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p Langer sets herself the goal of showing that “an expressive form is, after all, a symbolic form" (5, 385). It is only natural that in the process she should concentrate on an analysis of the meaning of the artistic symbol. In her work Feeling and Form the author writes that all the main contemporary theories of the aesthetics can be reduced to a single problem: What is “meaning” in art? In other words, what does “meaningful form" mean?

p We have already noted that expressive form expresses a feeling, which is itself a “meaning”. The term “feeling” is taken in its broad sense: it is not necessarily always emotion, as many critics of the theory of expressive form believe; the term means subjective reality, the subjective aspect of 160 experience, which includes the dynamic system of feelings as well as forms of imagination.  [160•1  Langer makes a distinction between the feelings which are experienced directly, and those which are contemplated and grasped by the imagination, between the contemplation of a feeling and the actual phenomenon known as “to have a feeling”. In Langer’s view, it is not the direct feeling of the artist but the nature of feelings understood, or grasped, by the imagination and depicted through the formulation and abstractive vision, which is the meaning of expressive form in art. The artist’s purpose is to reflect ideas-ideas about human emotion and sensuality, of which the work of art is a projection. The artist’s idea is his conception of human feeling, the depiction of forms of knowledge which are the cognition not of “facts” but of the “inner life" of tne conscious being, the symbolic revelation of truth about actual life. A work of art is a “symbolic projection of our insights into feeling" (10, 103-04).

p Insotar as Langer declares the main purpose of the artist to be the expression of an “idea” of human emotion, and insofar as she maintains that feelings in art are represented not so much for pleasure as for comprehension (28), her philosophy of art acquires a pronounced intellectual (cognitivist) character. A rift opens in Langer’s aesthetics between the direct expression of feeling (“self-expression”) and the logical projection of feeling, and the question is resolved dogmatically in favour of knowledge (32).

p Of course Langer is well aware that the “meaning” of expressive form in art always to a certain extent represents a feeling, a sensation, an emotional awareness, which is conveyed by a good work of art. However, this simultaneous communication by the work of art both of the feeling itself and of an idea about the feeling is not illuminated by Langer. Rudolf Arnheim, a leading American expert in the 161 psychology of art, has correctly noted that in those of Langer’s views discussed above her use of the term “idea” (or “ conception”) of feeling is not entirely clear. If for Langer an idea is perceived by the usual means as intellectual information, then in this case the distinction between the artistic and the purely informational statement is lost. If, however, the idea is felt, if it in fact is feeling, then the difference between actual feelings and the idea of a feeling remains still unexplained.

p Under the influence of the criticism discussed above Langer provides a detailed analysis of the special nature of the meaning of an artistic symbol. She sees this special nature in the inseparability of artistic meaning from the symbol itself, the fact that the depiction of the feeling is inseparable from its meaning. Its perceptual form is the only one it can have; it is not based on agreement, its meaning is innate to the symbol. Whereas in Philosophy in a New Key meaning is regarded as a function of the artistic symbol, now it is characterized as a quality of expressive form. Quality in art “is the projected feeling" (10, 106). In constrast to the meaning of a genuine symbol, which is communicated indirectly, via intellectual interpretation, with an essential “transition” from the symbol to its meaning, artistic meaning does not require interpretation, a full and clear perception of the represented form being sufficient. The vital meaning of a work of art does not require interpretation, and cannot be deduced in this way. Such a process in actual fact destroys any perception of meaning. Thus, direct perception of artistic meaning-intuition-is introduced in place of interpretation.

p Langer argues that the problem of intuition is of primary significance for the theory of the artistic symbol as a whole. But psychologists and epistemologists have, in her opinion, completely by-passed this problem. The main reason for this she sees in the habitual, common-sense interpretation of art as emotional self-expression and social communication. “If you grant,” she writes, “that artistic perception is an act of intuition, you do throw the doors wide open to this sort of mysticism, mixed with every degree of philosophical 162 irrationalism and transcendentalism on the one hand, and on the other with sheer sentimentality and romantic fancies. But the fact that an important concept has been used in confused or questionable ways does not prevent anyone from using it properly" (6, 61). By “proper” use she has in mind the Lockeinspired interpretation of intuition as a basic intellectual function: the direct logical or semantic perception of similar formal structures in sensually different things, the perception of one as a symbol of the other, etc.

p In Langer’s view, intuitive cognition in art makes connections or conditions by applying symbols of a special kind. “Langer,” writes M. Damjanovic, “has the ’logical courage’ to interpret intuition symbolically" (19, 255). It requires courage because symbolic cognition is usually regarded as mediated cognition, and intuitive as unmediated. Admittedly the author gives in to her critics and concedes in Problems of Art that it is really impossible to talk of intuitive symbolism, clearly having in mind the essential difference between the work of art and the genuine symbol. Nevertheless, insofar as expressive form in art is interpreted as symbolic form, the paradox of intuitive symbolism remains in effect. Moreover, her phenomenological interpretation of expressive form meant that Langer was unable to evade the transcendental approach to intuition. Indeed, with the help of intuition (of “pure perception”) we cognize the expressive form which obtains in the transcendental virtual field, and not rational essences. Thus, Langer’s phenomenological conception appears to lack a clear understanding of the fact that intuitive cognition is conditioned by two types of material circumstances: the environment and the physiological processes which take place in the nervous system, i.e. Langer lacks the view which is the only one to accompany a correct scientific resolution of the psychophysical problem-the affirmation of the oneness of the physical and the mental.

