Artistic Objectivity: From Ruskin’s ‘Pathetic Fallacy’ to Creative Receptivity

Abstract

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. 1. Beyond Self-Expression? The idea of art as self-expression can seem old-fashioned, if not justifiably obsolete. At the very least, it no longer has the explicit pride of place that it did for the Romantic tradition which rose to prominence in the early 19th century, giving new priority to the ‘expressive’ artist.1 For us now, rather, the idea of self-expression has apparently been “collecting dust for some decades,” as one recent commentator puts it— in art and aesthetics, as elsewhere.2 Still, it may have been right to say, forty years ago, that “the assumption that art is an important mode of self-expression and that it is justified on this account” is “ubiquitous” in the art literature of the 20 th century.3 But this assumption has arguably been steadily losing steam ever since. On the other hand, the idea of art as creative self-expression clearly still has a firm hold on many parts of the public imagination. To begin with, it is still ubiquitous outside the cutting edge of aesthetics and art criticism. In pedagogical contexts, for instance, it remains common to view arts and crafts education as cultivating a capacity for “self† University of Michigan, Department of Philosophy; elicht@umich.edu 1 See e.g. Abrams 1953. 2 Green 2007, 3. 3 Osborne 1977, 296–297.