Robin G. Collingwood
"1889–1943, English philosopher and historian. From 1908 he was associated with
Oxford as student, fellow, lecturer in history, and professor of philosophy. Collingwood believed that philosophy should be rooted in history rather than in formal science, and he attempted to correlate creative endeavor with historical experience rather than to sensation. He was also significant as a historian. In Roman Britain (1936) and in some
150 monographs he brilliantly reconstructed that ancient era from his study of coins and inscriptions. For his philosophical thought, see Speculum Mentis (1924), An Essay on
Philosophic Method (1933), Principles of Art (1938), and The Idea of History (1946).
See studies by A. Donagan (1962, repr. 1986), M. Kraus, ed. (1972), and L. O. Mink
(1987)." http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/CollngwR.html
"English philosopher. Influenced by Hegel, Cook Wilson, and Croce, Collingwood explored the implications of idealism for aesthetics and the philosophy of history in [his books] Collingwood proposed that historical understanding be achieved through empathetic reconstruction of the thoughts that motivated the actions of historical figures.
Recommended Reading: Aaron Ridley, Collingwood (Routledge, 1999);
Philosophy, History and Civilization: Essays on R. G. Collingwood, ed. by David
Boucher (U of Wales, 1996); and William H. Dray, History As Re-Enactment: R. G.
Collingwood's Idea of History (Oxford, 1999)." http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/c5.htm
R. G. Collingwood "The Poetic Expression of Emotion." from The Principles of Art
(1938)
1) The artist proper has something to do with emotions, but not to arouse them.
2) The most commonplace answer [based on what we habitually say], and the one we want here, is: he expresses them. a) This is not a philosophical theory or definition of art but a fact [or a supposed one], which we can later theorize about: it simply means to identify what people are saying when they say “art expresses emotion.” [But I am skeptical about this.
He seems like Plato in trying to define something, although he claims not to be giving a definition.]
3) process of expressing an emotion a) At first he [the artist] is conscious of having an emotion, but is ignorant of it: conscious of a perturbation or excitement, a sense of oppression.

b) He then expresses himself (in language, by speaking). i) He becomes conscious of the emotion as e.g. anger. ii) The sense of oppression has vanished and the mind lightened.
4) This is like "catharsis" [Aristotle’s idea] by which emotion is earthed [Aristotle never mentions the earthing of emotion: Collingwood means that for Aristotle the emotions of pity and fear disappear as when lightening disappears when it goes into the earth, is
“earthed.”]. Earthing involves fancy or make-believe, as when one fancies kicking someone down some stairs and then no longer feels anger.
5) But unlike catharsis, the expressed emotion does not disappear: although there is a sense of alleviation in understanding the emotion as anger. [Isn’t this inconsistent with his view expressed later in the selection that in expressing an emotion we are not merely labeling it?]
6) Expression is not a matter of intending to arouse a like emotion in another, although the artist may intend to make the other understand how he/she feels. a) The work is addressed primarily to the artist, and secondarily to anyone who can understand. b) Unlike someone who seeks to arouse a certain emotion, the artist need not know the audience.
7) There are two wrong ways to look at it. a) by using stimulus and response terminology [as was the case for psychologist B.F.
Skinner in writings he began publishing in the same year, 1938] b) by using means-and-ends terminology where the end is foreseen [as in craft]
8) Expressing an emotion is not describing that emotion. a) For example, the words in which anger is expressed should not use the term
"anger." b) Description, e.g. with epithets [“ A term used to characterize a person or thing, such as rosy-fingered in rosy-fingered dawn or the Great in Catherine the Great.”
American Heritage Dictionary] allows the emotion to become frigid, unexpressive. c) There is no need for a larger scientific language for emotions to improve poetic expression. d) Description generalizes and classifies, whereas expression individualizes: expresses e.g. the peculiar anger [i.e. the specific anger in this case]. e) Expression is becoming fully conscious of the emotion, expressing all its peculiarities. [compare to Plato on emotion] [This is like Freud, a contemporary, who believed that in psychoanalysis one can come to understand one’s own emotions.] [It would be interesting to contrast Collingwood here to Hume.]
9) A craft (e.g. that of arousing emotions) has an end that is set out in general terms.
There is always a "right way" to do things in craft. [Compare to Plato on the three beds.] [For Collingwood the craft of arousing emotions is one kind of craft, the craft of making tables is another.] a) For example a table's specifications might in principle be shared by other tables, and a physician seeks to create the condition of recovering from a complaint which can be shared by others.

