The Research Of Dewey’s Theory Of Artistic Expression

John Dewey was an influential philosopher and esthetician in America,with high international reputation and influence.His aesthetic idea had a real impact on contemporary artistic development.Therefore,organizing,analyzing and exploring his aesthetic is necessary,especially the Expression Theory,its core part.The article discusses Dewey’s aesthetic,the Expression Theory through the three aspects.The first part is to analyze and explain experience,the core of Dewey’s philosophy and aesthetics.The context of experience is the entry point of Dewey’s Expression Theory.First of all,Dewey’s context of experience was neither the same as the experience view in classic time,nor the experiential view represented by the British Empiricism,or the empirical view of experimentalism.Second,Dewey came up with his own experiential view after he inherited and criticized the traditional experiential view.His "an experience" concept connected normal experience with the aesthetic experience and broke down the walls between art and normal life.Finally,Dewey’s "art as experience"provided us a new point of view to explore art.The second part cutting in from experience,analyzes and discusses Dewey’s Expression Theory in detail.Breaking loose from traditional dualism,formalism and idealism,Dewey’s Expression Theory no longer discussed expression matter by employing binary oppositions,such as the subject and object,the mental and physical,and the contents and form.His Expression Theory laid emphasis on art works’ integrality and continuity,regarded art as experience and process,explained itself from the act of expression and the expressive object.From it we know that the object and content of expression was not emotion but meaning,expression was a unify of expression and representation,expression was not only abreaction,and that the expressive object was a formalized material.Thus,we established Dewey’s artistic expression theory system which was comprehensive,dialectical,clear and systemic.To begin the third part,the article teases the clew of the development of art expressional consciousness in a historical look,hoping to seize the research background of Dewey’s Expression Theory and make some reflection on Dewey’s artistic expression.Then,focusing on comparing Dewey’s and Croce’s expression theory,the article points out that the rupture between Dewey’s Expression Theory and traditional expression theory was of great significance,Dewey’s Expression Theory completed the transformation.Finally,by contrast,the article goes forward to explore the unique theoretical value and realistic significance of Dewey’s Expression Theory.