Communication in Dewey's Aesthetics

Author(s): George Boas

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Dec., 1953, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Dec.,
1953), pp. 177-183
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics

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 COMMUNICATION IN DEWEY'S AESTHETICS

GEORGE BOAS

It is interesting that as the science of aesthetics has developed, it has become

increasingly preoccupied with the problem of communication. In classical times
few, if any, writers bothered about this problem for they seemed to take it for
granted that a work of art transferred an imitation of nature from artist to
spectator. What an imitation of nature was again seemed to worry none of the
surviving writers of antiquity. Either the phrase was perfectly clear to them
or else their arts seemed representative enough to justify the theory. Moreover
they were more interested in literature than in the other arts, and the literatures
which they studied were written in only two languages, both of which were under-
stood apparently by all men of learning. When Renaissance aestheticians began
to write about poetry, it was again taken for granted that poetry had but one
purpose, usually moral edification, and it might well be said to be a communica-
tion of moral ideas. This theory too had its difficulties, but they were not such
as to make men ask whether a work of art communicated something or did not.
The great narrative and satirical and didactic poems were obviously transferring
something or other from author to reader and so were the great frescoes, em-
blematic paintings, illustrations to books, and portraits. That something was
easily translated into words which were prose. Again there is now no way of saying
whether this unanimity was attributable to the practice of writers and painters
or whether convention was strong enough to prevent any doubts about its
relevance to fact.
One may risk the guess that increasing anti-intellectualism of such seventeenth
and eighteenth century writers as the followers of Montaigne, the pious sceptics,
the Libertines, the Enthusiasts, the Rousseauists, and the late eighteenth century
mystics and mystagogues, may have intensified the taste for obscurity of ideas
and for clarity of "feeling." The vogue of horror, of which the Gothic novel is the
ordinary example, is a pretty definite indication that some members of the
reading public were more interested in an emotional thrill than in any set of ideas
which could be articulated in verifiable sentences. Like Catherine Morland who,
it will be recalled, "had no objection to books at all, provided they were all
story and no reflection," people in general seem to have become addicted to
literature which did not express ideas. It is perhaps not extraordinary that there
were also increasing numbers of writers who provided what such readers wanted.
But similar things were going on in painting. When landscapes began to appear
without banditti, languishing maidens, knights on white horses, ruined temples,
the picture itself seemed to contain all that was required of it. The banditti,
maidens, knights, and temples may have been an incitement to literary reflection,
may have evoked sentiments which were not purely pictorial, however distant
they were from the anecdotal incidents of earlier pictures. But the landscapes
even of Gainsborough could never have seemed like moral reflection on, for
instance, the beauty of poverty or even the more attenuated nature-worship of
177

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 178 GEORGE BOAS

the Lake poets. I should not lik

committed abruptly, as if the c
to common sense. On the cont
painters to set down what they
whatever emotion was to be sti
of the painting. Similarly in poet
at once, but was the culminatio
an equally long series of manif
may, the time arrived when ae
picture or read a poem and ask (a) what does it mean and (b) need it mean
anything?
The paradox of the situation was that as the literary and visual arts grew less
"meaningful" or more unintelligible, music and dancing and even architecture
became more meaningful. The early ballet was at best narrative, but before the
art of dancing reached 1952, it had become argumentative. We have all seen
ballets "expressing" the tragedy of the Mexican peon, the frustration of sexual
instincts, the conflict between urban and rural culture, the downfall of the
capitalistic system, and the rivalry between Christianity and Paganism. We have
heard music which tells stories, paints landscapes, and expresses philosophic and
religious theories. We have read into architecture all sorts of philosophic, or at
least ideological, meanings, mystical unions with native materials, racial or na-
tional aspirations, economic collapse, all being found in the shapes, height,
spread, the very stone and wood used to build a building. Hence it would be
folly to assert that the problem of communication at the present time arises from
the unintelligibility of all the arts. On the contrary, if its source lies in works of
art at all, and I do not say it does, then it will be found largely in literature and
painting.
The problem recurs constantly in Dewey's Art as Experience. Perhaps because
of its author's close association with Dr. Albert Barnes, Dewey's main preoccupa-
tion seems to be with painting rather than with music or architecture or dancing.
And yet he is not slow to generalize his experience of paintings and to transfer
his generalizations to the other arts. Now few would deny, if they have had the
opportunity to visit the Barnes Foundation, that its collection is not given over
to literary paintings, to paintings which have some narrative intention or
edifying purpose. If ever there were a group of paintings which were complete in
themselves, it is these. That they represent Painting in some transcendental
sense seems highly dubious to me, in fact downright false. They are a selection
made by the taste of one man, and by a man whose taste was far from being
eclectic. It is quite understandable that a person who had spent over three
quarters of a century trying-in vain-to make his ideas clear, should have
asked himself precisely what such canvases were trying to make clear. That
they were not trying to transmit anything clearly does not seem to have occurred
to Dewey; that there is no reason why any artist, whether painter or not, should
communicate anything other than his work of art to anyone else certainly did
not occur to him. Let me list the passages in which he speaks of communication:

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 COMMUNICATION IN DEWEY 'S AESTHETICS 179

