Love and Other Positive Emotions in Contemporary Vi­sual and Social Practice Art

Claire Schneider and Barbara L. Fredrickson, The Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities, 2022

Edited by Louis Tay and James O. Pawelski

Abstract

This chapter integrates theory and evidence on the science of positive emotions with re­cent examples of contemporary visual and social practice art that touch on resonant themes. Focus begins with an emphasis on the individual experience of positive emotions and extends to co-experienced positive emotions, at both relational and communal levels. The artists considered—Janine Antoni, Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, C.S.1 Curatorial Projects, Harrell Fletcher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sarah Gotowka, Jim Hodges, Emily Jacir, Julia Jamrozik, Miranda July, Coryn Kempster, Felice Koenig, Antonio Vega Macotela, and Kateřina Šedá—as well as the theorists Nicholas Bourraid and Luce Irigaray are all advo­cating for a more emotional and connected world after decades of highlighting differ­ ence. The chapter concludes with specific suggestions for more richly integrating scientif­ic and artistic approaches to understanding and evoking positive human experiences.

Love and Other Positive Emotions in Contemporary Vi­sual and Social Practice Art

We are delighted to explore how our two areas of expertise—positive psychology and con­ temporary visual art—might become more mutually supportive. We met in early 2013 when we discovered our shared interest in the topic of love. One of us had a new general audience book on the science of love (Fredrickson, 2013a) and the other had newly curat­ ed a special exhibit More Love: Art, Politics and Sharing since the 1990s (https:// ackland.org/exhibition/more-love-art-politics-and-sharing-since-the-1990s/; Schneider, 2013b).

Our early dialogue about how the two perspectives fit together planted the seeds for the current chapter. Our aim is to expand that dialogue to include positive emotions more generally, and to identify timely opportunities for our respective disciplines to supportand advance each discipline. The specific aims are twofold. First, we share the latest sci­entific theory and evidence regarding the unique adaptive value of human experiences of

(p. 302) positive emotions. Second, we offer a scientific appreciation of how contemporary visual artists activate and deploy positive emotions in their work and in the varied ways these works impact individual viewers and communities. This interdisciplinary endeavor not only illuminates how certain artistic works have significant community impact, but al­ so how the arts might be leveraged to advance scientific understanding of human nature.

A Scientific Understanding of One Person’s Positive Emotions

More than two decades ago, Fredrickson (1998) introduced a novel scientific theory to ex­plain why the ability to experience and express positive emotions is a ubiquitous feature of human nature. At the time, emotions were just emerging as a rigorous area of focus within psychology, having been swept aside for roughly half a century as behaviorism had its heyday (for a review, see Fredrickson, 2013b). Within this initial scientific renaissance, however, near exclusive focus was devoted to unpleasant emotional states—anger, fear, disgust and the like—with scarcely few pages devoted to joy, serenity, gratitude, interest, and other pleasant emotional states.

This new “Broaden-and-Build Theory” (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) addressed this imbal­ance and states that positive emotions had been useful to our human ancestors and pre­ served over millennia as part of human nature because positive emotions fundamentally alter how the human brain absorbs information in ways that—incrementally over time— made individuals more resourceful. Specifically, the momentary uplift of positive emo­tions expands awareness (i.e., the broaden effect), creating a form of consciousness with­ in individuals that includes a wider array of thoughts, actions, and percepts than typical. These subtle and unbidden moments of expanded awareness proved useful for developing resources for survival (i.e., the build effect). That is, little by little, moments of positive emotional experience, although fleeting, reshaped individuals by setting them on trajecto­ries of growth and building their enduring resources for survival. In short, the Broaden- and-Build Theory describes the form of positive emotions as to broaden awareness and their function as to build resources.