b) The "artist" [so-called: he doesn’t really believe such an individual is an artist, hence the scare-quotes] sets out to produce an emotion of a certain kind, requiring therefore means of certain kind. c) To produce psychological effects, for example those of magic or amusement, the work must be of a certain kind and no other.
10) This explains Aristotle who, in his Poetics , was concerned not with art proper but with representative art of a particular kind: the amusement literature of the 4 th century, and with giving rules for its composition. [Nehamas has a similar view of
Aristotle.]
11) Reynolds' [the 18 th
century English painter] idea of generalization in the "grand style" is the same: to produce emotions of a particular type, you put before your audience typical features: i.e. make your kings very royal, etc. [In what way is Collingwood’s attack on Reynolds like the attacks on kitsch mentioned by Solomon?]
12) In art proper the artist wants to "get this clear," not a thing of a certain kind clear. a) Literature should not be taken as psychology, as depicting e.g. the feelings of women [in general]: this is not art at all.
13) Expression of emotion is not the same as betraying it, showing symptoms of it: we say that stammering expresses fear, but this is an improper use of "expression" in the context of art.
14) It is false to think that it is a merit for an actress to weep real tears. i) Even if the goal is to produce grief in the audience there may be other ways. ii) If it is art the actress uses expressions in speech and gesture to explore her own emotions, and allow the audience to make a similar discovery about themselves.
A couple more points [taken from his book The Principles of Art ]:
"Art is not a luxury, and bad art is not a thing we can afford to tolerate. To know ourselves is the foundation of all life that develops beyond the mere psychical level of experience….Every utterance and every gesture that each one of us makes is a work of art. It is important to each one of us in making them, however much he deceives others, he should not deceive himself. If he deceives himself in this manner, he has sown in himself a seed which, unless he roots it up again, may grow into any kind of wickedness, any kind of mental disease, any kind of stupidity and folly and insanity. Bad art, the corrupt consciousness, is the true root of evil." 284-5
The artist, Collingwood says "undertakes his artistic labour not as a personal effort on his own private behalf, but as a public labour on behalf of the community to which he belongs…Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness" 314-316
Some Questions:
Any problems with Collingwood’s theory of art as expression?
Is the criticism of Aristotle valid?
How is this for a theory of acting?

Have you had experiences of coming to understand your emotions through making art?
What is the value of art on his theory?
Why should anyone bother to read a poem if the emotions expressed are so particular to the author? from “Collingwood, Robin George” by Douglas R. Anderson in Encyclopedia of
Aesthetics
"a work of art may be completely created when it has been created as a thing whose only place is in the artist's mind." p. 130
"a work of art proper is a total activity which the person enjoying apprehends, or is conscious of, by the use of his imagination." p. 151
"imagination is a distinct level of experience between sensation and intellect, the point at which the life of thought makes contact with the life of purely psychical experience." p.
215
Anderson: "imagining is…the active making of a world for consciousness."
Garry Hagberg from Art as Language 1995
1) Many, [but not Hagberg!] give a metaphysical priority to the artist. [This means that many people focus on the artist when trying to understand the meaning of the artwork.] a) We look for the meaning behind the work: what did Pollock mean by that? b) This assumes that the artwork is one thing and its meaning another, and that criticism will lead us back to the significance. c) The idea that artistic meaning is in the mind of the artist is like the idea that linguistic meaning in the mind of a speaker. d) However this leads to the problem with Rene Descartes’ dualism, his separation of mind and matter. e) Wittgenstein’s [1889-1951] argument against dualism [based on problems with private languages of the mind] needs to be assimilated into aesthetics. [Hagberg favors
Wittgenstein over Descartes and he thus questions dualism.]
2) the paradox of expression
1. Emotions are private internal objects.
2. Artworks are physical objects located in the public.
3. Artistic expression seems to impossibly merge 1 and 2.

3) Expression theory of art says that the essential unity of the arts comes from the fact that they serve as outward expressive vehicles for inner emotional states. a) This led Bosanquet to ask: “How can the feeling be got into the object?”
4) Hagberg: Picasso’s Guernica indisputably expresses Picasso’s rage at the [inhumanity of war]. a)
“A [painting] expresses X [rage]” b) A crude explanation of this is that Picasso felt rage at the moment of execution of the work. c) But he probably felt many different emotions at different moments. d) A partially refined theory: Picasso recalled to mind the rage initially felt at the bombing.
[This is close to Collingwood’s theory]
5) Collingwood: only in virtue of inner mental work was the artist called an artist at all. a) But, Hagberg replies, this requires that the cause of the outward expressive object be separable from, and precede, that work. [and this is problematic]
6) Wittgenstein [in Philosophical Investigations 1953] asks us to think of a group of people each of whom has a box with something in it, call it a “beetle.” It is quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box, and yet all these people would still have a word in common. a) Hagberg: imagine a group of painters in a studio who agree to use a bright red stroke on canvas as a sign of a particular inward feeling: the feeling could constantly change without that change being detected, and yet the red stroke would continue to mean something. b) The thing in the box has no place in a language-game [a term Wittgenstein invented to mean an activity that uses linguistic rules] at all. c) The red stroke could not be used as a “name” or sign of an emotion: it would have a meaning but would not acquire this meaning through reference to an inner object. d) Thus: the inner object is not the sole determinant of meaning in the way the privacy theorist predicted.
7) Conclusion: Picasso’s rage is perfectly visible in Guernic a, but this emotion is not metaphysically private, and the function of criticism is not to find it.