Susanne Langer (b. 1895, USA – d. 1985, USA)
Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art, 1953

There are enough of elements of Langer’s philosophy that I might want to challenge or to qualify as valid only under particular assumptions and conditions. E.g. it is somewhat annoying with scholars insisting to re-define widely accepted terms that makes understanding and discussion of various texts complicated as one always runs risk to mismatch the context with applicable definition (on the other hand it is equally annoying to learn tens of words for roughly the same thing that scientists try to differentiate and brand as their own on the basis of new definitions). So now I have to memorise a special case of the Langerian meaning of “symbol” as rendition of something otherwise inaccessible (I am trying to articulate it from memory, just to test how well it sits – I may be failing miserably already).

However, her focus on pattern recognition as key operation in art helps me to articulate my own intuitive understanding of the same (and yes, she sees intuition as pattern recognition as well, so stealthy pun intended). It is also good to have someone who acknowledges validity of works addressing phenomena that there are no words for. It gets a little bit tricky again when she calls any and all of that as “feeling” when meaning “pattern”, but it’s OK. It gets even trickier when she seems to assume that art by necessity aims to express something – but I have an option of just ignoring those elements of her philosophy that do not help my case. After all, I am trying to art here, not to science.