The Evolution of Psychical Distance As an Aesthetic Concept

Abstract

The problem of psychical distance refers to the relationship that a person has with an aesthetic object or work. Two basic traditions can be distinguished that have played a meaningful role in describing the underlying processes. The British Empiricist and Enlightenment traditions established the idea that the ‘real’ objective properties of aesthetic works engage viewers and evoke feelings of pleasure. The Romantic tradition placed a greater emphasis on interpretive activity in recipients who ‘willingly suspend disbelief’ and temporarily enter the ‘fictive’ worlds of poetry and drama. Writing in the early 20th century, Edward Bullough produced the idea of ‘psychical distance’, which combines both personal involvement and an awareness that the object or event is a cultural artifact. As the 20th century unfolds, we witness the death of the ‘aesthetic object’ as such and the emergence of a view that accommodates artists, aesthetic artifacts and receivers as open-ended and interacting systems. The complementary role of the realist and constructivist viewpoints is emphasized.

Full text

Abstract The problem of psychical distance refers to the
relationship that a person has with an aesthetic object or work.
Two basic traditions can be distinguished that have played a
meaningful role in describing the underlying processes. The
British Empiricist and Enlightenment traditions established the
idea that the ‘real’ objective properties of aesthetic works engage
viewers and evoke feelings of pleasure. The Romantic tradition
placed a greater emphasis on interpretive activity in recipients
who ‘willingly suspend disbelief’ and temporarily enter the
‘fictive’ worlds of poetry and drama. Writing in the early 20th
century, Edward Bullough produced the idea of ‘psychical
distance’, which combines both personal involvement and an
awareness that the object or event is a cultural artifact. As the 20th
century unfolds, we witness the death of the ‘aesthetic object’ as
such and the emergence of a view that accommodates artists,
aesthetic artifacts and receivers as open-ended and interacting
systems. The complementary role of the realist and constructivist
viewpoints is emphasized.
Key Word s aesthetic distance, creation, cultural and aesthetic
artifacts, reception
Gerald C. Cupchik
University of Toronto, Canada
The Evolution of Psychical Distance
as an Aesthetic Concept
Cultural psychology is challenged to understand the complementary
processes of creation and reception, and the ‘aesthetic objects’ or
artifacts that link them. Seeing artifacts as ‘aesthetic objects’ requires a
different attitude than is evident in everyday perception. Mundane
perception is action-oriented and involves the identification of useful
objects even when they are depicted symbolically in artworks. In
aesthetic perception, the sensory qualities of an object are valued in
and of themselves, and the two kinds of information, symbolic and
sensory, can be viewed relationally, expressively and metaphorically.
Our conception of creators and audiences who stand in relation to
these artifacts is also of necessity complex. People can be viewed as
minds engaged in an ‘effort after meaning’ (Bartlett, 1932; see Rosa,
1996) and/or as bodies whose perceptual mechanisms, viscera and
Culture & Psychology Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications
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nervous systems are affected by the aesthetic object,artifact or event. Of
course, both the object and the person exist against the dynamic back-
ground of changing cultures and roles, one that was present in the
context of creation and others that shape the context of appreciation.
In a social sense, there are three possible relationships involving
persons and creative cultural artifacts: first, there is the relationship of
the creator to the artifact; second, there is the relationship of the
recipient or audience to this work; and, third, there is the potential for
communication between creators and recipients mediated by the arti-
facts. These relationships have to do with the communication of ideas
and feelings through creative works. Intimacy and distance, which are
important qualities of social relationships, also apply to aesthetic
reactions. Personal involvement has traditionally been characterized in
terms of psychical distance. Qualitatively, psychical distance reflects the
non-utilitarian attitude that a person must adopt as a precondition for
an aesthetic episode to occur. Quantitatively, psychical distance reveals
the relative closeness that a person feels toward an aesthetic artifact or
event as a consequence of interacting with it.
The origins of the concept of psychical distance can be traced back at
least to the 18th century, where the contrasting Lockian and Leibniz-
ian (Allport, 1955) traditions of Content and Act psychology (Boring,
1950), respectively, affected aesthetic theory. British Empiricists, like
John Locke, favored a realist position, according to which sense data
convey the properties of objects in the everyday world. Taste theorists,
such as Lord Shaftesbury, defined beauty as Unity in Multiplicity, a
formal property of artworks that could also be discerned through
sensory input. The Leibnizian and Kantian approaches shaped the
holisitic thinking of German Idealists like Schiller (1759–1805), for
whom aesthetic perception represented a way of relating to things that
harmonized both thought and feeling, and involved the whole per-
sonality (see introduction to Wilkinson, 1957). The German scholar
August Wilhelm Schlegel and the English Romantic poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge also focused on individuals, stressing the willing sus-
pension of disbelief and acts of imagination in response to poetry and
drama (Burwick, 1991). The main goal of this paper is to show that the
processes implied by aesthetic distance (a content-oriented concept) and
willing suspension of disbelief (an act-oriented concept) are complemen-
tary and, when integrated, provide a comprehensive account of aes-
thetic engagement.
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Art Objects and the Aesthetic Attitude
Philosophers working within the epistemological framework of British
Empiricism maintained that a proper aesthetic attitude was needed for
the appreciation of art and literature (see Fenner, 1996). Lord Shaftes-
bury (1671–1713; actually the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley
Cooper) introduced the concept of disinterestedness, whereby the aes-
thetic object is approached in and of itself and without regard for any
practical purpose that it might serve. This attitude was a precondition
for appreciating the absolute properties that defined aesthetic beauty,
defined as Unity in Multiplicity. The moral sense, a taste (i.e. quality)
faculty, would then enable viewers immediately to discern beauty in
the same direct way that physical properties like color were perceived.
Francis Hutcheson (1725) extended Shaftesbury’s ideas from a Neo-
Platonic to a relational realist viewpoint. While acknowledging that
beauty was a real property of objects that could be perceived either
correctly or incorrectly, he emphasized relations between the object and
the perceiver. The locus of judgment was therefore grounded in the
observer, whose ‘internal sense’ faculty could discriminate ‘uniformity
amidst variety’. In addition to a disinterested attitude, the sense of taste
was a function of a practiced eye and therefore experience could facili-
tate aesthetic judgment.
The new aesthetics of the Enlightenment stressed manipulating an
audience’s imagination and emotions, in contrast with ‘the rhetorical-
allegorical style of the humanist and baroque tradition’ (Schneider,
1995, p. 82). This could be accomplished by selecting subject matter
that represented universally shared natural and social worlds, and no
assumptions were made about the need for recipients to possess
specialized knowledge in order to appreciate the work. Images should
be guided by strict mimesis, the controlled ‘imitation of nature’ (Schnei-
der, 1995). The goal of art was to create an illusionist style of represen-
tation in which the natural world, governed by laws of causality, could
be faithfully and immediately apprehended by the senses in a single
glance. This ‘visualist criterion’ associated an objective representation
of the world with sight, so that the aesthetic event, ‘as if it were the
thing itself’, would link a person with the familiar world (Schneider,
1995, p. 83). Addison (1672–1719) stressed the value of the visual sense
(and especially landscape painting) as a source of aesthetic pleasure in
terms of both direct sense impressions and subsequent recollections
(Addison, 1709/1963). French Neoclassicism emphasized the import-
ance of the ‘three unities’ of time, place and action in determining
dramatic illusion and the evocative power of a play (Burwick, 1991).
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This rationalist attitude applied to both painting and poetry, which
already embodied a ‘painterly’ sensuality and could guide the person’s
intuition toward insight.
Richard Payne Knight (1786), the late 18th-century scholar, offered
an associationist account of illusion in theatre as a kind of passive
response (see Burwick, 1991) in which the audience responds ‘in
sympathy with increasing emotional stimulation until the reason sur-
renders to the force of the passions’ (Burwick, 1991, p. 222). Knight’s
perspective ‘substitutes associational response for aesthetic engage-
ment’, and, consequently, ‘the mimetic and reflexive excitement of the
drama becomes virtually irrelevant’ (Burwick, 1991, p. 207). Audience
members remain at a distance from the unfolding drama: ‘Fiction is
known to be fiction, even while it interests us most’ (cited in Burwick,
1991, p. 207). Knight also analyzed aesthetic reactions in terms of
pleasure and pain responses to sensory stimulation. The example given
was of a person’s response to the vaulted roof of a Gothic cathedral
that is supported by slender columns. If the person ‘suspects’ that the
columns are not sufficient, then ideas of ‘weakness and danger’ may
be experienced. This is an excellent example of how associations can
shape the experience of aesthetic events and is an application of British
Empiricist ideas.
