1. BARUCH DE SPINOZA (1632 – 1677) AFFECT AND CONTEMPORARY ART

I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were investigations into lines, planes, or bodies (Spinoza Complete Works 2002: 278).

1. Introduction
In today’s globalizing world we tend to weave our thoughts precariously out of the images and words we find around us, in our conversations with friends, colleagues and what we perceive in artworks and in the media. As Durant states, Spinoza ‘tried to reduce the intolerable chaos of the world to unity and order’ (1962: 160). Therefore we need to train the mind, comparable to a mathematical method, concentrated on both matter and form: body and structure of and interaction between our thoughts and feelings. Spinoza’s Ethics is an architectural study of the human body, mind and soul.

Spinoza studies affect in three works: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being and Part III-V of Spinoza’s Ethics (1675)
Spinoza’s Ethics treats three major issues, which are at the start of this study of affective power of contemporary art (2010: 2):

1. The definitions and classifications of the affects.
2. The nature of bondage
3. The possibility of freedom
   The Ethics differ from the other two works because in this book Spinoza demonstrates the centrality of affects to his conception of the human being and human life (Schmitter 2010: 1). This chapter investigates Spinoza’s philosophy of affect by applying it to the visual encounter between a spectator and a contemporary artwork.

2. The Latin origins of Affect and Power
2.1 Noun Affect
The Latin dictionary (J. van Wageningen 1929: 38) describes the word ‘affectiones’ as Latin plural noun of ‘affectiō’, defined in four ways:

1. The relation or disposition towards something produced in a person.
2. A change in the state of the body or mind of a person; feeling, emotion.
3. Love, affection or good will towards somebody.
4. Will, volition, inclination.

The Latin dictionary (J. van Wageningen 1929: 38) describes the noun singular ‘affectio’, ōnis f., ‘afficio’ as:

1. An impression on something or someone -.
2. A state or condition, transmitted by a trigger action of something else – .
3. A state or condition a) of the body as a ‘firma corporis’. b) most of the spirit, with and without animi, impulse of an instant moment, a passion ‘per quondam affectionem animi’, or ongoing state of mind, mood, inclination, disposition ‘vitia affections sunt manentes’ -. c) benevolent mood, affection, love ‘privatis affectionibus obnoxius’ personal considerations; ‘nullā a-e animi (not led by predilection)’.

This first inventory in seven descriptions of ‘affectiō’, puts us at the crux of the matter. The first four share a reference towards a process, being ‘conceived through’, ‘produced in’, ‘a change in’, ‘will towards’ and ‘inclination’. This fourth noun means: a bent of the will or mind towards a condition or action. These seven descriptions of the Latin noun ‘afficio’ provides for a first epitome about the noun ‘affect’. Its characteristic is connective and active as: ‘a relation’, ‘a change’, ‘an impression on’, ‘transmitted by’, ‘impulse of’ and ‘ongoing state of mind’. Thus ‘affectio’ negotiates actively in the visual encounter between a spectator and a contemporary artwork.

This study argues that affective power of contemporary art structures that specific location in which the social and cultural origins of our emotional lives can be disclosed. Then it opens possibilities towards further engagement with the social concepts ethics, compassion, and identity. Affect encompasses the broad range of experiences referred to as emotions and moods (Forgas, 1991; Petty, DeSteno, Rucker, 2001, pp 212-233). Affect in itself seems scattered and amorphous. To feel happy is not a specific emotional response to a specific situation. It is more like the colouring of a person’s entire psychic condition. However, affect in this project involves reply to a contemporary artwork in the outside world. How does Spinoza’s philosophy apply to the research in affective power of contemporary art? His philosophy offers a means for intuitively affirming a truth (Dockstader 2011: 1). Spinoza outlines affect as a universal concept, from a cosmopolitan perspective, connected to all parts and pasts in the world (Spinoza 2001: 131). From this perspective affective power can be investigated as evidence of the collective cultural and social history, and from an individual present perspective. This chapter explores how Spinoza’s approach contributes to unravel affective power of a contemporary artwork in a visual encounter with a spectator. His theory unfolds affective power in the attachment between the two₁. How does affective power of contemporary art influence the spectator’s social and ethical ‘being’ in the world? What are the sources of the meanings of these words ‘affective’ and ‘power’? We start in section two with consulting three dictionaries: the Latin Dictionary by J. van Wageningen (1929), The Oxford Online Dictionary of English (GB) and the Cambridge Dictionaries of English (GB) Online. They unfold the semantic roots of the two words. In section three Spinoza’s philosophy of affect is introduced and connected to the visual encounter between a spectator and a contemporary artwork. Section four focuses on the primary aspects of affect, the passions. They rise in the visual encounter, and affect the looking process. Section five introduces the connection between the spectator’s ideas and affects in order to determine what passions disclose within this relation, followed by looking at the way passions grow in a ‘regime of variation’ in section six. Section seven introduces a main characteristic of passions, it’s division in passive and active striving, followed by its two directions in joy and sadness in section eight. The spectator and the role of his/her body and mind are discussed in section nine. Section ten elaborates on the process of reasoning. The conclusion in section eleven anticipates to three kinds of affective knowledge that structure affective power of contemporary art in chapter four.