(1). Because the objects of art are expressive, they communicate. I do not say that
communication to others is the intent of an artist. But it is the consequence of his work-
which indeed lives only in communication when it operates in the experience of others.
If the artist desires to communicate a special message, he thereby tends to limit the expres-
siveness of his work to others-whether he wishes to communicate a moral lesson or a sense
of his own cleverness. Indifference to response of the immediate audience is a necessary
trait of all artists that have something new to say. But they are animated by a deep con-
viction that since they can only say what they have to say, the trouble is not with their
work but those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not. (p. 104)
(2). The artist works to create an audience to which he does communicate. In the end,
works of art are the only media of complete and unhindered communication between man
and man that can occur in a world full of gulfs and walls that limit community of experience.
(p. 105)
(3). Every art communicates because it expresses. It enables us to share vividly and
deeply in meanings to which we have been dumb, or for which we had but the ear that
permits what is said to pass through in transit to overt action. For communication is not
announcing things, even if they are said with the emphasis of great sonority. Communica-
tion is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and
singular; and part of the miracle it achieves is that, in being communicated, the conveyance
of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to
that of those who listen. (p. 244)
(4). Men associate in many ways. But the only form of association that is truly human . ..
is the participation in meanings and goods that is effected by communication. The expres-
sions that constitute art are communication in its pure and undefiled form. Art breaks
through barriers that divide human beings, which are impermeable in ordinary association.
(lb.)
(5). Expression of experience is public and communicating because the experiences ex-
pressed are what they are because of experiences of the living and the dead that have
shaped them. It is not necessary that communication should be part of the deliberate intent
of an artist, although he can never escape the thought of a potential audience. But its func-
tion and consequence are to effect communication, and this not by external accident but
from the nature he shares with others. (p. 270)
(6). It is by activities that are shared and by language and other means of intercourse that
qualities and values become common to the experience of a group of mankind. Now art is
the most effective mode of communication that exists. For this reason the presence of
common or general factors in conscious experience is an effect of art. (p. 286)
(7). The possibility of the occurrence of genuine communication is a broad problem....
It is a fact that it takes place, but the nature of community of experience is one of the
most serious problems of philosophy-so serious that some thinkers deny the fact. The
existence of communication is so disparate to our physical separation from one another and
to the inner mental lives of individuals that it is not surprising that supernatural force
had been ascribed to language and that communion has been given sacramental value.
(p. 334)
(8) Art is a more universal mode of language than is the speech that exists in a multitude
of mutually unintelligible forms. The language of art has to be acquired. But the language
of art is not affected by the accidents of history that mark off different modes of human
speech.... The differences between English, French and German speech create barriers
that are submerged when art speaks. (p. 335)

Here are a set of assertions which contain a whole aesthetics. Let us see whether
they can be simplified and reduced to a few which might be fundamental.
1. Artistry is communication.
2. Communication is making an experience common to two or more people.

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 180 GEORGE BOAS

3. This experience is that of "meanings," qualities, and values.

4. It need not be intentional on the part of the artist.
5. It is culturally universal and thus accessible to people of any tradition.
That there is an art of communication, it would be foolish to deny. Exposition,
argumentation, narration, and description, to use the categories of the older
books on rhetoric, may be achieved with varying degrees of success in almost
all the media and forms of artistry. Similarly there might be an art of making
one's experiences common to all, using the word "experience" in Dewey's
technical sense. But there is also an art of concealment, an art which society
necessitates quite as much as it does that of communication. This also need not be
intentional. Dewey's playing upon the words communicate and communion
would seem to one reader at least to indicate his democratic bias, the desire,
so clearly expressed in all his writings, to believe that society is a union of people
in which barriers are broken down and the isolation of the individual is bridged,
the gulfs and walls of which he speaks filled and destroyed. As a matter of cold
fact no society, except possibly certain tiny groups living on isolated atolls or in
mountain villages, is so unified as all that, regardless of the arts which may be
practiced in them. Are there not people whose whole happiness in life is found
only in preventing others from knowing behind what walls they live and others
who deliberately cloister themselves and build a smaller society of their own?
The taciturnity of the legendary Pythagorean is a better symbol of some of
our activity than the communion of the democrat. Even Dewey's "experience"
must include the experience of other men's works of art, and how frequently do
we have to use them and their vocabulary to rebuild ourselves, not so that others
may understand us as we are but that they may remain in ignorance of what we
are? Moreover are there not arts whose only reason for being is the passing on
of ritual, arts whose ceremonial purpose may be communion with God, but surely
not with other men? Finally, the audience-the thought of which an artist can
never escape-may be himself; he may be trying to clarify his own ideas, his
own emotions, his own frustrations and repressions and aggressions for himself
with nobody else in mind.
But even if we suppose communication to be the making common of an experi-
ence, whether deliberate or not, the possibility of such communication depends
upon a community of symbolism-not necessarily speech-which in turn could
grow out of only unity of artistic practice, similarity of experience, and natural
similarity of people. But these are just what we lack. The gap between fifth
century Greek and Romanesque sculpture cannot be filled by any consideration
of the undeniable fact that both were religious and both made by men. Even
today the classicist would find Romanesque sculpture either barbaric or naive.
To find common standards for both, one has to pass beyond their subject matter,
their material, their symbolism, and think only of their line, rhythm, mass, etc.
Such abstractions are common in contemporary aesthetics, it is true, but they are
successful only to the extent that they remain abstract. They thus never exhaust
the content of any work of art and inevitably give rise to the false separation
of matter and form.
Moreover, when there are two people there is always more likelihood of miss