Imaginative Mental Activity and Aesthetic Experience
A Tale of Two Schlegels: Johann Elias and August Wilhelm
Johann Elias Schlegel (1719–1749)
Johann Elias Schlegel was a playwright involved in theatre manage-
ment whose experiences shaped his analysis of dramatic theory and
aesthetics in general (Wilkinson, 1945). He was seen as ‘kindly, yet
slightly aloof, humane and tolerant, yet fastidiously discriminating’
(Wilkinson, 1945, p. 50). His theorizing was always grounded in the
facts of his own experience rather than in some abstract model, and
thus he rebelled against the ideas of Johann Christoph Gottsched, his
conservative and powerful professor in Leipzig. Rather than working
from a priori rigid principles, as Gottsched did, Schlegel favored an
exploration of established great works of literature to determine their
underlying structural properties and effects.
He believed that the difference between reality and art was not
governed by the choice of subject matter (Wilkinson, 1945), nor was
pleasure a function of subject matter, because even ugliness could be
a topic for art. The treatment is what determines whether a work is
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original and gives pleasure, which indeed is the most important
function of art. Each art form has a distinctive medium with which the
artist works, and one cannot reject a particular medium on the ground
that it does not exist in everyday life. Thus, one cannot reject verse as
a medium in drama on the premise that people don’t normally speak
that way, and similarly one cannot reject sculpture for not being
colored. Aesthetic experience is shaped by order and not by the subject
matter or the medium as such. If the subject matter evokes excessively
strong emotion that seizes the imagination, then the hidden order
cannot be discerned.
Johann Schlegel was against any conception of drama that empha-
sized its ability to trick the spectator through the senses and emotion
into believing that the event on the stage is real. He held that we have
an element of detachment, but this can be understood as a reaction
against the use of ‘crude naturalism with intent to deceive’ (Wilkinson,
1945, p. 78). Theatre reflects the social realities and historical traditions
of its audience but at the same time can enhance social awareness. By
selecting critical moments in life and expressing them in carefully fash-
ioned dialogue, the playwright exposes the hidden workings of a
character’s mind. The author can provide motives to account for
actions as they unfold in a play to a greater degree than is available in
daily life. Probability must be available within the framework of the
drama itself because the unity of action is more important than the
unities of time and place. In short, by providing a meaningful context
to account for action, the author brings coherence and meaningfulness
to the audience’s experience. August Wilhelm Schlegel ( 1767–1845).
Following Kant’s influence, scholars in the Romantic tradition, such
as August Wilhelm Schlegel, grounded ‘aesthetic illusion in imagin-
ation rather than in emotion’ (Burwick, 1991, p. 193). Writing in the
early 19th century, Schlegel described the ways that illusion is shaped
by events on the theatrical stage. He countered the Neoclassical prin-
ciple that powerful dramatic illusion was created by the unity of time,
place and action, treating it as a ‘waking dream, to which we volun-
tarily surrender ourselves’ (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 194). Schlegel
proposed the very modern idea that reality and illusion actually
coexist. ‘The reality of the dramatic dialogue is that the text is written;
the illusion is that dramatic dialogue is spoken spontaneously’
(Burwick, 1991, p. 201). Illusion is sustained by the very knowledge of
the artifice underlying its seemingly spontaneous dialogue. The accept-
ance of a dramatic work as real is not determined by ‘probability’ but
‘depends on the appearance of truth to the senses’ (cited in Burwick,
1991, p. 210). Even the impossible might be accepted ‘so long as the
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grounds for impossibility are left out of the circle of our comprehension
or are cleverly veiled from our attention’ (p. 210). When illusion over-
comes the spectators, ‘they overlook the secondary matters, and forget
the whole of the remaining objects around them’ (p. 210). Schlegel not
only included audience participation as an important aspect of theatre
but added that their awareness of participating in sustaining an
illusion contributes to the overall aesthetic process. However, critics
who are obsessed with the realism of details suffer from a ‘prosaic
disbelief’ or ‘lack of faith’ that disrupts engagement and reveals a defi-
cient imagination.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, critic and poet, extended Wilhelm Schlegel’s
account of aesthetic illusion, placing a greater emphasis on the role of
will in adopting an aesthetic attitude. He described aesthetic illusion
as the product of a ‘willing suspension of disbelief for the moment,
which constitutes poetic faith’ (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,
1817/1983, cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 221). Coleridge was also inter-
ested in the delusional states that result from taking drugs like opium,
with which he himself experimented. His image of a person as ‘half-
waking, half-sleeping’ in the aesthetic experience reflected this dual
concern, but was endemic to 18th-century criticism and evident in the
writing of Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfather, among
others.
Coleridge objected to mechanistic models proposed by association-
ists like Knight because they treated the mind as passive. Instead, he
emphasized the logic of the imagination rather than the reception of
sensation. Imagination provides a basis for the fluid continuity of con-
scious experience. Henri Bergson (1920) later provided a comparable
description of states of ‘pure duration’ in consciousness: ‘Pure duration
is what the succession of our states of consciousness becomes when
our ego drifts through life and refrains from drawing a distinction
between the present state and previous states’ (p. 75; translated from
the French in Fraisse, 1963, p. 70). Chiari (1992) interprets Bergson’s
internal duration as ‘nothing less than the continuous life of memory
prolonging the past into the present, regardless of any awareness in
the present of a clear, ceaselessly growing image of the past’ (p. 256).
Further, Fraisse (1963) infers that, in the experience of internal
duration, ‘our thoughts and even more our emotions fuse together in
perfect harmony’ (p. 70). This subjective unity detaches experience
from ‘the exact stimuli corresponding to it’, and a search for these
stimuli would ‘destroy the state of fusion’ (p. 70). In drawing a link
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between Coleridge and Bergson’s notion of the internal ‘duration’,
Haeger (1992) states that Coleridge argued ‘strenuously for a causal
relationship between thought and consciousness that derives the
former from the latter’ (p. 99). This bottom-up model suggests that
unified consciousness and not analytical thought is the ground and
source of aesthetic experience.
This juxtaposition of imagination versus thought was expressed in
Coleridge’s comparison of children and adults in their response to the
familiar literary themes of artifice and reality. Whereas children can
readily suspend this distinction, adults are used to executing com-
parative judgments. This makes it more difficult for them to use their
imagination and accept the fictive as ‘real’ when reading a story, or a
‘representation’ as the ‘transaction itself’ when viewing a play. Adult
audience members experience an antagonism between what they know
(rational awareness that a play is a play) and what they feel (a sym-
pathetic emotional response to the dramatic action); the simultaneity
of artifice and illusion (see Burwick, 1991, p. 197) to which Wilhelm
Schlegel alluded. Excessive rational analysis can therefore get in the
way of aesthetic absorption. It is for this reason that adults must learn
to ‘willingly suspend disbelief’ and set aside comparative judgments
as to whether or not events in a work correspond faithfully to the
everyday world.
The antipathy that Romantic scholars felt toward mimesis was
reflected in Coleridge’s treatment of the distinction between copy and
imitation. While a ‘copy merely mirrors and reproduces, an imitation
reveals the conscious artistry involved’ (Burwick, 1991, p. 209). The
copy is a mere replica of the real, reflecting the accidents of the
moment. In imitation, imagination creates an ideal, through a ‘combi-
nation of a certain degree of dissimilitude with a certain degree of
similitude’ (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 212). Thus, Shakespeare did not
merely copy a character, but rather developed a character by ‘imitat-
ing the psychological veracities discovered through meditation’
(Burwick, 1991, p. 211). Whereas a landscape painting might be seen
as a copy, stage scenery involves an ‘analogon of deception’ (see
Burwick, 1991, p. 209). Proper aesthetic illusion implies that the spec-
tator avoids the everyday tendency to judge and compare, but instead
accepts the selected elements present in imitation as facilitators of
illusion. Aesthetic pleasure for the spectator derives ‘from knowing
that the scene represented was unreal and merely an illusion’ (cited in
Burwick, 1991, p. 213). In this way, recognizing the difference between
similitude and dissimilitude, between reality and artifice, produces a
sense of delight in the spectator.
