The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts

Derek Matravers is a Professor of Philosophy at The Open University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. He has written Art and Emotion (1998), Introducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies (2013); Fiction and Narrative (2014); Empathy (2017); and, with Helen Frowe, Stones and Lives: The Ethics of Protecting Heritage in War (2024). He has been the co-editor of several collections and is the author of numerous articles on aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He edits, with Paloma Atencia-Linares, The British Journal of Aesthetics. Vanessa Brassey is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, UK, and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art. Her research focuses on the malleability and adeptness of our perspective-taking and the role this plays in our appreciation of the visual arts. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow for the British Society of Aesthetics and is also an exhibiting figurative painter.

Introduction Derek Matravers and Vanessa Brassey 1. Empathy, the Aesthetic Emotion, and Expression in the Visual Arts Derek Matravers 2. Empathy, Enaction, and Artistic Expression Jesse Prinz 3. Affective Expression in the Visual Arts Mitchell Green 4. What Makes a Painting Sad? Vanessa Brassey 5. Susanne K. Langer on Art as Expression of the Form of Feeling Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin 6. Articulating the Visible: Collingwood and Merleau-Ponty on Expression in Painting David Collins 7. Portraits, Expression, and Morality Matteo Ravasio 8. The Viewer’s Share: An Examination of the Role of Projection in Pictorial Expression Elisa Galgut. Index