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 COMMUNICATION IN DEWEY'S AESTHETICS 181

comprehension than of understanding. For one man's

part because it is his and not that of someone else. T
only actually existent but a necessary condition of th
When the self can overflow the gulfs and walls and mer
the self ceases to exist. I am not the first to point out th
being selves may arise from our consciousness of ther
theory has any truth in it whatsoever, there is at leas
never be shared, namely that of being oneself. I do n
this is worth preserving or not. The fact is that some pe
have thought it was worth preserving, have thought tha
system of values, the core of our ethical and religious
ence which colors much of contemporary art, both p
estrangement not only from God but from one's fell
one's uniqueness are surely not discoveries of anyon
been felt at least from the advent of Christianity in
much earlier in the Orient. Strive then as one will to
sense of the word, one will be frustrated in certain ar
That the arts can communicate meanings, qualities
doubtful. That they must or should is more so. Society
and in such a state of inner conflict that the commu
certainly necessary. No one facing the ethical problem
advocate less communication. But this is a social prob
aesthetic problem. It may turn out that the experienc
by art and are thus shared by others will become so
mordial meaning and quality and value will disappear
likely as that they would be conserved. The languages
services perforce take on an archaistic quality after
obviously they could not have had when they were fir
precisely what makes them seem religious to many parti
question. The meanings of a Jewish service which is recit
lic service which is recited in late Latin clearly cann
the languages are translated. So the meanings of Byzantin
can Indian symbolism require translation before an outsid
Is it actually possible in the present state of affairs to co
bolism in terms of which all human values can be tra
flicts which give our society the complexion which it
that is extremely doubtful-then it may someday bec
program to be realized. But that day is not at hand
hope for is tolerance. Members of a given social gro
their meanings and qualities and values to one ano
social group is formed to oppose another social grou
what I am talking about in a hierarchical society. Cour
tion to peasant art; members of the courtly society m
they do not admire it in the same way as peasants admire
may admire courtly art but not as courtiers do. When we
we do not turn into folk. We are playing a role. But t

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182 GEORGE BOAS

us almost countless examples

of works of art which alone
That communication can c
communicate, is all too true
in our cleverest attempts
means that something is co
cate it or not, he can be be
depends in that case on wha
he knows. But he will have
know psychology and cultu
is applied to the work of ar
of art and expressed unint
thus expressed is the differ
conscious activities which ar
than to intelligence. Could
unconsciousness? Only after
that he needed no longer t
obviously had to learn the
Dewey knew, drop into unc
their ability to absorb a tec
There are some who correct
to satisfy themselves with al
tion or painting. But a glan
will suffice to show that t
"natural," the outpouring of
The universality of artisti
ality does not exist. Here a
it is only through reinterp
not so long ago that the J
ridiculed, only as of histor
evidence for the evolution
curious, fit for a virtuoso's c
man living a hundred years
matter what he did say be
better than particularity? W
to Platonism in his epistem
standing? Is there not som
men share in common is th
sitate abstracting from a se
number of experiences are
time and space, their ident
orientation in the society in
their very quality and tone
love as a universal emotion.
and blood and dated person
manner and charm. The love of Hector and Adromache, of Odysseus

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 COMMUNICATION IN DEWEY'S AESTHETICS 183

and Penelope, of Alcestis and Admetus, are all to be sure cases of conjugal love,
but what an impoverishment of particular events it is to say that what they have
in common is what we value them for, or what the individuals in love with each
other found so moving in the experience! Did Penelope wait for the return of
Odysseus ten years because she was in love or because she was in love with
Odysseus? Was Odysseus just an object of love and thus the embodiment of a
universal quality, or was he Penelope's husband, not identifiable with either
Admetus or Hector or Lord Byron or Casanova or even Jean-Jacques Rousseau?
If I have chosen as the subject of this paper a topic which raises so many
doubts in my mind, it is not because I either dislike or fail to admire Dewey's
very important work. Art as Experience is one of the few books in aesthetics which
contribute something new to our understanding of the arts. But it is also an
example of a book which is written by a man who saw something in artistry which
others had not seen and then proceeded to generalize from that. Some art is surely
experience as Dewey used that term and the art which is experience is as clearly
discussed and as persuasively presented as a reader could desire. There is scarcely
a sentence in it which is not provocative and challenging. But oddly enough in
Dewey's case, the fact that we use the word "art" in a variety of senses raised no
questions in his mind. He seems to have accepted its univalence and to have
proceeded from there to develop his theory. When a man of his ability commits
so strange an error, we may as well all be a bit hesitant to construct general
theories of aesthetics. We would do better to move forward step by step assuming
nothing that we are not forced to assume.

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