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According to Burwick (1991), Coleridge’s ‘faith in the logical coher-
ence of illusion’ (p. 224) was a substitution for ‘the classical precepts
of representative and probable’ (p. 224) addressed by Horace and
Aristotle. The notion of being representative implies some kind of typ-
icality or familiarity of the poetic reference that makes it accessible to
the reader. Too strong a departure from the representative into excessive
individualization and novelty makes the poetic reference seem alien to
the reader. In Coleridge’s analysis of poetic faith and the logic of the
imagination, ‘unwanted particularization disrupts the illusion of
verisimilitude; . . . the copy intrudes upon the imitation’ (Burwick,
1991, p. 225). The ideal is to achieve a balance between the generic and
the individual. The generic ‘makes the character representative and
symbolic, therefore instructive’, because it is relevant to all people. The
individual, on the other hand, ‘gives it living interest; for nothing lives
or is real, but as definite and individual’ (cited in Burwick, 1991, p. 226).
Achieving this balance is the goal of every poet, and part of suspend-
ing personal judgment during aesthetic episodes involves having con-
fidence in authorial judgment. It is this confidence that fosters the
‘willing suspension of disbelief’. We experience aesthetic pleasure
when the improbable is willingly accepted as probable, and imitation
offers us just the right amount of ‘Difference’ from reality.
In sum, Coleridge was against the naturalist and realist idea that the
goal of stagecraft was to create an external illusion that would both
deceive and engage the spectator. Foakes (1990) has underscored the
idea that Coleridge transferred the illusion from thestage and its scenery
to the mind of the spectator. But Foakes added that audiences arrive at
the theatre with expectations derived from prior knowledge and accept
certain conventions regarding their relationship with the actors, the
play, and so on. ‘The willing suspension of disbelief begins at the box
office’ (Foakes, 1990, p. 227). Accordingly, dramatic illusion is
. . . an activity of mind on the part of spectators, who, having willingly
entered a special place for play-acting in the acceptance of a range of possible
rules and conventions, yield for a limited time to an emotional and intellec-
tual involvement with what takes place on the stage, filling out in the
imagination the inevitable incompleteness and artifice of the representation,
while always remaining aware of the action as play and as distinct from life
outside the theatre. (p. 228)
He notes that breaking the stage-illusion is one way of stimulating
the audience. One can therefore appreciate experimental theatre, hap-
penings and surround cinema as attempting to break the bounds of
convention and reawaken the senses and experiences of the spectators
(Casebier, 1971).
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John Dewey’s (1859–1952) Modern Account of Aesthetic
Experience
Dewey’s book Art as Experience (1934/1969) reaches back to Romanti-
cism’s concern with imagination and experience, and forward to a
broader systemic treatment of complementary processes in creation
and reception that achieve a harmony between the structure of the
person (artist or viewer) and the work. His main contribution was to
describe ‘experience’ as a ‘whole’ that ‘carries with it its own individ-
ualizing quality and self-sufficiency.... Because of continuous
merging, there are no holes, mechanical junctions, and dead centers
when we have an experience’ (p. 353). Both artists and recipients have
common experiences as an aesthetic episode unfolds.
Between the poles of aimlessness and mechanical efficiency there lies those
courses of action in which through successive deeds there runs a sense of
growing meaning conserved and accumulating toward an end that is felt as
accomplishment of a process. . . . The process continues until a mutual adap-
tation of the self and object emerges and that particular experience comes to
a close. (pp. 355, 359)
From Dewey’s perspective, adaptation represents a resolution of the
problem of aesthetic distance, one in which intellectual and emotional
harmony bonds a person to the work, thereby establishing an optimal
degree of distance.
Dewey understood the active and complementary relations between
‘artistic’ (i.e. ‘doing’) and ‘esthetic’ (i.e. ‘undergoing’) processes that are
grounded in experience. Doing and perceiving are integrated one
within the other. Because an ‘experience has pattern and structure’, the
‘action and its consequences must be joined in perception. This
relationship is what gives meaning.’ (p. 359). And further, ‘nothing
takes root in mind when there is no balance between doing and receiv-
ing’ (p. 360). The very urge to paint completes an experience for the
artist: ‘Without external embodiment, an experience remains incom-
plete’ (p. 365). Something that is artistic also ‘presupposes a prior
period of gestation in which doings and perceptions projected in
imagination interact and mutually modify one another’ (p. 365). ‘The
real work of an artist is to build up an experience that is coherent in
perception while moving with constant change in its development’ (p.
364). This led Dewey to conclude: ‘. . . because the artist is controlled
in the process of his work by his grasp of the connection between what
he has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the artist
does not think as intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is
absurd’ (p. 360).
Reception, too, is not seen as a passive act. The distinction between
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recognition and perception is fundamental. ‘Recognition is perception
arrested before it has a chance to develop freely.... In recognition we
fall back, as upon a stereotype, upon some previously formed scheme’
(pp. 365, 366). In arousing the ‘old’, it limits ‘consciousness of the
experience that is had’ (p. 366). Reception ‘involves surrender’ (p. 366)
and ‘is a process consisting of a series of responsive acts that accumu-
late toward objective fulfillment’ (p. 365). In order ‘to perceive, a
beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include
relations comparable to those which the original producer under-
went. . . . Without an act of recreation the object is not perceived as
work of art’ (p. 367). The observer must be like the artist who ‘selected,
simplified, clarified, abridged and condensed according to his interest’
and
. . . go through these operations according to his point of view and interest.
In both, an act of abstraction, that is, extraction of what is significant, takes
place. In both, there is comprehension in its literal signification—that is, a
gathering together of details and particularly physically scattered into an
experienced whole. (p. 367)
Edward Bullough’s Concept of ‘Psychical Distance’
Background
The modern treatment of aesthetic distance derives from Edward
Bullough’s (1912) seminal article titled ‘ “Psychical Distance” ’ as a
Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle’. His paper offered a psycho-
logically oriented integration of the Empiricist and Romantic intellec-
tual traditions. A cursory examination of his personal background
accounts for this synthesizing disposition. In a biographical preface to
an edited collection of three papers by Bullough , Elizabeth Wilkinson
(1957) tells us that he was a linguist, born in 1880 in Switzerland, of
English and German parentage. The cultural diversity of his family
background led to expertise in modern European languages as well as
Chinese. Wilkinson concluded that his appreciation of diversity in
cultural perspectives, with reference both to ‘the cultural backcloth of
a people’ and to works of art and literature, saved him ‘from the anach-
ronistic crudities, the local and historical parochialism, which are a
blemish on much criticism and aesthetics’ (p. xxv). He was a founding
member of the British Psychological Society, conducted research on
color appreciation at the Cambridge Psychological Laboratories, and
was elected to the Chair of Italian at Cambridge University a year
before his untimely death in 1934.
Bullough was ahead of his time in his critical reflections on the
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experimental method and was skeptical about using the stimulus–
response approach for the study of aesthetic process. Experiments in
the isolated context of a laboratory can only provide some sense for
the ‘elements’ of aesthetic experiences. As a foreshadowing of Heisen-
berg’s principle, Bullough (1957) said ‘to be asked in the midst of an
intense aesthetic impression ‘whether one likes it,’ is like a somnam-
bulist being called by name’ (p. 108). The onus of interpretation always
lies with the experimenter, who must appreciate the complementary
relationship of the simple to the complex, and vice versa. He was
against the idea of reducing everything to a single principle to account
for aesthetic preferences. Like the Romantic philosophers, he argued
that the ‘aesthetic “fact” is a distinctive mode of consciousness’ (cited in
Wilkinson, 1957, p. xxvii). A more sophisticated model was therefore
needed to distinguish between beauty and agreeableness in the study of
aesthetic judgment and preference.
Wilkinson (1945) has suggested that the idea of aesthetic distance
could be traced to Schiller’s treatment of éloingment, the notion that
poets should not write in the moment of strong emotion but, rather,
‘in the tranquility of distancing recollection’ (cited in Wilkinson, 1957,
p. xxxv). Bullough (1912) appears to have transposed this concept from
the poetic to the aesthetic domain. His theorizing was very much in
tune with other ideas expressed in the early 20th century. In his very
first publication, titled ‘Mind and Form’, Bullough (1904) expressed the
Gestalt principle that art is formation (Gestaltung) that reveals an
‘inward life’. The German Aktualgenese (perceptual microgenesis)**
school similarly believed in the ‘intrinsic structuredness of perception’
and empirically examined how a coherent (i.e. meaningful) Gestalt
emerges over time as perception progresses toward conception (see
Flavell & Draguns, 1957).
Bullough’s work complements that of Lipps (1903–1906/1962), who
formalized the concept of Einfühlung, or empathy, which contrasted
with Worringer ’s (1908/1953) more detached account of Abstraktion,
and Wolfflin’s (1915/1950) description of the psychological processes
underlying the linear (e.g. Neoclassical) versus painterly (e.g. Baroque)
dimension of artistic style. The Russian Formalists (Shklovsky,
1917/1988) also argued early in the 20th century that perception in
everyday life becomes automatic and habitual, and the goal of aesthetic
devices is to defamiliarize perception, to reawaken it through novelty.
