eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 59
or natural space, for example; about the relationship of human beings
to nature, the spiritual dimensions of a sublime experience, or the pres-
ence of the divine in nature; about the unseen facial expression of the
figure, his possible alienation from society, or his intellectual mastery of
the scene before him (and us). Kant has often been accused of being a
‘formalist’, of concentrating on the formal features of objects to the
neglect of their sociopolitical contexts. But there is no hint, in his dis-
cussion of aesthetic ideas, that we ought to limit our musings, in the
contemplation of a work of art, to formal considerations. In response to
the Friedrich, we may wish to think about a variety of non-aesthetic
issues, such as the political or patriotic resonances of the figure’s
costume, the scientific implications of the portrayal of fog in the
mountains, or the sociological entailments of the picture’s inclusion in
a major German museum collection. Any of these trains of thought
would be compatible with the free play of mind so long as they did not
stop short at a cut-and-dried conclusion. More importantly, when
taken together they demonstrate the inexhaustibility of the thoughts
and feelings to which the picture may give rise. Thus they exemplify
the aesthetic ideas which, for Kant, distinguished the work of genius: ‘I
mean that representation of the imagination which induces much
thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever,
i.e. concept, being adequate to it’.
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The free play of mind is characteristic of all experiences of the beau-
tiful. However, Kant speaks of aesthetic ideas only in relation to works
of art. It is crucial that the aesthetic ideas are generated in the free play
of imagination and understanding in the mind of a human artist, as
well as stimulating an answering free play in the mind of the observer.
We have seen that there is no reason why the aesthetic ideas should not
involve any area within human experience. But they can also suggest or
adumbrate what is beyond human experience, perhaps by imaginatively
recombining sensory perceptions, or by inventing sensuous forms for
immaterial ideas (Kant’s examples include ‘death, envy, and all vices, as
also love, fame, and the like’
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). This at last gives positive value to the
work of art: unlike naturally occurring objects (such as wild flowers),
art not only permits the human mind to leap beyond what empirical
perception and objective knowledge can grasp, it also does so in a way
that is communicable from one human being (the artist) to others.
But once again such notions drastically alter the emphases of previ-
ous art theories. No longer does the imitation of natural scenes or
objects (mimesis in classical art theories) seem the most worthwhile
activity. Instead the Kantian emphasis on aesthetic ideas seems to
exhort the artist to invent as freely as possible, or even to defy everyday
experience or logic; this passage in the Critique of Judgement might be
held responsible for the more bizarre artistic fantasies of Romanticism,
in the next generation. In the early nineteenth century Runge designed