Barringer, Art, Music, and the Emotions in the Aesthetic Movement

This article explores two phenomenologically distinct aspects of cultural production, art and music. It shows how they overlap, exist in counterpoint or in harmony, and coalesce around specific themes and preoccupations to represent, articulate, produce, or, indeed, repress feelings. Focusing on the work of William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler, Frederic Leighton, and Aubrey Beardsley, the article examines the claims of a realism in which the representation of emotions is achieved through narrative forms and close description of the material world, and a formalism which claims that the manipulation of abstract structures in art or music can directly affect the emotional state of the viewer or reflect that of the creator. Integral to this discussion is the relationship between sexual desire and aesthetic pleasure at the point of intersection of art and music.