In all these theories and approaches, formal properties of the stimulus,
be it an artwork or a person’s emotional experience, interact in an
orderly way with a person’s experience, as if shaping or giving form to
it.
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Processes Underlying ‘Psychical Distance’
Bullough’s distinctly phenomenological approach to experience
treated the notion of ‘psychical distance’ as an ‘outlook’, a ‘metaphor’,
a space that ‘lies between our own self and such objects as are the
sources or vehicles’ (Bullough, 1912, p. 89) shaping our ‘affections’,
defined as bodily or spiritual reactions involving sensation, perception,
emotional states or ideas. In the intellectual lineage of the British
Empiricists, though more Continental in sensibilities, he saw distance
as transforming the experience, say, of fog, ‘in the first instance by
putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our practical,
actual self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal
needs and ends’ (p. 89); then,
. . . by looking at it ‘objectively’, as it has often been called, by permitting
only such reactions on our part as emphasise the ‘objective’ features of the
experience, and by interpreting even our ‘subjective’ affections not as modes
of our being but rather as characteristics of the phenomenon. (p. 89)
Bullough’s own poetic account offered a phenomenological description
of fog as ‘the veil surrounding you with an opaqueness as of trans-
parent milk, blurring the outline of things and distorting their shapes
into weird grotesqueness’, and so on (p. 88). In other words, the
qualities of our experience are projected onto the stimulus; in this
instance, the physical phenomenon of fog.
Bullough’s psychological analysis of the ‘working of Distance’
acknowledged that it is ‘not simple, but highly complex’ (p. 89). It has
both a ‘negative inhibitory aspect—the cutting out of the practical side
of things . . .—and a positive side—the elaboration of the experience on
the new basis . . .’ (p. 89). The ‘distanced view of things is not, and
cannot be, our normal outlook . . . and the sudden view of things from
their reverse, usually unnoticed side, comes upon us as a revelation,
and such revelations are precisely those of Art’ (pp. 89–90). As such,
Distance provides ‘the much needed criterion of the beautiful as
distinct from the merely agreeable’ (p. 90) and offers a unique synthe-
sis of traditional opposites; subjectivity–objectivity, idealistic–realistic,
sensual–spiritual, personal–impersonal and individualistic–typical.
Distance is therefore ‘one of the essential characteristics of the
‘aesthetic consciousness’ (p. 90) and of ‘the contemplation of the object’
(p. 91).
Distance should not be understood to ‘imply an impersonal, purely
intellectually interested relation. . . . On the contrary, it describes a
personal relation, often highly emotionally coloured, but of a peculiar
character’ (p. 91) because the practical side is filtered out. In his model
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of the interaction between people and aesthetic works or events,
Bullough made reference to the ‘antinomy of Distance’. On the one
hand, we need ‘some degree of predisposition’ in order to appreciate
the ‘appeal’ of a work. He articulated a principle of concordance to
account for variations in taste whereby the success and intensity of a
work’s appeal stands ‘in direct proportion to the completeness with
which it corresponds with our intellectual and emotional peculiarities
and the idiosyncrasies of our experience’ (p. 92). As applied to appreci-
ating drama, the principle involves achieving the greatest concordance
or ‘resemblance with his own experience—provided that he succeeds in
keeping the Distance between the action of the play and his personal
feelings’ (p. 93). The same principle applies to the artist, who ‘will
prove artistically most effective in the formulation of an intensely
personal experience, but he can formulate it artistically only on con-
dition of a detachment from the experience qua personal’ (p. 93). The
central principle is therefore the same for both viewers and artists: the
goal is maximal involvement without excessive self-absorption; ‘utmost
decrease of Distance without its disappearance’ (p. 94). This is Bullough’s
main theoretical contribution to the study of aesthetic distance.
The next modern innovation of Bullough was to treat distance as a
matter of degrees, which is a function of ‘the nature of the object’ but
also varies in accordance with ‘the individual’s capacity for maintaining
a greater or lesser degree’ (p. 94). Persons also differ in their ‘habitual
measure of Distance’, and the same individual ‘differs in his ability to
maintain it in the face of different objects and of different arts’ (p. 94).
Bullough introduced the concept of a Distance-limit: ‘that point at
which Distance is lost and appreciation either disappears or changes
its character’ (p. 95). Two extreme conditions can be observed in
relation to Distance: under-distancing and over-distancing. Under-
distancing occurs when the subject matter is ‘crudely naturalistic’,
‘harrowing’, ‘repulsive in its realism’, and over-distancing takes place
when the style ‘produces the impression of improbability, artificiality,
emptiness or absurdity’ (p. 94).
The more evocative the theme (e.g. by referring to ‘organic affec-
tions’ or ‘sexual matters’), and the more mundane its reference (e.g. ‘to
topical subjects occupying public attention at the moment’), the higher
the probability of pushing the bounds of aesthetic distance and
evoking everyday, practical and personal responses. However, ‘even
the most personal affections, whether ideas, percepts or emotions, can
be sufficiently distanced to be aesthetically appreciable’ (p. 95). Artists
and authors are distinguished by their ability to achieve this distance,
rising above ‘practical and problematic import’ and turning problems
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of the moment into dramatically and humanly interesting situations.
Indeed, the fact that the artist can achieve greater aesthetic distance
regarding feelings, sensations and situations compared to the average
person has ‘often quite unjustly earned for him accusations of
cynicism, sensualism, morbidness or frivolity’ (p. 95).
Distancing ‘the subject matter sufficiently to rise above its practical
problematic import’ (p. 95) is a matter of the viewer’s perspective and
can also be facilitated by the ‘manner of presentment’ or style of the
work. The medium can affect psychical distance, sometimes hindering
and at other times facilitating it. Thus, the fact that ‘living human
beings’ are ‘vehicles of dramatic art’ is a problem faced by theatrical
performances that encourage under-distancing. Dance is even a
stronger ‘lure to under-distancing’ because ‘its animal spirits are
frequently quite unrelieved by any glimmer of spirituality’, a very
19th-century moral evaluation. This viewpoint is further revealed in
the comment that the ‘whole censorship problem . . . may be said to
hinge upon Distance; if every member of the public could be trusted
to keep it, there would be no sense whatever in the existence of a censor
of plays’ (p. 97). For sculpture, ‘the human form in its full spatial
materiality constitutes a similar threat to Distance’ (pp. 97–98). An
‘inability to realise the distinction between sculptural form and bodily
shape’ by people with ‘[o]ur northern habits of dress and ignorance of
the human body’ has ‘enormously increased the difficulty of distanc-
ing Sculpture’ (p. 98).
Distance is decreased to the extent that subject matter reminds us of
our everyday lives. Style serves to attenuate this rush toward famili-
arity and possible digression away from the work into personal remi-
niscences. In idealistic Art, which commemorates ‘religious, royal or
patriotic functions’, artists can use exaggeration of size (i.e. monu-
mentality), extraordinary attributes (i.e. combinations of human and
animal features) or conventionalized gestures and expressions to
distance figures in the subject matter of an artwork and make them
stand out. Similarly, fairy-tales and tales of strange adventures were
‘invented to satisfy the craving of curiosity, the desire for the marvel-
lous’, but ‘by their mere eccentricity in regard to the normal facts of
experience they cannot have failed to arouse a strong feeling of
distance’ (p. 102).
With a sense for the immediacy of perceptual experience, Bullough
observed: ‘The mere realism of foreshortening and of the boldest
vertical perspective may well have made the naive Christian of the
16th century conscious of the Divine Presence—but for us it has
become a work of Art’ (p. 103). Similarly,
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. . . it is largely the exceptional which produces the Distance of tragedy:
exceptional situations, exceptional characters, exceptional destinies and
conduct. . . . The exceptional element of the tragic figures—. . . is their
consistency of direction, a fervour of ideality, a persistence and driving-force
which is far above the capacities of average men. (p. 103)
Because of Distance,
. . . real tragedy . . . truly appreciated, is not sad . . . it is the homage to the
great and exceptional in the man who in a last effort of spiritual tension can
rise to confront blind, crowning Necessity even in his crushing defeat.
