Worringer is discussing the evolution of an aesthetic system. This system is inherent in the culture. It has depended on the psychological positioning of the people. He looks at why we have the urge to abstract; be it man's need for religious transformation, for a way to untangle oneself from the craziness of the outside world or to  hold an understanding of that world that gives one greater confidence. With this confidence one has the "impulse of self-alienation  as its most profound and ultimate essence." 

When I read these articles I always try to find how they relate to me and my own artistic practice. In the article "Abstraction and Empathy: A contribution to the psychology of style", I found a few things that I felt I could strongly agree with.  In chapter two Wilhelm Worringer writes about naturalism and style, were he says naturalism is not a direct imitation of an object. An artist emphasis with on object and there for feels the urge to make art based on the object, which is exactly what I do. I do not want to copy the object in a trompeloeil sense, but  interpret the object how I see it in my mind.  In this article I also find my self thinking of trompeloeil artist such as Richard Shaw. Richard copy's objects so realistically that its hard to believe that they are ceramic sculptures.  Were would we place Richard on the art spectrum were empathy is at one end and naturalism is at the other? I guess that he would be placed on the empathy side because he emphasis's with these objects and therefor enjoys making them into ceramic sculptures, but then his work is very natural looking.

Abstraction and Empathy

Wilhelm Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy was published in 1908 and was a critical and commercial success. It consists of five chapters and two main sections, a theoretical section(our reading for the class) and a practical section that includes chapters on ornament and examples from architecture.
Worringer's main thesis is that empathy and abstraction are the two main catalysts of art and both are equally valid. Primitive societies that have a "dread of space" and are fearful of the outside world tend to abstract art because it serves as an escape from the outside world, a "refuge from appearances."(p.16) Modern societies have tended to empathy in art because "the urge to empathy is a happy pantheistic relationship of confidence between man and the phenomena of the external world." In other words man finds enjoyment in the forms he sees in the world. Worringer repeats the phrase "Aesthetic enjoyment is objectified self-enjoyment" many times in the first chapter. Worringer announces abstraction as a valid contemporary art practice. "Having slipped down from the pride of knowledge, man is now just as lost and helpless vis-a-vis the world-picture as primitive man."
I found it interesting that he said people were confused about realism(naturalism) and the legacy of Renaissance art. Many people according to Worringer assume Renaissance artists were copying nature, a mere imitation. The reality was "not because the artist desired to depict a natural object true to life in its corporeality, not because he desired to give the illusion of a living object, but because the feeling for the beauty of organic form that is true to life had been aroused and because the artist desired to give satisfaction to this feeling."(p.27)
What ways do artists express their relationship to the world?
Can abstraction be empathetic?