Noted feminist scholar Claudia Moscovici is a professor the University of Michigan, and who has published several books on feminist theory and women's sensuality, including Erotisms and From Sex Objects to Sexual Subjects.

On Expressivity: Art and Emotion
By Claudia Moscovici

It has occurred to me that part of the appeal of DOMAI’s simple nudes can be attributed to the way in which they express emotion through the flow, position, and movement of the body. There is something undeniably artistic and moving about DOMAI photography which is for the most part missing from contemporary art today. For this reason I would like to retrace part of the history of art to explain this link between art and emotion which DOMAI photography, going against the grain, perpetuates.

In our own minds, we still tend to associate art and emotion. For the romantic notion of art as the product of an emotive, sensitive and inspired artist who creates masterpieces to move and elevate the public has not altogether disappeared from the popular imagination. Yet, unfortunately, in recent history—particularly since the movement of art for art’s sake in the nineteenth century and the formalist and conceptual currents of the twentieth century—emotion has almost disappeared from art itself. Even in the movement of conceptual art most closely associated with emotion and spirituality—abstract expressionism—the emotion is a part of the process of artistic creation and palpable in the moving effect of art upon (some) viewers rather than readily recognizable in the artistic object itself. There is, of course, no inherent and eternally valid rule that dictates that emotion should be an inherent part of a work of art—or of any part of the artistic process, for that matter. And, in fact, art has not always existed as separate from artifact and artistic objects have not always been valued for their expressive powers.

For the ancient Egyptians, to offer one notable example, art served a largely symbolic and religious function. Tombs, busts and paintings were used as a means of preserving and glorifying the souls of kings, queens and other privileged members of society. E.H. Gombrich informs us that, appropriately enough, one Egyptian word for sculptor was “He-who-keeps-alive.” Egyptian artists depicted the human figure not as they saw it, nor to express or provoke emotion, but to capture the essence of an important person’s spirit by representing his or her body from its most characteristic angles. The face was shown in profile; the eye from the front; the shoulders and chest from the front; the legs from the side, with the feet seen from the inside and toes pointed upward. (The Story of Art, 60-1). For millennia Egyptian figures had a frozen and immobile, non-expressive look that strove to freeze the souls of powerful men and women in time and to safeguard their pleasures and happiness in the afterlife.

Greek art was perhaps the first—and certainly the most influential art in the Western tradition— to capture the essence not only of the human spirit, but also of the human form, with all its movement and powers of expression. In Greek art, we feel, even the body seems infused with a soul. Myron’s famous sculpture of the discus thrower, Discobolos (c. 450 B.C), which is of the same era as the better known works of the sculptor Pheidias, displays the beauty, poise, force and movement of a young man’s efforts to launch the discus he holds in his hand. The sculpture is not entirely naturalistic—in the sense that athletes who would try to assume the same position would not be able to throw the discus very far. Nonetheless, it captures the elegance, athleticism and eloquence of the male body in the first blush of its youth. Part of this sculpture’s naturalism lies in the way it conveys movement and emotion through the stance and poise of the body. More generally, classical Greek and Hellenistic sculptures rarely look stiff or contrived because of the way in which the human form is balanced: often in a position of counterpoise, with the weight shifted upon one leg, which allows sculptors to reveal the subtle curvatures of the body.

While classical Greek sculpture tends to focus upon the beauty of the human form, Hellenistic art—the art of the empires founded by Alexander the Great’s followers—places more and more emphasis on the expression of emotion. The kinds of feelings represented in Hellenistic sculpture, however, are not those of everyday people in ordinary circumstances. Rather, Hellenistic art usually exhibits the emotions of extraordinary individuals engaged in tragic conflicts. To offer one well-known example, the sculpture Laocoon and his sons (175-50 B.C.)—executed by Hagesandros, Anthenodoros and Polydoros of Rhodes—immortalizes the story of a priest who is being punished by the gods for forewarning the Trojans not to accept a giant horse which, as it turns out, carried inside it enemy soldiers.

