ABSTRACT
Philosophers agreed that expression appears in its purest form, which is best suited to the analysis and study of the concept, precisely in the world of art. During the 20th century, expression became an object of research in new sectors of knowledge, which, from the end of the 19th century, assumed the form of new disciplines, often breaking away from philosophy and from other fields of knowledge. Wolfgang Metzger argues forcefully that expressive qualities have genetic and phenomenal priority in human experience of the world. He treats the question of expressiveness by underlining its relevance and significance as part of his own psychological theory and attempting to produce an admittedly rather concise conceptual framework. There are innumerable terms with expressive connotation that derive from perception, from experience and from the conceptualisation of inanimate objects and that, by extension, are often used to indicate physiognomic expressions.
