The Study of Lessing’s Laocoon from the Aesthetics Affects Perspective

 
 
 
Problem Statement: The information taken from the letter of an architect Pope in the 16th century A.D. shows that " The statue Laocoon and his sons was found on 14th of January 1506 in a subterranean chamber with an adorned floor and coloured walls in a vineyard in the vicinity of the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, north-east of the Colosseum". Finding such a great work of magnificent classical art prompted thinkers such as Lessing to critique Laocoon's aesthetics.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and an outstanding representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing first published Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (Laocoon, or on the Limits of Painting and Poetry) in 1766. Over the last 250 years, Lessing's essay has exerted an incalculable influence on western critical thinking. Not only has it directed the history of post-Enlightenment aesthetics, it has also shaped the very practices of 'poetry' and 'painting' in a myriad of different ways. Lessing is a key conduit between the transformation into German Romanticism transition from the destroyed enlightenment French. "He is the first literary figure of greatness that Germany has brought into existence in the New Age". Lessing wrote Laocoon; An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry into the field of aesthetic philosophy in 1766 with remarks illustrative of various points in the history of ancient art in twenty-nine chapters.
To begin pondering the Limits of Painting and Poetry, Lessing began with a reflection on Winkelmann's views on harmony and expression in the visual arts. Lessing established his discussion based on criticizing the Winkelmann's book named “Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture” about the progression of art on the development of Greek art. “Lessing dismantles Horace’s famous claim “ut pictura poesis” (as is painting, so is poetry), arguing that these media are inherently different, because while poetry unfolds in time, painting exists in space. He refers to the media as “two equitable and friendly neighbors”. Lessing contends that an artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own medium, and the transmission or representation's possible meanings cannot be separated from its medium. From Lessing's point of view, “a visual work of art and a literary work originates in different spatial and temporal conditions, Lessing argued, serving thereby to liberate art from the tradition of ut pictura poesis”. “Beyond Laocoon, he examined and categorized the arts (The distinction between the temporal and spatial arts) and the specific function of each”. In his text, the human body has a key place in the aesthetic understanding.
This article combines different perspectives from interdisciplinary subject areas (including the history of evolutionary thoughts, aesthetics, comparative studies, and the history of art) and examines Laocoon, using critical angles. It can be considered that this research is a short interpretation of ancient art and poetry from Lessing's view, which leads to the recognition of the cultural contexts of the eighteenth century and the credibility of Laocoon's observations in the field of aesthetics. Thus, this study shows how Laocoon used Greek and Roman models to draw the appropriate spatial and temporal " limitations" (what Lessing calls "poetry" and "painting"). Also, it explains how Lessing's article has been rooted in Enlightenment theories of art, historical perception, and interpretation, as well as in emerging ideas such as affects. In this research, it has been tried to first study the collection of Laocoon sculptures and then to analyse the Lessing's text about Laocoon.
This article has a qualitative and analytical nature and the method of collecting information is based on library studies, documents and valid electronic databases. What is important in these discussions is this paper is issues related to the embodied mind, affects and aesthetics, based on critical approaches and opinions in this regard, this issue has been addressed from a new perspective.
Research question: Lessing's research on the representation or transfer of the meaning of the statue of Laocoon is raised as a question, how does the embodied mind react to the image of the human body?
Research Methodology: In terms of its nature, this article is of the qualitative content analysis type, and its method of collecting information is based on library studies, documents, and reliable electronic databases, prepared, organized, and edited, and based on a logical method, Laocoon Lessing's research is done from the perspective of affects, is what is important in these topics is the investigation of topics related to the embodied mind, affects and aesthetics, which, based on critical approaches and opinions, tries to address this topic from an innovative angle.
Conclusion: Going back to Roman history and studying the views of thinkers on the Laocoon and his sons sculpture collection, this article shows that Lessing is the creator of a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics. Lessing argues that sensory perception can be analyzed in terms of physical impact based on particular attention to the viewer. In his view, what we reflect in it is ourselves. Thus, the imitated body is not a product of art, but a set of effects produced through the eye and the sensitivity of the viewer. The emergence of the aesthetic subject occurs not through the work of art but through the process of imitation. Therefore, the existence of aesthetics is tied to the observations of the human body and is involved in emotions and influences. The experience that is considered is not beauty, but the physical presence of the effect that is visualized in front of the individual's eyes. Therefore, the best way to create the effect of the aesthetic experience of the viewer of the work of art. Therefore, in answer to the main question of the research, it can be concluded that what can be deduced from Laocoon Lessing's text is a subject that is reflected in itself through the emotions that are created in another body and, above all, it is a subject that through works of art can create a state about how to experience pain, sorrow, joy, kindness and other effects on the human body, i.e., the viewer.