(p. 104)
In drama, various features of stage-presentation enhance the sense
of Distance: ‘the general theatrical milieu, the shape and arrangement
of the stage, the artificial lighting, the costumes, mise-en-scène and
make-up, even the language, especially verse’ (p. 104). One factor that
creates Distance for sculpture is its lack of color, and, interestingly,
pedestals serve to place a work in a space of its own and remove it
from our own viewing space. Factors that contribute to Distance in
paintings are: the two-dimensionality and framing of pictures, the fact
that ‘neither their space (perspective and imaginary) nor their lighting
coincides with our (actual) space or light’ (p. 105), the reduction in scale
of represented objects, and, most importantly, ‘unification of present-
ment’ effected by ‘such qualities as symmetry, opposition, proportion,
balance, rhythmical distribution of parts, light-arrangements, in fact all
so-called “formal” features, “composition” in its widest sense’ (p. 105).
The ‘visibly intentional arrangement or unification must, by the mere
fact of its presence, enforce Distance, by distinguishing the object from
the confused, disjointed and scattered form of actual experience’
(p. 106). Style therefore serves a dual role: a high degree of finish
reduces Distance and makes a work more accessible, while salient
stylistic qualities remove the work from the everyday world. Thus,
when it comes to themes of sensuality in Art, Distance serves to
spiritualize, purify and filter them.
In the end, Art serves to balance the interplay of the individual and
the typical. While the typical or abstract counteracts under-distancing by
limiting concreteness in art and emphasizing the generally social, the
individual opposes over-distancing by bridging to the personal. Finally,
Bullough argued against the fundamental principle of hedonistic
aesthetics that beauty is pleasure. This is of course the main principle of
experimental aesthetics, both classical (Fechner, 1876/1978) and
modern (Berlyne, 1971, 1974), which holds that moderate levels of
complexity produce the greatest pleasure, and thereby affirms the idea
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that the beautiful is also the agreeable. Bullough argued, instead, that ‘the
agreeable is non-distanced pleasure’ (p. 108). While ‘the agreeable is felt
as an affection of our concrete, practical self’ (p.108), the aesthetic
experience is focused on the object. It is psychical distance that also
keeps us from simply responding to the agreeableness of colours as
‘warm or cold, stimulating or soothing, heavy or light’. Instead, colors
are seen as ‘a kind of personality; colours are energetic, lively, serious,
pensive, melancholic, . . . etc’ (p. 110). Bullough concluded that the
aesthetic state has a two-fold character ‘in which we know a thing not
to exist, but accept its existence’ (p. 113).
Distancing and Empathy
Bullough was clearly aware of the similarity between his notion of psy-
chical distance and the concept of Einfühlung as expressed by various
writers of that era, Lipps, Witasek and Volkelt, when he said that
Distance ‘is essential to the occurrence and working of ‘empathy’
(p. 117). According to Lipps’ (1903–1906/1962)** analysis of Einfühlung,
or empathy, we spontaneously imitate an expressive person or object
and the resulting kinaesthetic sensations produce an experience of the
emotional state itself. We then attribute a comparable emotional state
to the stimulus through a process described as feeling into. Kreitler and
Kreitler (1972) pointed out that this requires ‘the active participation
of the observer’, who ‘must be ready to experience’ the emotion
(p. 269). Thus, Lipps and Bullough fall into the long tradition, reaching
back at least to Kant, Wilhelm Schlegel and Coleridge, that stresses the
active role of the observer in imaginatively constructing meaning.
A practical adaptation of the emphasis on interpretive activity was
proposed by Frank (1939) in his classic paper on ‘projective tech-
niques’. He argued that a field (object or experience) with relatively
little structure provides the individual with an occasion to ‘project . . .
his way of seeing life, his meanings, significances, patterns, and
especially his feelings’ (p. 403). The results are
... constitutive as when the subject imposes a structure or form of configur-
ation (Gestalt) upon an amorphous, plastic, unstructured substance such as
clay, finger paints . . .; or they may be interpretive as when the subject tells
what a stimulus-situation, like a picture, means to him; or they may be
cathartic as when the subject discharges affect or feeling upon the stimulus-
situation and finds an emotional release that is revealing of his affective
reactions toward the represented stimulus-situation. . . . (p. 403)
But projection does not necessarily produce objects of aesthetic value
because the person lacks distance and does not meaningfully contem-
plate the medium itself.
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Philosophical Commentary and Criticisms of Bullough
Philosophers who study aesthetic attitude or experience all quote from
Bullough’s (1912) seminal work, but their citations focus on isolated
concepts related to aesthetic distance. They fail to grasp the fact that
Bullough was offering a distinctively psychological theory of process
and not just the isolated concept of ‘psychical distance’. Fenner (1996)
offers a modern rendering of the related notion of aesthetic attitude
and continues the disposition of Empiricist philosophers to distinguish
between object and subject. Accordingly, ‘an aesthetic object is any
object, or event, that is the focus of an aesthetic experience’ (p. 8). An
aesthetic attitude is intentionally adopted to ‘facilitate the spectator’s
having of an aesthetic experience’ (p. 4). Thus, there are aesthetic
properties in an object or event that, when discerned, give rise to an
aesthetic experience. Beardsley (1982) adopted five criteria to describe
the aesthetic character of experience: object directness (attention to
phenomenally given qualities and relations in the object), felt freedom
(regarding the results of the experience), detached affect (a sense of
emotional distance that enables spectators to rise above even negative
emotions elicited by a work), active discovery (exercising constructive
mental activity) and wholeness (an enhanced sense of personal
integration resulting from the encounter).
The notion of aesthetic attitude has been subject to extensive debate
among philosophers. George Dickie (1964) argued that ‘the aesthetic
attitude is a myth’ and criticized the very words used to describe its
boundary conditions. The core of Dickie’s critique was aimed at the
dual concepts of distance and distinterest. ‘The question is: Are there
actions denoted by the phrase “to distance” or states of consciousness
denoted by “being distanced”?’ His answer was grounded in personal
anecdote.
When the curtain goes up, when we walk up to a painting, or when we look
at a sunset are we ever induced into a state of being distanced either by being
struck by the beauty of the object or by pulling off an act of distancing? I do
not recall committing any such special actions or of being induced into any
special state, and I have no reason to suspect that I am atypical in this
respect. (p. 57)
In a further attempt to demonstrate that there is nothing distinctive
about aesthetic attention, Dickie described ‘a playwright watching a
rehearsal or an out-of-town performance with a view to rewriting the
script’ (p. 59), and stated:
The playwright might enjoy or be bored by the performance as any spectator
might be. The playwright’s attention might even flag. In short, the kinds of
things which may happen to be playwright’s attention are no different from
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those that may happen to an ordinary spectator, although the two may have
quite different motives and intentions. (p. 59)
This critique does not demonstrate an appreciation for the complex
problems faced by creative writers and the importance of shifting
between engaged experience and detached judgment while working
through a piece.
Dickie concluded that being in an aesthetic attitude reduces to attend-
ing closely to a work of art and this is all that is left ‘after the aesthetic
attitude has been purged of distancing and distinterested’ (p. 64) as oper-
ative concepts. Adopting a dismissive attitude toward this ‘equation’,
which he deemed ‘vacuous’, Dickie concluded that ‘if the definition
has no vices, it seems to have no virtues either’ (p. 64). An aesthetic
attitude is viewed, ‘in more recent times’ (p. 65), as a way of lowering
prejudices against artistic styles. While of no theoretical value for aes-
thetics, it may have therefore practical application. This microscopic
(i.e. analytical) analysis of language might appear clever, but without
a meaningful and in-depth analysis of process it appears somewhat
trite, and while Dickie may play formally with the ‘distance’ and ‘dis-
interest’ concepts, his own appreciation of attentional processes lacks
subtlety.
Dickie’s (1973) final critique of the idea treated aesthetic distance as
a voluntary action that is necessary for experiencing the state of mind
termed aesthetic consciousness, as if it were a hypnotic state of mind. He
argued that Bullough and others who adopted the aesthetic attitude
viewpoint were overly committed to the belief that people are gener-
ally concerned with ‘the reality of things’ (p. 18). Dickie simply does
not believe that ‘being distanced’, and therefore insulated from
everyday practical concerns, is a necessary condition for aesthetic
appreciation. He believes that people don’t have to suspend practical
activity, because any ‘person who is in his right mind’ (p. 22) knows
that watching a play in a theatre is not a practical activity.
