"Performance" In The Fusion - Dewey 's "Expression Theory"

The distinction between art and non-art to stress the independent, mysterious and prestigious characteristics of the former is common to all the aesthetic and artistic theories prior to the time of John Dewey. The Expression Theory of Dewey, thus stands out with its unique understanding on art and its major attack on the traditional notion of art as an isolated realm. It is fair to say that Dewey starts a new era of art theory that focuses on the continuity and fusion of art with our common life. What’s more, the Expression Theory is open to the modern world, and points to the prospect of art theory, which is walking away from isolation and coming close to the masses, and their life as well in search of new materials based on experiences.The significance of the “Expression Theory” lies in its fundamental viewpoint that goes against misleading idea that art is centered on our emotions and that insists on the particularity or uniqueness of aesthetic emotion, which is excluded and separated from the act of expression, and is regarded as something divine in nature or say, with an aura. Under the influence of such idea, the so-called aesthetic emotion is becoming more and more mysterious and separated from our common life. As a result, artistic creation remains in its own independent world, without a slightest contact with life, which sows the seed of the crisis of art in the modern world. In contrary to the emotion-centered outlook of art, the Expression Theory explicitly indicates that emotion is attached to and accompanies the expressive act; only when it draws to itself appropriate material, together with which it undergoes the process of modification and transformation, can it run its course to fulfillment and consummation.The significance of the Expression Theory lies in its firm stand on continuity, which connects art and non-art, including pure art and common life, refined art and popular art, as well as art and craftsmanship based on “an experience”. It is advocated that we start from the animal behaviors and trace back the origin of aesthetic experience to daily life. Through restoring “continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience”, we are able to stop art from being isolated and placed in a realm of its own, and reduced to a handful of “elite” that are granted the access to the enchanting art.In addition, the Expression Theory calls us to observe artistic activity from the context of experience. Therefore, we are able to form an overall understanding of art in terms of its function, value and nature. The gap between art and non-art that used to dominant art theories results from a lack of attention to the common ground of aesthetic experience and daily experience: both of them could be “an experience”, and once the condition is created, the latter could transform into the former, and become a source of aesthetic appreciation.To summarize, Dewey’s understanding of art based on his Expression Theory is an open field that encompasses all human activities, various forms of culture and new realm of experience, that could be added into and altered from generation to generation. The Expression Theory not only provides us with a new way to understand the world and its relation to us, but also pours into the modern world a number of ideas that are shared by the contemporary art theories, whose vision is of great significance to future theory development. Seen from this perspective, we could always return to John Dewey, and his Expression Theory in search of inspiration and foresight in order to reflect on and improve upon our comprehension and observation of art.