Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 33))

CONCEPTION AND EXPRESSION

^TT THAT language do you think in?” is a question often asked
people who, besides their mother tongue, have mastered
another language. The answer is generally given after some
hesitation, “Why, both.” The answer might more truthfully be, “Neither.”
We do not think in words, but translate our thoughts into words to communi-
cate them to our fellow men. How often we hear, or say ourselves, “I know
what I want to say, but can’t find the word for it.” What language are we
then thinking in ? Our thoughts are not words but images, revivals of old
impressions received by the brain, which are frequently brought into new
combinations, and can be classified into five groups, according to the one of
the five senses through which they were originally perceived. Other so-called
abstract ideas correspond to general physical sensations which we do not
consciously locate. Joy will be accompanied by the relaxation of certain
muscles, pain by the contraction of certain muscles,—sleep means the absence
of conscious sensation, and so on.
When we communicate our thoughts to our fellow men, we rely on their
having had similar sensations to ours, and we use a medium which will awaken
or recall these sensations. What do the words blue or red mean to a blind
man, or C sharp to a deaf man ? No two individuals have had identical
experiences, so that response to our communication can never be more than
approximate. It is doubtful if there exists a human being of whom it may be
said that he is perfectly balanced in every respect. Especially among artists
some one sense has attained a higher development than the others. In the
musician the sense of hearing; in the painter the sense of form and color; in
the cook the sense of taste may become so highly developed that their thoughts
are almost entirely auditive, visual, or through the sense of taste, and when
their delicate perceptions are translated into the medium in which they have
chosen to express themselves most directly, they can only be imperfectly
understood by those whose senses are more rudimentarily developed.
The medium most commonly used to express our thoughts, the most
easily understood by the majority of people, is through the use of words—
literature. That is why so many people, failing to grasp the message of the
artist through another medium, ask to have it transposed into the medium
which they can best grasp, and ask to have music, painting, explained to
them—that is, to have form, color, sound sensations transposed into words.
The difficulty of such a task is clearly apparent when we consider that, although
words are capable of calling up visual and auditive images, they do so by
appealing to memories based on original impressions, different for each
individual; and that is why so many explanations of art explain nothing.
The artist’s thought inevitably loses a great deal when expressed through the
medium best suited to it, on account of the limitations of the medium. How
much more must it lose when translated from this imperfect medium into
a still more remote and imperfect method of expression ? The painter’s
message must be understood through the eye, the musician’s through hearing,
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