2.2 Verb Affect
The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1998: 17) defines ‘affect’ as a verb:

1. To cause some results or change in; influence
2. To cause feelings of sorrow, anger, love etc.

The Latin verb ‘affectus’ has three related significations:

1. to reach for something, to seize something *navem; * viam Olympo (davitus) follow the path towards O. (immortality): ad alqd of alqm viam aff. Com.; iter; morbo affectari be affected. –
2. zealously striving for something, search for something to grasp, to acquire (for better and worse) regnum to strive for kingship, want to become king; spem (hope for good results at, etc.) affectandi regni minuere; spem (cherish and seek to achieve) […]
3. strive to search in a forced, artificial manner touch decus in dicendo.

Thus, the verb ‘affectio’ mainly contains five interrelated verbs: ‘to influence’, ’to cause’, ‘to reach’, ‘to search’, ‘strive’. These verbs pinpoint at an active process of gaining something or someone that is not-yet-known. An activity has to take place; something has to be done, to get towards this not-yet-known. Thus, both noun and verb contain a relational, activating and motivational forces of encounter between the spectator and the artwork.

The noun and verb ‘affect’ relate to the adjective ‘affective’. The Cambridge Online Dictionary describes it as ‘connected with the emotions’. Oxford Online Dictionary’s definition is ‘relating to moods, feelings, and attitudes’. As an adjective ‘affective’ gives substantive information of the essence or essential element of the noun ‘power’ and as such it is incapable of independent function.

2.3 Affective Power
In this study ‘affective’ connects the noun ‘power’ to contemporary art. The Latin dictionary (1929: 38) defines the noun ‘pōtīs’ as: [very old noun: ‘ruler, lord and master’; …]. The noun ‘pōtestās’ means:

1. power, strength, force […]
2. legal authority to act […]
3. figurative: a) opportunity, possibility […] to make available, to give opportunity to, engage in a fight, grant an audience […].

Thus, in this first stocktaking, the noun ‘power’ grants the adjective ‘affective’ a legal, forceful opportunity to act. Power provides ‘affective’ with strength. Force makes relations to moods, sensations and feelings operable and provides related definitions:

1. a moodful force
2. a noncognitive strenght
3. an intuïtive authority

In these three characterizations three nouns become prominent: ‘force’, ‘strength’ and ‘authority’. They pinpoint intrinsic definitions of the expression. They identify affective power as a static perception, with a tendency towards fragmentation. Consciousness emerges in an isolated moment of assertion. For example, take a first look at Anish Kapoor’s sculpture Cloud Gate (Plate 1)₂ . We could state: ‘Seeing the reflecting surface of this huge bean, provides the work with a moody strength’. This decisive statement reflects a stationary, detached look in a closed argumentation. In other words it states: ‘The first encounter between the spectator and the sculpture communicates of a intuitive authority of opinion, which addresses the spectator’. The nouns ‘encounter’, ‘spectator’, ‘sculpture’ and ‘authority’ stress a division, as a form of concentrated knowledge of characteristics, belonging to the two given nouns, sounding as affirmations. But analyses of affective power of contemporary art needs a more adequate way to enclose the looking process.

3. Affective power, from Latin origin to Spinoza
However Spinoza wrote Ethics in Latin, his way of thinking opposes the way dictionaries interpret words₃. For example, Spinoza uses the word ‘substance’ for that which stands beneath, an underlying reality (1962: 161). It does not point at an elementary material of anything, for example, the wood, or paint of an art object. Spinoza’s use of substance concerns the inner being, the essence. The word stems from the Greek ‘ousia’. This is the present particle of ‘eina’: ‘to be’. Thus substance refers to that which eternally and unchangeably is, and of which everything else must be a transient form or mode. It indicates ‘the very structure of existence, underlying all events and things, and constituting the essence of the world’ (1962: 162).

