What Are Artists Really Trying to Say?

Dear Reader,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “expression” in the context of art recently. It’s such a potent and loaded art term, and captures one of the most persistent ideas in how we think about creativity.

The notion is something like this: that a work of art gives more than a record of the visible world; it also gives an authentic trace of the artist’s inner life, their feelings and personal experiences.

But how true is this?

The thought that artists “express” themselves in their works is powerful idea and it has a history.

It did not arrive fully formed with the Expressionist painters of the early 20th century, but developed gradually over the preceding two hundred years, as artists and thinkers began to argue that the value of art lay less in its adherence to inherited rules and more as a manifestation of individual style.

The change of trajectory had begun in the 18th century with the emergence of the Romantic movement. Romanticism did two core things: it questioned the Classical tradition and the value placed on technical virtuosity and clarity of exposition. It also fostered an image of the artist as an independent force, whose own personal “temperament” was crucial in understanding their work.

By the beginning of the 19th century, artists were encouraging each other to locate their own motivations, to see themselves in relation to the concept “genius”, and to let these forces shape their choice of subject matter and the manner in which they represented it. This was the age of individual expression.

Yet the full consequences of this shift were only just beginning to unfold.