ABSTRACT
Susanne Langer holds fast to the expressionist assumption that forms or tones are analogues of feelings and will therefore convey a specific emotional experience. The expression of emotion works through symptoms which are natural and unlearned, the communication of information through signs or codes which rest on conventions. It is true that expressionists tend to regard the conventional aspect as less essential, less artistic than the other. It is no wonder that its popularity led to an abandonment of structure and to the increasing cult of the spontaneous 'natural' symptom in abstract expressionism and to the uniformly blue canvas that expresses the artist's 'blues'. The artist who wants to express or convey an emotion does not simply find its God-given natural equivalent in terms of tones or shapes. The discovery of how much could be conveyed by lines and shapes must have stimulated him to explore how far such means could be simplified and still be used for varying expressions.
