Amongst Simmel’s writings on various cultural phenomena, the dissertation on Expressionistic art in The Conflict of Modern Culture is sanguine and animated, elevating said discipline to a surreal height. To him, the creation of such art is a process by which “the emotional impulse is spontaneously transferred into the hand holding the brush, […], so that what eventually takes shape on the canvas is the direct precipitate of inner life, unmodified by any external, alien elements.” The writing gives a number of insights into such a spectacular art form as Expressionism, and at the same time raises interesting questions with regards to its peculiarity – specifically, challenges to meaningful interpretation and subjective cultural value.
Artworks for Simmel are constituents of culture and, moreover, products of inspiration of both spiritual and physical natures. . Akin to other cultural items, art is prone to the disparities between the objective and subjective spirit. Firstly, any subjectively created discipline develops rules and rigidities outside the control of their human counterparts – reflections of this occurrence can be seen in the numerous forms and techniques that art has produced. Secondly, the vast and ever increasing quantity of objective art items available results in decreasing abilities of individuals to absorb such art for the purpose of personal refinement. Simmel points to cultural works having attained such perfection within their fields that individual humans are little able to understand and interact with such works. “The most impressive works and ideas impose their own intrinsic content and criteria on us that their cultural significance is overshadowed”, and hence these works of perfection are left to drown in solidarity.
The difference of Expressionistic art from other art forms, in Simmel’s view, consists in its lack of restraint by forms. Expressionism “takes seriously the insight that a cause and its effect can have wholly dissimilar external manifestations”. Traditional art may require that a vase be drawn according to certain techniques and rules so that it may best resemble the original item of inspirations, but Expressionistic art commands no such thing. Instead, the inspiration of a vase may result in any quantity and quality of colours, shapes, lines, as instigated by the creativity of the artist. Simmel accredits Expressionistic art as flowing forth with the inner vigour of life, raw and unchanged, beyond worldly judgments of beauty and likeness. Thus, Expressionistic art brings out the energies of life which traditional art stifles.
To see the significance of such a conclusion, we recall Simmel’s other writings in which he calls the conflict of modern culture “a perpetual struggle between life, with its fundamental restlessness, evolution and mobility, and its own creations which become inflexible and lag behind its development.” Culture is a continual interaction between the subjective and objective spirit, in which creations of the subjective soul become objectified as intellectual products, and individuals subjectify cultural milestones through learning for the purpose of personal refinement. However, the process of objectification of human creativity is flawed, since the soul cannot be represented wholly by something that is rigid in form.
The social mania for originality springs from the fear of channeling life into and “squandering its vitality on something that is no longer alive.” After being alienated from their own creations, humans seek to escape from the constraints of forms that these creations have developed independently. Indeed, the essence of life aspires to “manifest itself beyond all forms.” The importance of Expressionistic art then, arises from the fact that it has attained the unattainable – artistic inspirations are expressed in their raw entirety and the essence of life has become free. In a world where so many constraints and unsuccessful attempts to veer away from those constraints – Simmel calls Futurism one such effort – Expressionism is a rare victory in the manifestation of life.
Accordingly Simmel celebrates Expressionism. In has endorsed life so wonderfully, that “perhaps [it] is the basic explanation of the peculiar preference for the late works of the great masters observable in recent times, [where] creative life has become so sovereignly itself, so rich in itself, that it sloughs off any form which is at all traditional or common to other works also.” Van Gogh’s works, for example, Simmel lauds, possess a passionate vitality transcending the limits of painting, stunningly becoming unveiled self-expressions.
Although Simmel depicts beautifully the admirable qualities of Expressionism in overcoming the inflexibility of cultural forms, it would not be fair to conclude that one tragic portion of culture has been thus sutured. A simple trip to the museum – surely most people have the experience – brings about interesting questions.
That we catalog works of arts from all around the world and display them for the benefit of the public demonstrates, as a society, that we recognize the objective importance of these cultural artifacts – mere existence is sufficient for cultural significance, regardless of our personal opinions and preferences. Yet how many times has someone ventured into a gallery full of Van Goghs or Rodins sculptures and lamented his own inability to appreciate such masterpieces? How many times has someone scrutinized a famous post-modern work of art and raised an eyebrow, thinking it odd and even insensible to put such a piece on display? Objective awareness of the importance of such artworks often clashes with subjective outlook: some individuals or cultures may regard certain art forms highly while others harbor no such opinion. A trip to the art museum likely results in appreciation of some arts and confusion at some others.
Masterpieces may embody the energy and creativity of the artist, but the matter lies with how external observers resonate with such energy. With artworks, immediate appreciating often arises when the piece has some characteristic which the observer can relate to. No other individual than the artist himself can feel the inspirational vigour of his piece, and it must be the case that not all viewers can resonate with the artist’s energy or absorb it through the viewing of that particular piece of work. If a class of young students were presented some random shape and instructed to draw whatever the shape reminded them of, the end of the class will surely yield a great many difference drawings, perhaps never two the same – People always interpret inspirations, internal or external, differently and uniquely.
With unique interpretations of inspiration, it is sensible that artworks are often of an inter-subjective nature. Just as money is objectively very thin paper, subjectively, wealth or disdain possession, inter-subjectively all individuals recognize money as currency and a medium of exchange. Likewise, objectively society regards the artwork as a milestone of culture, subjectively some museum-goers find the artwork interesting or uninteresting, and some artworks can inter-subjectively be interpreted as “an apple” or “a lady sitting by a tree”. Naturally, most personal pleasure achievement of refinement is obtained through subjective appreciation – the ability to resonate with the artist’s energies – but even an inter-subjective recognition of the artworks allows for some surface understanding and knowledge. It is in the case of Expressionistic art that such inter-subjectivity does not exist, and a viewer must choose to accept or reject the artwork’s energies subjectively, a price to be paid for raw expression. As formidable as the energies that flow from Expressionistic artists, they can only be understood at a subjective level. The color of life can never be objectively defined or infused through learning, and so the lack of an inter-subjective layer results in the museum goer’s welling up in joy in sight of the painting, or vaguely acknowledging it as some renowned work.
In Simmel’s texts, movements against form, such as Futurism and Naturalism, result in unintelligible and inarticulate expressions. Thus they are brave but unsuccessful. But does not the average museum-goer’s quandary show that Expressionism in its lack of form is also often unexpressed? True manifestation of life is only attainable through the sacrifice of form, but form provides the inter-subjective window that transforms crude inspiration into recognizable culture. The conflict and tragedy of culture remain unresolved.