A Study Of Susanne K. Langer's Artistic Illusion Theory

Susanne K. Langer, a well-known contemporary American philosopher and aesthetician, as the main representation of symbolistic-aesthetics, succeeded and developed Alfred North Whitehead's logic symbolism and Ernst Cassier's cultural symbolism. She believes that art is creation of human feeling in the symbolic form. Her whole philosophy of art was going to demonstrate the truth of these statements. After the study of the art ontology, clearly she has to talk about the problem of art creation. What does art created? How does art created the symbol? And how the symbol representing human feeling? Susanne analysis different categories of art and try to argue the truth of her definition of art in practice. Illusion theory of art plays an important role to link the ontology and production of art. Application of the illusion in her theoretical system makes his proposition-art is creation of human feeling in the symbolic form which roots in her whole theory---be the logical truth. Based on the analysis of symbol, artistic symbol, she studies art thoroughly and believe that artistic symbol and illusion related each other. The producing process of artistic symbol also is the producing process of artistic illusion; at first needs a commending form. Secondly, the artistic abstraction is the key element. There must be the abstraction form of human feeling and life in the art works. Both the conduction of commending form and form affection of artistic abstraction together produces the symbol of feeling, that is artistic symbol. So, artistic abstraction, artistic illusion and artistic symbol cannot be separated each other. The realization of artistic abstraction produces the artistic illusion and artistic symbol, and artistic illusion is the non-materiality presence of artistic symbol, key step of artistic abstraction is the production of art illusion which makes the work be artistic symbol, the real art work. In Susanne's art illusion theory, the most important function of illusion is the classification of art and art illusion is the criteria of the art category. In her profound study, she found that different art forms have different basic illusion: the plastic art's basic illusion is space, music is illusional time, poetry ,prose and movie are the illusional life. The quadratic illusions the affiliated illusion is assimilated by the illusion in to the whole art form. So in the art categories, art can be divided into basic illusion is the determinative issue of art classification, which is the main part of Susanne's artistic illusion theory.