The Missing Person Found. Part I: Expressing Emotions in Pictures

Abstract

In Sight and Sensibility Dominic Lopes argues that expressiveness in pictures should be analyzed on the model of the "contour" theory of musical expressiveness, according to which an "expression" need not express anything about the inner psychological states of a person. According to his "contour theory of pictorial expression," expression by scenes and designs requires "no being to whom the expressed emotion is attributable" (the "missing person problem"). However, on this account expression has lost its fundamental raison d'être, that of manifesting somebody's actual emotional states. By contrast, I argue that successful works of pictorial expression depict the way the world appears to someone (the artist or his/her persona) when in some emotional state. Moreover, the emotional attitude thus expressed by the work is an important unifying principle for pictures, and hence an important artistic value.