p The inseparability of meaning and symbol, the lack of a transition from the symbol to the meaning, and the intuitive grasping of meaning-all these features of the artistic symbol lead Langer to a comparison of the symbol and the met aphor. In her Problems of Art she writes that the principle 163 of metaphor is a principle of language to which the latter resorts in order to express new experience in a non-discursive manner, for discursive, verbal symbolism is unable to do this. The principle of the metaphor is a principle which consists in being able to talk about one thing and at the same time express the meaning of another through it. A metaphor is an idea which functions in its turn as a symbol, in order to express something. It is non-discursive and therefore in actual fact does not affirm the idea, but formulates new concepts for our direct imaginative grasping. A work of art is a developed metaphor.

p The author develops the analogy between the artistic symbol and the metaphor in her Mind... and notes that the work of art is a highly elaborate, and not simple, metaphor, even when it has the simplest composition, and that a work of art as metaphor must be comprehensible without translation or comparison of ideas. It just reveals its form, and its meaning is perceived directly. For this precise reason Langer stressed that the problem of intuition and the metaphor is of primary significance for the theory of artistic symbolism.  [163•1  On the basis of the analogy she makes between the work of art and the metaphor Langer considers it worthwhile to “call a work of art a metaphorical symbol" (10, 104). The idea of the metaphorical symbol in art, advanced long before by Peirce, unquestionably deserves attention and is of heuristic value.

p An analysis of Langer’s conception of expressive form, interpreted as a metaphorical symbol, clearly shows that Langer was persuaded by her critics to make considerable corrections to her theory of presentational symbolism, placing her main accent on an explanation of the special nature of the artistic symbol by comparison with discursive symbolism. She states outright that the difference between the functions of “a genuine symbol" and a work of art were 164 greater than she had realized before (6, 126). For this reason she changed her terminology. She replaced “ presentational symbol" and “artistic symbol" (on M. Rader’s advice) with the terms “expressive form”, and also “symbolic projection”. The term “meaning” to designate the meaning of a work of art was replaced with the term “import”, and sometimes “vital import”. Despite all these corrections Langer continues to hold that the function of the work of art is more like the symbolic function than anything else. She sees this similarity in the fact that “expressive form" in art, like any symbol, on the one hand reflects something elsea dynamic system of feelings-and on the other articulates, creates form, resorting to a process of transformation and above all to abstraction, which we discussed in detail in the previous section: “The function of a symbol is not only to convey a form, but in the first place to abstract it" (10, 105). Like any symbol expressive form is a projection of an idea, which it communicates, and which constitutes the meaning of the work of art.

p Langer’s new conception of the artistic symbol was also subjected to criticism. Some critics, and above all those who attacked the theory of presentational symbolism for failing to take account of the specific features of works of art as against those of discursive symbols (Nagel et al.) now praise Langer, as she has taken these into account. They approve of the fact that she has recognized that expressive form in art does not refer to anything other than itself, has no “ references”, that the value of art is cognized intuitively, without mediation, etc. These critics were right to reproach Langer for contradicting herself and continuing to call the work of art a symbol, when a symbol without reference cannot be a symbol (29; 33). Langer’s arguments that a work of art is a symbol because, like a linguistic simbol (a sentence), it forms an idea for comprehension, abstracts, etc., are convincingly refuted. Thus A. Berndtson has shown in his detailed criticism of these arguments of Langer’s that the symbol’s ability to be an instrument in the formation of thought (in language) or of feelings (in art) is indivisibly connected with its function of representing something else. Without this function 165 the symbol can still be an instrument, but it ceases to be a symbol.

p In addition to this criticism other criticisms are levelled from an opposite position-that of defending the symbolic nature of art. Thus the Italian aesthetician Enrico Fubini asserts that as early as in Feeling and Form the author herself points to the crisis in her theory of artistic symbolism, for she emphasizes that the artistic symbol cannot be separated from meaning, and contrasts two radically different methods of expression: the mediated, logical, peculiar to discursive and scientific languages, and the unmediated, intuitive, and therefore alogical method, inherent in art. In Langer’s theory art now reveals feeling but does not communicate it. Fubini makes a perfectly’ justifiable conclusion: a gradual decline can be observed in Langer’s theories from her premises to her conclusions. Her basic requirement-to draw art into the field of analytical activity, to see in art human experience comprehensible in the framework of symbolic activity-is all reduced to naught; her polemic with the neo-positivists is ultimately reduced to squabbles over terminology and as a result Langer’s theory of the artistic symbol “imperceptibly slips into neo-positivist positions" (23, 77).

p M. Damjanovic’s criticism follows the same course. In his opinion Langer, having opposed the artistic to the genuine symbol and introduced a new, semantically inexact concept of the symbol, was unable to substantiate the symbolic character of art. We believe that Damjanovic is correct when he points out that one of the main stumbling-blocks encountered by Langer was the problem of the unmediated and the mediated in art. Having posed this important question, she was unable to give it a dialectical resolution, proceeding as she did from unsatisfactory philosophical premises. Instead of explaining the really difficult problem of how the artistic symbol manages dialectically to combine unmediated ( intuitive) and mediated (logical) factors, Langer decided the question metaphysically in favour of the unmediated, intuitive, thereby undermining the basis of the symbolic interpretation of art. To talk of the mediated nature of cognition 166 in art is tantamount to talking of the reality of the world and the feelings to which the artistic symbol refers. However, on the basis of the idealistic, Cassirer-inspired theory of “symbolic forms”, on the basis of phenomenalism Langer was only able to formulate a theory in which the artistic symbol represented something which it creates itself and which we are intuitively aware of. In this process “any ontological, realistic meaning of art is rejected" (19, 261).

We should also mention that Langer’s conception of symbolism contains such aspects as her view that expressive form in art reflects the morphology of feelings, by developing which she would have been able to avoid many of the contradictions and idealistic conclusions to which her theory led.  [166•1