THE THEORY OF ART AS EXPRESSION

Art is the community’s medicine for the worst disease of mind, the corruption of soul. (Collingwood 1975) According to the theory of expression, art should clarify and refine ideas and feelings which are shared with the spectator. Among its most influential exponents was the British historian and aesthetician R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943). In The Principles of Art (1943), Collingwood argued that art proper is distinguished by a particular and unique emotion, not possessed by either craft or art as amusement,
which he describes as lesser forms of technical art. As he eloquently put it, art’s place is to tell the audience ‘the secrets of their own hearts’ (Collingwood 1975: 336). By communicating authentic thought or a state of mind, art enabled both the artist and viewer to gain self-knowledge and so lead a better life. As Graham notes:

It is through imaginative construction that the artist transforms vague and uncertain emotion into an articulate expression. (1997: 32)
The idea that art should have a broadly communicative role is not new, but what Collingwood seems to be suggesting is more ambitious:
art should convey fundamental truths and insight about what it means to be human and in the world. This theory is regarded as normative; its concern is less with a definition of art as such, but with how art should be valued and understood (Graham 1997: 176).
Insofar as Collingwood’s theory disregards resemblance as a criterion of art proper, it shares similarities with Bell’s idea of significant form and other formalist theories.