Dickie’s analysis holds that devices that supposedly encourage aes-
thetic distance, such as frames or raised stages, are signals that remind
us of ‘conventions governing particular art situations’ rather than a
‘special psychological force which restrains spectators’ (p. 25) or ‘a
special mental state so delicate that the least external pressure destroys
it’ (p. 27). We almost always have ‘a background awareness of some-
thing external to a work’ (p. 27) and neither it nor ‘momentary dis-
tractions necessarily interfere with appreciation’ (p. 27). If concerns
with external things distract a person from the work, then that person
is ‘out of relation’ with the work or not attending to it, and there is no
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need to speak of states of being ‘under-distanced’. In short, ‘there is no
necessary conflict between aesthetic appreciation and practical
concerns’ (p. 26) and ‘no reason to think that a psychological force to
restrain either action or thoughts occurs or is required in the ordinary,
non-desperate case of aesthetic experience’ (p. 28). This critique is com-
parable to that offered by behavioral psychologists, such as Duffy
(1941), for whom there is no need to posit special states such as
emotion; one model of behavior stressing situational or conventional
cues is sufficient. But it also draws our attention to the role of social
conventions in shaping attitudes toward aesthetic events.
Alan Casebier (1971) took on Dickie’s early challenge to the concept
of distance, arguing ‘that there are many more types of distance and
non-distance cases than he considers’ (p. 72). He cited a number of
examples that go beyond the narrow definition of distance as ‘focused
attention’ and considered as ‘unwarranted’ Dickie’s assumption that
distance implies inattention to the aesthetic object. With reference to
Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane, he described an historian who might
focus his attention on its historical accuracy and be concerned with its
‘external relations’ to American history. A second example involved an
hypothetical friend of William Randolph Hearst who attends closely
to the film but considers it to be an intentional slur, as did many who
saw it as a parody of the famous publisher’s life. A third viewer, a film
maker, might also consider practical external relations between the
visual and auditory qualities of the film and film-craft. Still a fourth
observer might be drawn away from the film by a series of remem-
brances triggered by the apparent similarity between her own marital
situation and that of Kane’s first wife. While this viewer might digress
away from the film, the others are variously involved in attending in
conjunction with different forms of contextualizing the work. Thus,
one can be both personally involved in many different ways while
maintaining a certain aesthetic distance.
Systems Theory and the Death of the Aesthetic
‘Object’
The Aesthetic Work as an ‘Object’
In the early part of the 20th century, New Criticism maintained that
the properties and structures of literary works could be formally and
objectively analyzed in much the same way as physical objects in
daily life (e.g. Eliot, 1932/1975). By accomplishing this, literary
criticism could have the same standing as scientific investigation, an
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achievement indeed during the era of the Vienna Circle and its posi-
tivist doctrine (Cupchik & Leonard, 2001). The same idea could also be
found in formalist art criticism (e.g. Greenberg, 1946/1957), which
sought to preserve the sanctity of modernist High Art in the face of an
encroachment by Popular (i.e. ‘Low’) Art and mass media (Benjamin,
1967)**. One might argue that the desire to preserve the ‘aura’
(Benjamin, 1967)** of an original work of art extends, on the one hand,
the cult of genius begun in the Renaissance when artworks were first
signed, and, on the other hand, the need to preserve the High Art
‘object’ as a thing that could be privately owned or hung in a public
art gallery as an embodiment of cultural and financial value. Monroe
Beardsley’s (1958/1981) highly concrete description of a painting by
Renoir (Three Bathers) as an aesthetic object exemplifies this material
perspective. He described it as an oil painting on canvas, executed in
1892, containing some lovely flesh tones, that is located on a wall in
New York’s Metropolitan Museum, and is worth a great deal of money!
The Aesthetic Work as a System
The death of the aesthetic ‘object’ as a thing, in the mid-20th century,
can be traced in part to information theory, which dealt with the simul-
taneous presence of symbolic and purely sensory qualities in visual,
musical and literary creative works. Moles (1958/1968) wanted to
‘show the role that information theory plays in the mechanisms of per-
ception and more particularly of esthetic perception’ (p. 4). His focus
was on aesthetic messages, be they musical, visual or ‘polydimensional’
(e.g. cinerama), and on the channel, ‘which conveys a message from a
transmitter to a receiver’ (p. 7). ‘A message is a finite, ordered set of
elements of perception drawn from a repertoire and assembled in a
structure’, the elements of which ‘are defined by the properties of the
receiver’ (p. 9). The information that is transmitted along these
channels is conceptualized as a quantity and can thereby be measured
and related to human perception and behavior.
My concern here is not with the application of an engineering
metaphor to the world of aesthetics, which has received due criticism
(Green & Courtis, 1966/1969). Rather, it is to show the value of treating
an artwork in an abstract manner as a multilayered event. Moles
(1958/1968) stated that ‘[w]ithin the same material message, there is a
superposition of several distinct sequences of symbols. These symbols
are made of the same elements grouped in different ways’ (p. 129).
According to the information-theoretic viewpoint, subject matter and
style emerge from the same basic material elements (e.g. dabs of color)
organized in different ways. At a basic level, relations among
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physical/sensory elements of the medium distributed in space (e.g.
dabs of color) convey aesthetic information that defines artistic style.
These same elementary properties also group to denote objects,
people, settings and events at the higher symbolic level of semantic
organization.
The multilayering concept in visual aesthetics can also be analyzed
in terms of figure and ground relations. The figural part of a work, its
subject matter, conveys semantic information, while the ground of the
work encompasses its style and transmits syntactic information
(Berlyne, 1971, 1974). A comparable view of the multileveled nature of
the aesthetic work was also expressed at a slightly later time period by
Gestalt-oriented theorists (Arnheim, 1986; Kreitler & Kreitler, 1972).
Arnheim (1986) underscored the application of Gestalt laws to visual
shapes possessing structural unity rather than those that are piecemeal
or atomistic. Accordingly, ‘every Gestalt is generated by a two-way
process operating downward from the comprehensive structure of the
whole and at the same time upward from the structures of the con-
stituent subwholes’ (p. 283). These ‘subwholes’ or ‘isolable sections of
contexts’, ‘while clearly influenced by the context, retain considerable
independence and by their conspicuous presence enrich the structural
interaction of which the perceiver becomes aware’ (p. 283). This implies
that a meaningful hierarchy should be viewed in terms of ‘stepwise
dependencies’ among segments. A ‘part is a Gestalt embedded in a
larger context. A whole, more often than not, is also a part of a larger
context, which, however, is being ignored, with or without justifi-
cation’ (p. 284). The central point here is that meaning is always depen-
dent on context both within and without the work, and these contexts
can be hierarchically structured, thereby setting the stage for depth as a
fundamental property of aesthetic meaning and involvement.
Kreitler and Kreitler (1972) applied a comparable Gestalt analysis ‘in
clarifying what it is in the contents and structure of works of art which
makes it the carrier of such a multiplicity of meanings and significa-
tions whose wholeness persists in the face of a variety of multileveled
integrations’ (p. 294). Multileveledness is
. . . the capacity of a work of art to be grasped, elaborated, and experienced
in several systems of connects potential meanings, each of which allows a
meaningful, clear, comprehensive, and sometimes even autonomous
organization of all the major constituents of the work of art. . . .
However, regardless of whether the different levels complement one
another, they represent hierarchically more comprehensive meanings,
remain autonomous, or tend to fuse within the framework of a more general
conception, each level affords a view of the whole, without impairing the
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wholeness quality of the work of art, produced by many or all of the levels
together. (pp. 295, 297)
Multileveledness ‘appears to be a joint product of characteristics in the
work of art and of certain modes of perception and elaboration on the
part of the observer’ (p. 297).
The Kreitlers (1972) provided a very interesting account of relations
between multileveledness and aesthetic distance looking back over the
history of the concept. A ‘disinterested’ attitude, in Bullough’s sense,
eliminates practical involvement with a play, for example, and inhibits
action that would normally be called for if the events were taking place
in real life rather than on the stage. This distancing also enhances atten-
tion to the work and intensity of the internal experience elicited by the
work. But a second viewpoint suggests that ‘[a]pparent detachment is
thus a side effect of an intense, multileveled personal involvement in
the work of art’ (p. 282). Thus the complexity of experience evoked by
identifying with different characters and their potentially incompatible
viewpoints is another inhibitor of action. According to the first view-
point, ‘distance is a factor external to experiencing and limits its
boundaries . . . without reducing its intensity and degree of personal
involvement’ (p. 282). The second approach holds that ‘distance is a
factor inherent in the very act of experiencing art fully and uninhibit-
edly’ (p. 282). It is closer to the Gestalt and constructivist emphasis on
‘the structuring of experience, i.e., its chainlike and multileveled
nature’ (p. 283).
An important addition of later 20th-century thought has to do with
the social role of the recipient or audience member. The Kreitlers argue
that in its early stages ‘art seems to have been much more closely
bound up with action and participation’ (pp. 283–284), while the
emergence of High Art was accompanied by social codes stressing
behavioral inhibition. The Kreitlers therefore tie aesthetic distance to
inhibition and conclude that ‘the optimal degree of inhibition can
hardly be determined in isolation from the accepted social role of the
observer’ and ‘the complex system of interactions between observer,
object, and situation’ (p. 284).
