Bergson’s aesthetics: Art as a unique form of communication

Abstract

For Bergson, creating a masterpiece and perceiving it amounts to an act of intuitive communication between the artist and the spectator. Both the artist and the viewer intuit the work of art, which is something other than their own personal history, something that belongs to both of them and at the same time exists independently from them. The Bergsonian concept of heterogeneous duration, which primarily refers to consciousness and living processes, is extended in this instance to artistic communication as a process that unites creation and contemplation. Artistic creation and communication constitute an intimate ontological bonding wherein human beings actualize their ability to intuit and where an artist shares with the audience his or her deep emotions without revealing personal data. This process of creation and perception of art could be named artistic duration or artistic communication. This duration is created by a joint participation of more than one individual and represents duration that escapes the boundaries of one mind because it is created by more than one mind. The artist initiates a continuity of emotion, by expressing it in art and making us feel it when we admire the masterpiece. By perceiving it, we do not return to the artist’s time and re-live his or her artistic creation vicariously, but pick up where the artist left this creation and let it live further on in our soul.