present expressive aspects as faces
do. It will be unconvincing to argue that dynamic and structural similarities
between human actions and music account for the expressiveness of music.
That is to say, it is hard to see how the expressiveness of music could be
generated merely by the mimicry of the dynamics and structure of human
actions or physiognomy. Moreover, it will be necessary also to explain how
appearances of emotions are evocative of emotional responses, given that those
appearances are not symptomatic of occurrent emotions. But these are not

15 See Hospers (1955), Scruton (1974: 38–43).

16
See Urmson (1973), Davies (1980), Kivy (1980).
254 The Expression Theory Again

matters to pursue here.17 For the present purpose, it is sufficient that there is
a plausible alternative to the account offered by the Expression Theory.18
According to this alternative theory, artists deliberately create art with a
physiognomy that is expressive in that it presents characteristic appearances of
emotion. In this way they achieve the type of expressiveness the Expression
Theory is concerned to explain; namely, expressiveness that is artistically
interesting and valuable because it is experienced as residing in artworks, by
contrast with expressiveness that stands at a remove from artworks and their
immediate properties and that focuses instead on emotions felt by people.
Of course, this theory need not deny that artists sometimes are concerned
to express their own (or their employers’) feelings. A woman artist grieving
for her dead son might choose to express her grief by painting a Pietà or
by painting a work that expresses (rather than represents) sadness. This
mode of expression is like that of a person who, on actually feeling sad,
deliberately adopts a sad expression with the aim of appearing sad. The
physiognomic expression adopted is, in such a case, a secondary or tertiary
expression of the person’s feeling, though the same behavior or physiognomy
would be a primary expression of the person’s feeling were it to occur
unthinkingly rather than deliberately. As a secondary or tertiary expression
of an occurrent emotion, it exploits the prior expressive character possessed

17 Scruton (1983: 61) seems to have such worries in mind when he suggests that faces can be

expressive in themselves, without regard to occurrent emotions, only because sometimes their
expressiveness does indicate the presence of occurrent emotions: his point being that art cannot
supply the same (in my terms, primary) connection with occurrent emotions. In Davies (1980)
I suggest some answers to this particular difficulty and to the other problems raised in this
paragraph.
18 Tilghman (1984: 175–8) denies that this alternative is plausible. He regards the experience

of art’s expressiveness as irreducibly analogous to the experience of human expressions of

occurrent emotions. For him, artistic expressiveness is not grounded in any similarities between
human physiognomy and the ‘‘physiognomy’’ of art. An analysis such as I have recommended
leaves the philosophical problem untouched, he says, because the similarity must be described
by means of the very language (in terms of action, rather than mere movement) that the
resemblance is supposed to underwrite (1984: 177). Despite these criticisms, I am not sure
that the recommended theory is so different from the view Tilghman defends. It may be
true, ultimately, that the experience of expressiveness is grounded in irreducible experiences
of similarity between, for example, spatial and musical movement, or musical movement and
intentional human action. Nevertheless, there can be philosophically interesting territory to
be explored between the experience of artistic expressiveness and the irreducible experiences
of similarity in which, finally, it is grounded. And it is just that territory with which the
recommended theory is concerned. To take an analogous case, Tilghman himself allows (1984:
184) that the experience of seeing a duck in the duck-rabbit figure is not irreducible in the way
that the experience of seeing a dot in the picture as the duck’s eye is. Besides, there is something
very odd in the complaint that a view leaves the philosophical problem untouched when it comes
from someone whose aim is to show that there is no such problem (see Tilghman 1984: 169).
 The Expression Theory Again 255
by that physiognomy or behaviour in virtue of its relation to (actual) primary
expressions of (actual) felt emotions.
The point, though, is this: as a secondary or tertiary expression of someone’s
emotion or attitude, the expressiveness of the work of art is not in any usual
or obvious way relevant to its appreciation as art. Rather, it is the form of
expression that is appropriated by the artist to the end of creating secondary or
tertiary expressions of her (or her employer’s) emotions or attitudes that has
aesthetic centrality. That is to say, the expressiveness in need of appreciation
by the art lover is the expressiveness the work has by virtue of its presenting
in its appearance emotion characteristics integrally associated with primary
expressions of emotions or attitudes. What is aesthetically relevant is the
expressive character present in the artwork, not the fact—if it is a fact, which
usually it is not—that this expressive character has been used because it
matches the mood to which it gives secondary or tertiary expression.

VI

By now it should be clear where the error of the Expression Theory lies. It
assumes that all expressions of emotion must be expressions of felt emotions
and is concerned, therefore, to locate an ‘‘owner’’ of the emotions expressed
in art. Where those emotions or attitudes cannot be attributed to some person
depicted, they are attributed to the artist who, after all, is responsible if anyone
is for the appearance of expressiveness in his artwork. But the Expression
theory flounders, either because it mistakenly sees art as a primary expression
of artists’ feelings or because in revised form it wrongly supposes there is
aesthetic point in artists’ giving secondary or tertiary expressions to their
(or their employers’) feelings in their creative acts. The Expression Theory
rightly acknowledges that we respond to the expressiveness of art as presenting
the appearance of primary expressions of emotion and that it is just such
expressions that are artistically important and in need of explanation. But
because it assumes wrongly that all appearances of primary expressions of
emotion must be primary expressions of occurrent emotion if they are not to
be deprived of expressive character, the Expression Theory misconstrues the
relation between artistic expression and the expression of actual emotions in
behaviour. And it is because sophisticated versions of the theory are keen to
preserve the connection with the artist’s feelings that they force the analysis
by equating the type of expressiveness that is aesthetically significant with
artists’ giving secondary or tertiary expression to their emotions or attitudes.
The Expression Theory need not be wrong in holding that artists sometimes
256 The Expression Theory Again
feel emotions that they intend to express in their artworks. And it need not
be mistaken in holding that such intentions can be successfully realized. It
errs, though, in maintaining that the expressiveness of art can be explained
solely and simply as artists’ expressing their feelings. An artist’s intention
that some emotion be expressed in his artwork is neither a necessary nor
a sufficient condition for his work’s expressing that emotion. And in those
cases where the artist’s intention is realized, that fact is irrelevant to the extent
that the expressiveness of the artwork can be apparent to someone who is
aware neither of the artist’s feelings nor of his successfully realized intention.
Ultimately, the expressiveness of art is independent of artists’ feelings and of
their intentions to express their feelings in their creations.