This more complex appreciation of the structure of aesthetic works
and events was also central to an emerging movement in the human-
ities emphasizing the polyvalent (Schmidt, 1982), indeterminate (Iser,
1971) and open-ended (Eco, 1962/1989) quality of the interpretive process.
Reader-response theorists (Fish, 1980; Holland, 1975) and construc-
tivist (Schmidt, 1982) scholars in the latter half of the 20th century
stressed the idea that it is impossible to uncover ‘true meaning’ in
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literary and other aesthetic works. While aesthetic conventions may
govern the appreciation of stylistic structures, it is important to
appreciate the subjective and interpretive roles of individuals and
communities. It is precisely this open-ended and multileveled nature
of art and literary works that invites deeper intellectual and emotional
examination.
Gestalt Applications
Iser (1978) has proposed a theory of the reading process that takes into
account Gestalt principles, and demonstrates the value of a contextu-
alizing and systemic approach. He described the reader as synthesiz-
ing a text into an expanding network of connections that integrates
denoted references and contexts. In the act of reading, a person is con-
stantly anticipating future events in the text, while retrieving and
modifying things from memory. The fragmented quality of literary
texts challenges the Gestalt principle of good continuation by making it
difficult to build consistency. These breaks in good continuation, which
are embedded by the author in a text through ‘fragmented, counter-
factual, contrastive or telescoped sequence’ (Iser, 1978, p. 186), mobilize
interpretive activity. It is this ‘impeded’ quality of a text that promotes
the production of diversified interpretive images.
Meaning emerges from the grouping of these interpretations, with
coherence serving as a criterion for interrelating ‘the polyphonic
harmony of the layered structure’ of the text (Iser, 1978, p. 175).
Relations between part and whole or ‘theme’ and ‘field’ are defined in
terms of ‘relevance’ (Gurwitsch, 1964). Themes can be juxtaposed
against different contexts or ‘fields’ in accordance with a sender or
receiver’s goals, needs, and so on. The notion of thematic relevance is
particularly important to the problem of multilayered meaning
because a change of context can lead to the reconceptualization of
meaning. There is a clear similarity here between Arnheim’s Gestalt
analysis of part–whole relations in visual images and Iser’s account of
the search for coherence in ‘impeded’ texts.
Summary and Implications
The aesthetic work is no longer conceived of in object terms in which
the more or less stable physical materiality of a painting is confused
with invariance of its meaning. But there is a link with the past. Both
20th- and 17th-century scholars believed that aesthetic beauty resides
within the coherence or unity amidst the diversity of organized levels,
respectively. The emphasis placed by constructivists in the later 20th
century on the interpretive role of the individual can be seen as a return
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to the holistic Kantian and Leibnizian traditions, continued through
the Gestalt and phenomenological schools. The same work means
different things to different people under different circumstances
(Schmidt, 1982), implying that meaning depends on the context that is
brought to bear. When the context is internal to the piece, as described
by Iser, meaning will depend on how parts of a text are seen in relation
to each other. When the context is external, it depends on the kinds of
questions the viewer is asking about the artist/author, the era in which
the work was executed, and its originality in relation to earlier styles.
If the accepted boundary of contexts is quite wide, then interpreters
can bring to bear arbitrary ones that reflect their own doctrinal
agendas, as in some postmodern criticism.
Synthesis
The two dominant approaches to aesthetic distance describe external
and internal models. The Enlightenment and Empiricist traditions
emphasized realism and the ways that an artist or playwright’s
carefully constructed representations of the world could externally
modulate experiences of pleasure and excitement. This external model
is based on the mundane premise that people spontaneously engage
in acts of cognition to recognize familiar objects and universal themes
from everyday life, and generally experience feelings of pain or
pleasure associated with them. The evocative potency of the work
diminishes psychical distance in part because of the immediacy of this
effect and the fact that the locus of emotion is perceived as ‘out there’
in the aesthetic artifact or event that caused the experience in the first
place. According to this model, attachment (i.e. close psychological
distance) should be to works that evoke positive feelings or excite-
ment in accordance with the recipient’s affective needs (Cupchik,
1995).
This concept of a work as an ‘aesthetic object’ applies best when it
is approached in the context of action. The context of action is inherently
purposive in nature and involves a pragmatic attitude on the part of
the person. Approaching a work as an aesthetic object within a context
of action can imply different things. It may be seen as a commodity with
a certain monetary value to be collected or to be given to a museum
because of its tax-deduction value. Similarly, an artist can produce
artworks repeatedly in a particular style because there is a market for
them. A work can be viewed systemically in the context of action if only
some of its qualities are relevant, as in the case of a decorative piece that
fits into a particular setting. Aesthetic distance in the context of action
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would then be based on the approach or avoidance value attached to
the object.
Scholars in the Romantic tradition, on the other hand, focused on the
role of the recipient in constructing an interpretation of the meaning of
a work. Acts of imagination provide an internal way to synthesize sensory
and symbolic qualities of the multilayered aesthetic artifact or event into
a coherent whole. Treating the aesthetic work as if it were real requires
a willing suspension of disbelief (that the work is not absolutely faithful
to the literal world) and an effort at finding meaning in the piece. This
applies to artist/authors and recipients alike, who, at the higher levels
of appreciation, engage in both ‘doing’ and ‘undergoing’. These
Gestalt-like acts of closure also depend on the perspective (i.e. under-
standing, vision both literally and metaphorically) that artists/authors
and recipients bring to creative works. It is here that context (i.e. know-
ledge, personal and social relevance) shapes perspective, which in turn
determines what is real for the creative person and the recipient. Thus,
the internal experience of the person provides a ground for the aesthetic
episode and is the locus of the unfolding meaning and emotion. When
the structure of a work is personally, intellectually or emotionally
meaningful to the artist/author/recipient, distance is reduced between
them and an attachment is formed.
A common framework is needed a priori in order to synthesize these
two approaches. Objects and the artifacts that denote them have both
material sensory qualities that define them perceptually and symbolic
meaning that identifies them linguistically. In everyday cognition,
there is a bias in favor of identifying useful objects, and sensory
qualities are automatically discarded on route to object recognition
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972). However, aesthetic episodes are unique
because both material sensory and symbolic qualities are attended to
and merge in a unified experience. In fact, artists and authors inten-
tionally manipulate sensory qualities to make them salient and
reawaken our sensibilities, thereby making us aware of the process of
perception itself. It is this process of de-automatizing perception from
the cognitive bias of everyday life that constitutes a first step in
aesthetic education.
The integration of these qualitatively different material sensory and
symbolic qualities into a coherent whole provides a cross-modal chal-
lenge for both the artist and the audience. The aesthetic attitude
provides an opportunity for integrating sensory and symbolic infor-
mation, structure and sign, style and subject matter, into a coherent
experience without concern for its functional value. The more repre-
sentational a work, the more the sensory qualities are subsumed within
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the symbolic ones to maximize verisimilitude. The less representa-
tional a work, the more the sensory qualities take on a life of their own
in the form of a style, and the more difficult it is to ‘read’ the work
unless the underlying code of order is known. This balance between
symbolic and sensory qualities, usually referred to as subject matter
and style, affects the relative distance between the person and the work.
The context of experience focuses on the whole encounter with a work
and is valued intrinsically. Approaching a work in the context of experi-
ence has interesting implications in terms of treating it as an object or
as a system. Artists, particularly during modern times, have sought to
affirm the surface of an artwork as a thing that occupies space. One
reason for doing this was to eliminate views of artworks as mirrors of,
or windows onto, reality. In modern art this was accomplished by
affirming the two-dimensionality of a piece and reducing illusionary
depth of space. Therefore, it is possible to experience a work of art in its
thingness or sensory materiality. Qualities like impasto (i.e. thickness of
surface paint) can make viewers feel like reaching out to touch the
salient surface. Thus, implied tactile qualities of a work as an object can
reduce aesthetic distance.
However, it is in a systemic view of artworks that the context of experi-
ence plays a more significant role. Experience can be shaped by rela-
tional meaning within the sensory qualities of the work. The overall
compositional structure of a work in and of itself shapes experience
unbeknownst to the viewer (though manipulated intentionally by the
artist). This does not merely refer to the placement of objects in a
rendered scene for the purpose of creating balance or tension. The very
selection and juxtaposition of colors according to principles of com-
plementarity and contrast can create the illusion of space or even of
motion. Once subject matter is thrown into the mix, experience extends
to all domains of symbolic meaning, both social and personal.
