This essay updates Aaron Smuts', 2009 Philosophy Compass piece, “Art and Negative Affect” in light of recent work on the topic. The “paradox of painful art” is the general problem of how it is possible to enjoy or value experiences of art that involve painful emotions. It encompasses both the paradox of tragedy and the paradox of horror. Section 2 lays out a taxonomy of solutions to the paradox of painful art and argues that we should opt for a pluralistic (...) approach rather than seeking a unified solution. Section 3 surveys recent work on the topic, with an emphasis on views holding that it is possible for an experience of art to be pleasant partly in virtue of involving painful emotion. Section 4 suggests a range of phenomena that are not usually considered under the umbrella of the paradox of painful art but that offer promising directions for further research. (shrink)

In paragraph 48 of the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant claimed that ‘only one kind of ugliness cannot be represented in accordance with nature without destroying all aesthetic satisfaction, hence artistic beauty, namely that which arouses disgust.’ However, from Baudelaire to Damien Hirst, there have been artists who delight in arousing disgust through their works, and many of these disgusting works, such as Baudelaire's Une Charogne, have high aesthetic merit. In her splendid new book, Savoring Disgust, Carolyn Korsmeyer rejects Kant's (...) suggestion and argues that there is something called ‘aesthetic disgust,’ that is, ‘the arousal of disgust in an audience, a spectator, or a reader, under circumstances where that emotion both apprehends artistic properties and constitutes a component of appreciation.’. (shrink)

Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, (...) and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positiveandnegative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our Distancing-Embracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories. (shrink)

Disgust is an emotion that is visceral, reactive, and uncomfortable. It is also purposively aroused by art in ways that contribute substantially to the meaning of a work. In such cases “aesthetic disgust” is a component of understanding and appreciation. Disgust comes in many varieties, including the humorous, the horrid, and the tragic. The responses it elicits can be strong or subtle, but few are actually pleasant. Therefore aesthetic disgust raises an ancient question: how is it that emotions aroused in (...) practical life become the focus of pleasure or enjoyment when they are aroused by art? This paper reviews a number of accounts of aesthetic satisfaction in disgust, arguing that the most profound uses convey an immediate and visceral grasp of physical vulnerability and mortality. (shrink)

This essay tries to categorize the range of artistic options that filmmakers currently have at hand to evoke bodily disgust. It asks: If we examine the variety of disgusting scenes at the movies, how can we usefully distinguish them? I present five categorical distinctions indicating choices filmmakers often implicitly make when disgust comes into play. (1) Temporality: Does the filmmaker confront us with the disgusting object suddenly or anticipatorily ? (2) Presence: Does the director allow us to perceive or imagine (...) the source of disgust? (3) Character engagement: Are we affected via empathy or sympathy ? (4) Synaesthetic audiovision: What other senses – apart from seeing and hearing – does the scene address? (5) Affective co-occurrence: What other emotions come into play during the disgusting scene? It will turn out that cinematic disgust is not as simple as it might seem at first sight. In fact, we might even attest to its unforeseen complexity. This unorthodox finding, in turn, complements an insight recent studies on affective responses at the movies have yielded more generally: the more we know about cinematic emotions, the more we have to conclude that we still know very little. (shrink)