The work of art is a product of excitement about the subject matter.

It's wrung out of the artist by the pressure of objective things upon natural impulses, it doesn't issue forth just from the imagination. The act of expression is a construction in time. I'm not so sure about this poin t, but it means that the act is more than just the time taken transfer a concret e idea from the imagination to the medium- the expression is shaped in real time BY the interaction with the medium as well. Both the medium and the thing issui ng from the self acquire a new form. So, you can't take your idea and force it u pon your medium. This is probably the root of the idea of "happy accidents." Where does digital fit in here? Excitement about the subject matter stirs up meanings derived from prior experie nce within a person, which turn into conscious thoughts and emotions, and then t o emotional images. These are what require expression. The fires of initial inspiration are just the start, issuing from the subconscio us. It doesn't come in concrete forms or shapes, but needs to feed on the fuel o f objective material. This conversion process isn't always pretty, which is why we do studies. But don 't we exhaust some of the fire in the process? Isn't this the sticking point bet ween Dunn and Cornwell? Emotion is always about something objective, it isn't something from within that only acts upon external materials when uttered. Something objective includes si tuations, like the death of a friend. The emotion can't be understood except as an interpretation of the self in context of objective conditions. This goes agai nst the idea of emotion as something complete within itself. The idea that expression is a direct emission of an emotion complete within itse lf would mean that individuality is specious and external. These would be generi c emotions and art would fall into generic categories. Emotion is connected to a particular object or situation. The aritst builts up that concrete thing and al lows it to evoke the emotion, rather than build the emotion up in intellectual o r symbolic terms. Art is selective because emotion excludes all that isn't associated with it. In a direct outburst, an objective stimulus is the cause of the emotion. In poet ry, the objective material is the content of the emotion. Emotion draws appropriate material to itself. It's appropriate because it has ex perience emotional affinity for the state of mind already. We can tell when ther e are parts to a piece of art that don't fit. With skill of execution but no emotion, we have good craft but no art. With too much emotional intensity, there's a loss of control and the result isn' t good art, it's disorderly. There's too much undergoing and not enough doing. T hus, art is not just the embodiment of emotion. Immediacy and individuality, which mark concrete existence, come from present oc casion. Meaning, substance, content, come from what is embedded in the self from the past. Past experience generalized, with present conditions in particular. Spontaneity is the result of long periods of activity, otherwise it's too empty to be an expression. Direct effort of will gives birth to mechanical things. The process may be begun directly, but it then proceeds to the subconscious and must burst forth on its own. We need to prepare the doors for it to come out of beforehand, but then it must come out unaided. Consciously, we think over different things that may be independent of each othe r, but they're all bound together beneath the surface, apart from intention. Som ething is born in spite of the conscious personality. And, having been under pre ssure, it must burst forth. There are values and meanings that can only be expressed by immediately audible and visible qualities, not in words and symbols apart from direct experience. Material needs to be reworked in the creation of a piece of art. The emotion cal led out by the original material is reworked as it's attached to the new materia l. Just as physical material is altered in the creation of a piece of art, so is th

e inner material, both by a single operation, step by step. Both are reordered w ith every mark placed. Art is conceived in terms of its medium. The physical media may be ordered befor ehand in the imagination or in the concrete material, and the physical process d evelops imagination. The transformation changes the character of the original emotion into one with d istinctly aesthetic character. "An emotion is aesthetic when it adheres to an object formed by an expressive ac t, in the sense in which the act of expression has been defined." In the beginning, emotion flies straight to the object, but it may be turned asi de. The emotion of love may find material that isn't the thing directly loved, b ut is cognate through the emotion that draws things it has affinity to. The mate rial can be anything as long as it feeds the emotion. In the case of poetry, an impulse is diverted into indirect channels and finds m ateral that isn't directly appropriate to it, and gives it new meaning. The consequences of these diversions become their own meaning, taken into that i mpulse which caused the diversion. This is imagination in action. Expression is clarification of turbid emotions. Our tendencies recognize themsel ves in works of art, and are transformed. The emotion is induced by expressive m aterial, and because it's evoked by the material, it consists of a natural emoti on that has already been transformed. If the original impulsion is ordered or satified by the action carried out, if t he changed object reflects the change that's taken place in the person, somethin g emotionally fulfilling has been done. The emotion is objectified. It is now ae sthetic. Two schools of thought that went against this idea of aesthetic emotion- one was that it existed externally and was expressed through contact with external mate rials, making it something lofty and removed from everyday life. The other was t hat it didn't exist at all. Again, in reality, it's connected to our experience with the outside world. Aesthetic emotion, the kind that is felt by searching out an observation, or fro m channeling energy in a way that puts objects into satisfying order, the expres sive kind- it is not the same as a simple act of emotional discharge, but the tw o have continuity. Aesthetic emotion is native emotion transformed through objec tive material. Skip Ahead Art is not representative in the sense of brute copying of nature, because that ignores what the artist brings to the table. The artist sees nature, bringing his own history and experiences and biases to b ear, and certain lines and colors and rhythms stand out and alter his actual vis ion, subordinating everything else. Using these, a positive statement can be mad e. The lines and their relations are full of meaning, but this means the meaning is exclusively of their relations, and replaces the meanings otherwise attached to the natural scene. Something exclusive to art. Thus, the subject doesn't matter . This leads to the idea of art and esthetics as something separate from experie nce, though. The artist cannot separate what he is looking at from the meanings he brings to a scene from experience. So there can't be a completely separate aesthetics of l ines and colors that is divorced from the aesthetic meaning of objects. So, the idea that the artist doesn't use ANY of the meanings of the subject matter at al l is false. The subject matter's meanings can be used to concentrate the "diffus ed and dulled" meanings of other experiences. Meaning is more fully expressed in an individualized form than in a diagram or a literal copy. The former is too indefinite and the latter has too much that is irrelevant. Drawing is the extraction of what the subject matter has to say to the painter, in his experience.

Lines aren't mere pointers, and they can't only have meaning through the functio n of the eyes going over them. When we look at them, they are experienced as lin es of objects that we know of in everyday life, not in isolation. The other theory places the aesthetic element solely in humans, through enacting motor relations of shapes. It's an empathic view, and it considers things like color to be irrelevant. Life is a continuous process of acting upon the environment and being acted upon by it. Experience is cumulative, and the experience of the world becomes a part of the self that further acts and is acted upon. Even after the events have pas sed, their meaning remains a part of you. So, ideally, all objects of experience become expressive. What actually happens is that we build a shell around objects, become overly fam iliar, conceited and consider the self to be above objects. Art throws this off and shows the expressiveness of things, breaks us out of our routines. Tolstoi: Those who are moved, feel as if the work expresses something that they themselves have long wanted to express. Language involves the speaker, the thing said, and the audience. All language involves what is said and how it is said- substance and form. 111