As many scholars have noted, digressions into the self through
evoked associations serve to distance the person from the work.
However, this is avoided to the extent that the viewer works to inte-
grate the physical/sensory and symbolic levels of meanings in the
search for coherence. Resonance between these two seemingly disparate
domains engages the viewer because structure in the sensory domain
serves as a metaphor for the symbolic. Thus, the theme of isolation can
be effectively communicated by appropriately situating a solitary
figure, but it is experienced more fully, and metaphorically, though the
creation of a highly enclosed space (Cupchik & Wroblewski-Raya,
1998).
The work loses its object quality in the context of experience, where it
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possesses both structure and indeterminacy. Thus, there is some kind
of order involving subject matter and/or style but, because the levels
have some autonomy, there are many different ways to perceive and
interpret it. The interaction with the artist/author is governed by an
attempt to bring coherence (unity amidst diversity) to relations between
the manipulated medium and its effects in the unfolding work, while
preserving maximum uncertainty in the synthesis. A successful
painting is one in which an attempt to make a visual statement is
appreciated by cognoscenti who can work backward to uncover the
evolution of the piece from the perspective of the artist. The audience,
too, tries to bring coherence to the unfolding interpretation and
accompanying experience. But the audience members start with the
whole and must analyze the structure embedded within, and only the
most experienced can readily do so. The greater the number of dimen-
sions or levels of the work that the audience members can discern and
appreciate, the richer their experience. The more they engage the work
interpretively, the greater will be their pleasure.
Absorption defines a condition wherein the boundaries between the
person and the aesthetic work, understood as open systems, are min-
imized. It would be highest when: (1) the symbolic meaning or per-
ceived subject matter of the work elicits clear personal associations in
the recipient, and (2) the sensory experiences elicited by the work give
experiential form to the symbolic meaning. Since the locus of con-
struction is within the recipient, the boundaries between the work and
the recipient are minimized and the experienced connection is height-
ened. A trade-off between subject matter and style becomes relevant
here if negative affect is elicited. Under these circumstances, an intel-
lectualized attention to style reduces excessive affect and moves the
recipient to a more comfortable position relative to the work (Cupchik
& Wroblewski-Raya, 1998).
It is also important to address communal absorption in aesthetic
works that are incorporated into social or religious rituals. While arti-
facts from small-scale societies are ‘aesthetic objects’ and considered
collector’s items by people from large industrialized states, they are
systemic virtual objects for members of the source society. Each virtual
object conveys important information about the social structure and
beliefs of the society (Layton, 1991), while embodying dynamic and
expressive qualities as well. Together they give the work an ‘aura’, an
evocative quality that arouses intensified consciousness of shared
meanings, while providing the soothing feelings that result from
collective experiences or ‘happenings’. Absorption thereby becomes
an intersubjective cognitive and emotional event. Scheff’s (1979)
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treatment of ritual emphasizes the role that it plays in catharsis, the
spilling of pent-up emotions in a safe collective context. Popular
culture can be seen in a similar light as providing collective emotional
associations for people raised in a particular historical era (Cupchik
& Leonard, 2001). In essence, it makes it possible to express pent-up
emotions in a subculture, and provides an affective marker for the
feelings of a generation. Stories can also be seen as raising con-
sciousness and moral valuation (Averil, 2001). Chassidic story-telling,
for example, has used simple but engaging language to increase
people’s awareness of moral and spiritual aspects of daily life
(Buxbaum, 1994).
Detachment refers to a situation in which the context of action out-
weighs in importance the context of experience. At an individual level,
it might involve the purchase of an ‘aesthetic object’ based on some
criterion external to it, such as value based on market parameters (i.e.,
notoriety of the artist, availability of his/her works, and so on). Detach-
ment can also occur even when a work is treated systemically. Someone
might experience sympathy (as opposed to empathy) for the circum-
stances of situated characters depicted in paintings, dramas, and so on,
but ‘not want to get involved’, so to speak. One could not accuse the
person of failing to attend to the play, but it simply does not have an
affectively evocative quality. This might reflect the topical nature of the
subject matter, which is alien to individual members of an audience
who are unfamiliar with the issues.
Communal detachment is a phenomenon of large-scale societies and
can be attributed in part to the effects of mass media. Television and
the internet, while providing speedy and unparalleled access to infor-
mation, also provide a large-scale frame around both good and bad
events taking place in the world. This creates a sense of detachment as
one observes possible horrors at a safe and sometimes voyeuristic
distance. Thus, while media can bring us knowledge about problems
in far-away lands or even in our back yards, they also affirm our separ-
ation from them. At the same time, one cannot put the blame on a
medium in and of itself. As a complex system it functions simul-
taneously at many levels. While writers, cinematographers, costume
designers and others might work collectively to create aesthetic
programs, they are potentially constrained by the forces of globaliz-
ation and corporate power. The shaping of programs might work
downward from the hierarchy of power, favoring particular themes,
and desiring to produce agreeable feelings that favorably dispose
people toward the products linked with them. While new larger and
more detailed formats of films are becoming available, they temporarily
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serve to attract perceptual attention. But once the novelty wears off,
the same problem prevails.
Conclusions
The two streams from which modern aesthetic theory flows are based
on different ontologies. The Empiricist view is fundamentally mechan-
istic and assumes a kind of realism according to which the structure of
objects and events in the physical world do two things. First, they
operate through the equivalent of affordances (Gibson, 1971) or con-
straints (Hochberg, 1986) that determine the image experienced by
viewers according to the criteria of everyday perception and cognition.
Second, the Empiricists assume that these objects and events manipu-
late emotion along a dimension of pain versus pleasure, and leave
memories that serve as markers for them. Not surprisingly, the ideas
of the taste theorists were formulated in relation to representational
paintings, which provide the clearest examples of mimesis, an attempt
to copy the physical world. Aesthetic distance reflects an awareness of
the work as a cultural artifact and is aided by the stylistic manipulation
of a medium that makes the materiality of the work salient.
The Romantic tradition is more vitalistic in its approach and is sen-
sitive to the organic development of the experience as encounters with
cultural artifacts unfold in time. It also emphasizes the constructive
efforts of individuals and audiences in the search for meaning. Given
that meaning is indeterminate, it is impossible to use truth as a criterion
of aesthetic appreciation. Rather, the contexts associated with an
aesthetic episode will shape the interpretive process. Theoretical
developments occurred in relation to drama and the problem of dis-
tinguishing reality from unreality. While the real is part of an inter-
subjectively shared world, the unreal is wrapped up with hope and
fantasy, both individual and collective. Since both themes are present
in dramatic works, the audience must ‘willingly suspend disbelief’ and
go along with the imitation or simulation (Oatley, 1999) of events in the
dramatic world that re-creates social episodes.
Aesthetic distance helps situate the person with reference to an aes-
thetic event. It involves an awareness of the event as such, be it a
painting or a performance, as different from, though meaningfully
related to, the everyday world. It preserves the aesthetic viewpoint,
one in which sensory and stylistic qualities are given a standing of
equal importance with symbolic subject matter. A ‘willing suspension
of disbelief’ is essential if the person or audience is to set aside the
everyday criterion of singular referential meaning. The combination of
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both sensory and symbolic meaning provides the artist/author with
an opportunity to create new stylistic codes or meanings. The viewer
or listener also becomes engaged in a process of synthesizing meaning,
and this affords the experience of both challenge and pleasure in the
interpretive process. Grounding the aesthetic experience in culturally
shared knowledge and becoming aware of the interpretive process
itself are important aspect of aesthetic episodes. Rather than juxta-
posing realist and constructivist ontologies, they should be viewed as
complementary with the framework of ‘constructivist realism’
(Cupchik, 2001).
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Biography
GERALD G. CUPCHIK is professor of psychology at the University of
Toronto. He is past president of the International Association for Empirical
Aesthetics (1992–94), the International Society for the Empirical Study of
Literature (1998–2000), and of Division 10 of the American Psychological
Association: Psychology and the Arts (1996–97). His interests encompass the
psychology of emotion and aesthetics. In the area of emotion, his goal is to
build bridges between two seemingly incompatible views, the
behavioural/cognitive and the phenomenological/psychodynamic. In
aesthetics, he studies both acts of creation and of reception using diverse
materials and methods, ranging from experiments to semi-structured
interviews. ADDRESS: Dr. Gerald C. Cupchik, University of Toronto at
Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, ON, Canada M6H 3A8.
[email: gerald.cupchik@scar.utoronto.ca]
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