This meant that negative and positive emotions alike came to be part of our universal hu­ man nature through selective pressures related to survival, albeit on vastly different hu­ man timescales. Negative emotions carried adaptive significance in the moment that our human ancestors experienced them. Specifically, the action urges associated with nega­ tive emotions—e.g., to fight, flee, or spit—called forth behaviors that saved life and limb. Positive emotions, by contrast, carried adaptive significance for our human ancestors over longer stretches of time. Having a momentarily broadened mindset is not a key in­ gredient in the recipe for any quick survival maneuver. It is, however, in the recipe for discovery, e.g., discovery of new knowledge, new alliances, and new skills. In short, broadened awareness led to the accrual of new resources that might later make the dif­ ference between surviving or succumbing to various threats. Resources built through pos­ itive emotions also increased the odds that our ancestors would experience subsequent positive (p. 303) emotions, with their attendant broaden-and-build benefits, thus creating an upward spiral toward improved odds for survival, health, and fulfillment. Figure 23.1 provides a graphic summary of this Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions.

Empirical evidence to support both the broaden effect and the build effect of positive emotions has grown significantly in the intervening decades (for a review, see Fredrick­ son, 2013b). For instance, rigorous and randomized laboratory experiments show that when people are induced to experience even mild positive emotional states (through an unexpected gift of candy, carefully selected excerpts from music or film, or via relived emotional memories), they show expanded peripheral vision and visual search (Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007; Wadlinger & Isaacowitz 2006) and an increased ability to take in the big picture rather than getting stuck in small details (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Gasper & Clore, 2002; but see Harmon-Jones, Gable, & Price, 2013). Complement­ ing this evidence for the short-term effects of positive emotions, longitudinal randomized controlled trials show that when individuals develop skills to self-generate day-to-day pos­ itive emotions more readily, they spur their own development, becoming more socially in­ tegrated, more resilient, and even physically healthier in the ensuing months (Fredrick­son, Cohn, Coffey, Pek & Finkel, 2008; (p. 304) Kok et al., 2013). Contemplative practices have been shown to be particularly well-suited for this (Fredrickson et al., 2017, 2019).

Appreciating the Way Artists Use Positive Emo­tions in Art on the Individual Level

Mirroring the earlier aversion in science to studying emotions, visual artists for decades —beginning in the 1960s with pop art, minimalism, and conceptualism—have prioritized ideas over emotions as central drivers of works of art (Baume, 2005). As a result, when a video, piece of language art, performance work, and even a painting did address emo­tions, it was usually a negative one, such as sadness or anxiety. In addition, much of the art critiqued societal systems—media, gender, race, or institutional power—and hence fo­ cused on what was going wrong.

It is important to note that artists work differently than scientists. While many artists want to influence discourse on issues they care about, works of art are rarely created in the manner of a scientific experiment—where one has a thesis and creates a situation as a means of testing an empirical question. Contemporary art is more like a poem or philo­ sophical piece, working to give form to experience.

That said, it is illuminating to take the Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions and retrospectively interpret artists’ works via this lens. Over the last twenty-five plus years, a growing number of artists have purposely created works of art that turn toward positive emotions—joy, gratitude, interest, amusement, and awe. Their strategy, much like the feedback loop of the Broaden-and-Build Theory, is to conceive works that inspire these feelings—either for the viewer or the participant collaborator—so that she will be more open to new ways of thinking. Nevertheless, it is also important to note that the art dis­ cussed in this chapter was created for a fine arts context, like a museum, and not devel­ oped for an educational or therapeutic setting, where working to support or heal others is the primary starting point. The artists discussed in the following examples are choosing to use positive emotions as a means of articulating larger ideas about the world we live in.

One of the most important artists of the last thirty years (Schneider, 2013a), Felix Gonzalez-Torres creates works which consist of various “ideal weights” of candy, places these enticing sweets in a pile or carpet configuration, and allows viewers to take a piece and consider enjoying it. Not surprisingly, seeing that much candy anywhere elicits joy in almost any­ one, from kids to heart-hardened skeptics. In a pristine gallery, a place where one is cau­ tioned not to touch, much less taste, this offering almost feels illicit and even ecstatic. Central to Gonzalez-Torres is the creation of work that is conceptually open and whose ul­ timate interpretation would be up to every individual who encountered it. Why would someone create such an offering? What does it evoke in you?