This sculpture was rediscovered in Rome in 1506 and many art historians believe that what was found was not the original sculpture, but a Roman copy. Whether it is the original work or not, The Laocoon Group made a strong impression upon Italian Renaissance sculptors, especially upon Michelangelo. Laocoon is frozen in an image of terrible anguish since his punishment consists of having to witness two gigantic snakes emerge from the sea and suffocate with their coils his beloved sons. Hellenistic art, at least in this representative sculpture that would become a favorite during the Renaissance and the neoclassical periods, privileges the expression of a kind of emotion that is at once mythical and dramatic: mythical in its literary and religious references; dramatic in its depictions of human tragedy.

The painting and sculpture of the The Renaissance masters—especially Michelangelo and Bernini—continues to focus upon the expression of emotion on a grand scale and to grapple with the unknowable connection—as well as the unbridgeable hiatus—between the human and the divine. Michelangelo’s The Dying Slave (1513), for example, reveals the moment when the slave seems to let go of earthly life as his soul escapes towards heavenly existence. Despite the twists and turns of his beautiful, muscular form, the slave’s body conveys the resignation, tranquiliy and spirituality of the transition from life to death. Emotive expression, Michelangelo shows so well, is not primarily located in the face. The whole body, every movement and gesture, expresses coherently and in unison the feelings and attitudes we can see reflected in the face.

This total, eloquent expressivity of Renaissance sculpture reaches its apex, many believe, in Lorenzo Bernini’s The ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1645-52). The sculpture represents the sixteenth century mystic in a state of rapture. We witness the moment when the angel of God pierces the young nun with a golden arrow, provoking the paradoxical feelings of pleasure mixed with pain and of sensual abandon mixed with divine illumination. As she swoons, half-closing her eyes and slightly opening her lips with ecstasy, Saint Teresa becomes the very embodiment of religious fervor, spiritual attunement and passion. Even the drapery that enfolds her body swirls and twists around her with the same mixture of passive yet passionate frenzy that we see reflected on her face.

Yet what about the expression of more modest, individuated, earthly feelings? In the modern period, few artists were as thoughtful and successful in showing the relation between human form and feeling as Auguste Rodin. Rodin brings emotion down to earth by materializing a passion that functions not as a connection between the human and the divine, but an intimate and profound connection between lovers. Perhaps nobody has described Rodin’s most sensual and moving sculpture, “The Kiss,” as eloquently as his friend, the art critic Gustave Geffroy:

The man’s head is bent, that of the woman is lifted, and their mouths meet in a kiss that seals the intimate union of their two beings. Through the extraordinary magic of art, this kiss, which is scarcely indicated by the meeting of their lips, is clearly visible, not only in their meditative expressions, but still more in the shiver that runs equally through both bodies, from the nape of the neck to the soles of the feet, in every fiber of the man’s back, as it bends, straightens, grows still, where everything adores—bones, muscles, nerves, flesh—in his leg, which seems to twist slowly, as if moving to brush against his lover’s leg; which hardly touch the ground, uplifted with her whole being as she is swept away with ardor and grace.

Rodin revealed human love and life as a process of mutual creation. Not only as a union with those we desire and adore, but as an elevation through shared feelings and sensuality which is always in process, never complete. His representations of the fragility of our mutual creation were as incohate, vulnerable yet compelling as the material shapes that seem to emerge only part-finished from the bronze or block of stone. In the expression of the beauty, erotic fervor and intensity of human emotion—features we can attribute to the simple nudes as well—Rodin has yet to be matched.

We have seen that art can serve many different purposes in different contexts such that it’s impossible to define it in relation to any set of common qualities, including emotion. Yet, I have tried to show, when emotion is materialized in art and photography, it renders artistic objects all the more poignant, moving and palpable for the viewers. The expression of emotion not only touches us, but also helps us connect to beauty in a way that is unique and irreplaceable. It seems to me that DOMAI continues the Renaissance and romantic legacy of expressing emotion at each stage of the creative process: the emotive experience and inspiration of the artist; the expressivity of artistic representations, and the emotional impact upon the viewers. Emotion and art don’t have to be connected. But what beautiful and meaningful art is produced when they are!