A Study On Susanne K.Langer’s Concept Of "Virtual Space "

Susanne K.Langer expounds the problem of artistic creation from the perspective of artistic semiotics,puts forward a unique illusion theory,applies this theory to the eight art categories of music,dance,painting and pattern,sculpture,architecture,poetry,drama and film,and analyzes the illusion of the eight art categories and their artistic characteristics.Her theory is deeply influenced by Whitehead,the founder of process philosophy and logical semiotics,and Cassirer,the founder of philosophical anthropology and cultural semiotics,which makes her theory have both logical speculative characteristics and humanistic emotional implications.In addition,she reads a lot of books,critically absorbs the works on art by Baensch,Croce and Collingwood,and finally forms her own huge semiotic art theory and ideological system.From a static perspective,Langer unifies painting and pattern,sculpture and architecture as "plastic art",and believes that their basic illusions are "virtual space" resorting to vision,because they are the three forms of expression of the concept of space,"they are equally fundamental and destined to develop and improve respectively".It is precisely because different art categories have different basic artistic illusions that all art categories can be distinguished.The basic illusion "virtual space" of plastic arts is different from the basic illusion "virtual time" of music,the basic illusion "virtual powers" of dance,the basic illusion "virtual life" of poetry,the basic illusion "virtual history" of drama,and the basic illusion "virtual present" of film.Although painting and pattern,sculpture and architecture have the same "virtual space",which are called "plastic art",their forms of expression are different.Painting and pattern create a visual plane on a two-dimensional plane,and the basic illusion is refined into "virtual scene".Sculpture creates three-dimensional works with three-dimensional material materials,and the basic illusion is refined into "virtual kinetic volume".Through the treatment of an actual place,the basic illusion of architecture is refined into "virtual ethnic domain".She applied the illusion theory to plastic arts and explained in detail the similarities and differences between painting and pattern,sculpture and architecture,which is unique,very novel and of great research value.This thesis tries to take the basic illusion of plastic art-"virtual space" as the clue,explore the process of transforming plastic art into "virtual space" from a dynamic perspective,and systematically study Langer’s interpretation of plastic art by using her original illusion theory,study the concept of "virtual space".Specifically,plastic arts are transformed into artistic symbols through artistic abstraction.Through artistic abstraction and configuration,plastic arts show "otherness" divorced from the secular world,which distinguishes the world created by plastic arts from the real world;Artistic intuition makes artistic symbols appear as illusions,namely "virtual space",which extracts the representation of the actual plastic art form,which makes the plastic art concrete and vivid;Life forms are expressed in "virtual space".Plastic arts capture forms and express life and human universal emotional concepts through "virtual space".Finally,this thesis discusses the characteristics of American modernist plastic art in the 20 th century and Langer’s influence on the transformation of plastic art in this period,discusses the similarities and differences between the concept of "illusion" expressed by plastic art and the concept of "image" of Chinese classical plastic art,and discusses the new angle of thinking on the relationship between art reality and life reality provided by illusion theory.