(p. 305) One reading among many is that Gonzalez-Torres created these works, one prime example being “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), to address the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s, which included the death of his partner Ross and ultimately himself. The weight of the candy, for those works which list the ideal weight as 175 pounds, can represent a human body, perhaps his body or another healthy individual, and as it is consumed, it can slowly disappear, per­haps mirroring the wasting from the disease. (The possibility also exists to replenish the candy at any time.) While Gonzalez-Torres may have wanted to address the grief he expe­ rienced watching his lover’s illness progress, he also captures the complete bliss and gratitude he feels for his soulmate and lover. By doing so, he shares this delight with his audience. And, as a result, people who engage with this work may be more likely to ap­ proach AIDS and the once vilified topic of homosexuality with a broadened awareness. Her mood may be more open as a result of being given the unexpected gift of a sweet; perhaps she will remember the time when someone she cares deeply for passed away. No longer is the viewer focused primarily on the shameful and visual nature of the disease (as much work about the crisis did), but instead on the common ground all humans face when someone they feel warmly or passionately about passes away.

Like all works of art, the artist’s personal circumstance is just the beginning point for un­ derstanding a work. Working to connect with a large, broad audience, who could come to the work in any way they saw fit, was of primary importance to Gonzalez-Torres. He said, “Without the public, these works are nothing, nothing; I need the public to complete the work. I ask the public to help me, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in” (Spector, 2007, p. 57). There is something deeply positive about Gonzalez-Torres’s work, which connects with the Broad­ en-and-Build Theory. Not only in this case, with its offering of edible joy, but in its con­ stant insistence that its meaning remain open, and as a result relevant to everyone who encounters it, previously, in our time, and in the future.

Likewise, Nick Cave courted broad audiences by inducing joy. He created colorful sculp­ tures of found materials that have the intricacy, sense of uniqueness and awe, and total more-is-more saturation of adornment that mixes tribal regalia, Mardi Gras attire, and high fashion. Known as Soundsuits, these wearable pieces, which occasionally make noise, hide one’s identity, functioning as a kind of armor. Originally created by sewing twigs to a face-covering bodysuit, Cave’s first Soundsuit in 1992 was a response to the Rodney King beating. It allowed him to both embody the monstrous and throw away na­ ture, too often associated with black men, and also to shield himself. As Cave’s materials expanded to include suits of buttons, toys, beaded ball gowns, colored hair, raffia, latch hook rugs, and doilies, the material mood turned more festive and gleeful. As a re­ sult, Cave is able to draw a wide public to his work to consider the beauty in what is dis­carded and the way one can maximize, protect, and reclaim one’s identity.

Czech artist Kateřina Šedá creates scenarios that occur outside of a fine arts setting to build enduring resources for a network of family members and specific Czech communities. With It Doesn’t Matter (2005–2007), Šedá turned around her grandmother’s constant refrain. Jana (1930–2007) had become the family’s main fo­ cus when she retired and quit cooking, cleaning, and shopping, and began watching tele­ vision all day. One of the few things that she often talked about was her thirty-three-year service as a tools stock manager at a hardware store. Šedá convinces her grandmother to draw all of the 650 items she remembers. For three years up until her death, Jana became interested again in what she was doing, created 521 drawings, and the baneful phrase, “It doesn’t matter,” disappeared from her grandmother’s vocabulary. Fearful that these drawings would become routine, Kateřina created three more pieces, What Is it For?, 1x Daily Before Meals, and Travel Diary, all of which engage her grandmother with questionnaires that encourage her to stay interested in life (Fetzer, 2012, p. 29).

A Scientific Understanding of Shared Positive Emotions

Fredrickson’s initial theorizing on the evolved adaptive function of positive emotions cen­ tered on emotions as individual experiences that, for the most part, carried benefits for individual survival and well-being. Underemphasized were positive emotions as collective experiences that carry benefits not only for the individual, but also for that individual’s re­ lationships and broader community. Although an emphasis on emotions, more generally, as intra-individual phenomena has long been predominant in Western scholarship, investi­gations of emotions as inter-individual phenomena are on the rise (Brown & Fredrickson, 2021).

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email claire@cs1projects.org for the full essay or visit The Oxford Handbook of The Positive Humanities or your university / public library database