DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0067
SENSIBILITY
We have seen here the kind of question and answer which formal
relations provide; and the same holds of colour, which has so often been
regarded as in some way a source only of an inferior kind of pleasure.
There is of course an immediate sensual pleasure in some colours, a
pleasure perhaps of a direct physiological kind—some of Titian’s reds
and blues may give us this; but this is a very small part of Titian’s
effect, and some great colourists give us very little of this direct pleasure.
Our pleasure then is of this intellectual kind. We say, why is that colour
in this place? and the answer comes, Oh, because of that other colour in
that place, and we feel at once with a shock of pleasure that the answer
satisfies us.
And I conceive that this process may go on down to very minute
considerations of handling and texture. The description I have given
here of questions and answers is only a kind of schematic diagram.
What really goes on is a very rapid to and fro movement of our minds,
a movement which is constantly accompanied by these shocks of
pleasure which come when the mind passes from unrest to rest. And of
course we get this satisfaction most readily from an artist with whom we
have already established a sympathetic rapport, because we can accept
his answers readily. But sometimes when we examine the work of an
artist which we do not like as a whole, it is quite possible that if we put
some of these questions deliberately and consciously the artist may be
able to answer our questions satisfactorily. It is indeed by some such
process that we can extend our powers of comprehension of art, and
increase the acuteness of our sensual logic.
We have seen that the relation of exact symmetry is too simple and
self-evident to give the specific intellectual pleasure of a work of art. It
is not only a demonstrable and exact mathematical relation but a very
simple one. We End that in a case like the Seurat there must be a
very complicated series of relations which might be measured; and it has
naturally occurred to people to examine whether these might also
conform to some more complicated mathematical relation. Such an
enquiry was even more immediately suggested by the appearance of
< 31 >
We have seen here the kind of question and answer which formal
relations provide; and the same holds of colour, which has so often been
regarded as in some way a source only of an inferior kind of pleasure.
There is of course an immediate sensual pleasure in some colours, a
pleasure perhaps of a direct physiological kind—some of Titian’s reds
and blues may give us this; but this is a very small part of Titian’s
effect, and some great colourists give us very little of this direct pleasure.
Our pleasure then is of this intellectual kind. We say, why is that colour
in this place? and the answer comes, Oh, because of that other colour in
that place, and we feel at once with a shock of pleasure that the answer
satisfies us.
And I conceive that this process may go on down to very minute
considerations of handling and texture. The description I have given
here of questions and answers is only a kind of schematic diagram.
What really goes on is a very rapid to and fro movement of our minds,
a movement which is constantly accompanied by these shocks of
pleasure which come when the mind passes from unrest to rest. And of
course we get this satisfaction most readily from an artist with whom we
have already established a sympathetic rapport, because we can accept
his answers readily. But sometimes when we examine the work of an
artist which we do not like as a whole, it is quite possible that if we put
some of these questions deliberately and consciously the artist may be
able to answer our questions satisfactorily. It is indeed by some such
process that we can extend our powers of comprehension of art, and
increase the acuteness of our sensual logic.
We have seen that the relation of exact symmetry is too simple and
self-evident to give the specific intellectual pleasure of a work of art. It
is not only a demonstrable and exact mathematical relation but a very
simple one. We End that in a case like the Seurat there must be a
very complicated series of relations which might be measured; and it has
naturally occurred to people to examine whether these might also
conform to some more complicated mathematical relation. Such an
enquiry was even more immediately suggested by the appearance of
< 31 >