Dictionaries indicate how the world is constructed from an intellectual point of view, describing meanings, word origins and pronunciations. They reflect a world of reason and a world of ideas. But when a spectator of a contemporary artwork encounters contemporary art by using a dictionary, (s)he collects mainly reasonable sources. In contrast, Spinoza argues that being reasonable is a process of becoming of the mind, body and soul (Spinoza, Complete Works 2002: 281). This growth in becoming, as an active force, changes the concepts of reasoning and bodily (re)actions. Spinoza distinguishes mental actions on the one hand and appetite, through will in physical activities of the body on the other hand (2002: 281). Both, however, are one and the same thing, simultaneous in nature. Spinoza merges these mental actions and physical appetite into one concept, the attribute of Thought (2002: 281). Mental actions consider decisions, through will and desire. Physical activities are extensions through the laws of bodily motion-and-rest.

The spectator of a contemporary artwork consists of two distinct aspects (2002: 245): a physical body and its extensions: modes of expression on the one hand, in gestures, eye movements and ideas and feelings in the mind and their modes of thoughts on the other hand. Affective power grows in the visual encounter between the artwork and the spectator. It becomes an integral part of a series of affective forceful interactions between the artwork and the spectator. The premise is that this visual encounter is determined by the nature of the spectator’s affective thought, ideas and its physical expressions (2002: 246). Between the spectator’s physical and mental body there is a thoroughgoing correlation and parallelism. However body and mind to not causal interact. For every bodily mode of extension there is a corresponding mode of affective thoughts within the spectator’s mind: ‘the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connections of things’ (2002: 247). A spectator’s power of thinking and feeling is on par with his/her power of acting. Hence, the mode of extension and the idea of that mode of extension are one and the same thing. What differs is their expression: in thoughts and in bodily extensions.₄

Affective power grows in the visual encounter between an artwork and the spectator. They become attached. The attachment through a visual encounter expresses and represents this visual encounter: it touches a spectator’s body and mind. We return to our example, the sculpture Cloud Gate (Plate 1). It exists as a material object in the urban landscape of the Millennium Park and also, simultaneously grows within the spectator as the idea of the existing sculpture. Both, sculpture and its spectator are simultaneously part of a greater surroundings of our globalizing world. But this sculpture also is a material object. The sculpture’s perception and it’s representation in the eyes of it’s viewer are one and the same thing, but explained by the two different attributes: thoughts and feelings within the mind and bodily extensions, through gestures and other kinds of physical expressions. Hence, whether we conceive the artwork under the attribute of extension, or under the attribute of thought, one and the same order will be found as one and the same connection of causes (2002: 247)

4. Passions and the conatus
A spectator reflects his/her body awareness, in the visual encounter with the artwork. In this looking process passions arise₅ . Passions are a species of ‘affectio(n)’. The passions consist in ‘the affections of the body by which the body’s power of activity increases or diminishes, assists or checks, together with the ideas of these affectio(n)s’ (2002: 278). Passions are the functions of the ways in which a contemporary artwork affects the spectator’s power of capacity in a visual encounter. Spinoza argues: ‘Therefore the emotions [passions]₆ […] considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and force of Nature as all other particular things’ (2002: 278). Passions grow in the visual encounter between the spectator and the artwork. The evolving awareness of affective visual experiences, from the spectator’s body, expresses and reflects itself in the mind. Thus, the spectator’s mind experiences what happens in the body, while viewing a work of art. His/her mind and body are two different expressions, under idea and under extension of one and the same thing: the spectator. However, a mind – body dualism doesn’t arise because there is no causal interaction between the two, they correspond (2002: 278). Let us take a close look on how this connection between body and mind works.

The spectator’s mind is a collected term for a series of ideas, which connect (2002: 257). These inward thoughts of the mind (form), and the outward movements of the body (matter) are two entities of one process (2002: 280). Nothing can happen to the body, which is not perceived by the mind (2002: 365). Thus, the mind does not consist of separated entities called intellect, ideas, imagination or memory. They all correspond with the viewer’s will, expressed in a series of bodily actions governed by volitions. Both, mind and bodily expressions through volitions is one and the same thing (2002: 273). How does this oneness in body and mind operate in the looking process? Is this the correspondence between the growing of an idea and the passing over into action? Spinoza’s words: ‘The affections of the body, that is the images of things, are arranged and connected in the body in exactly the same way as thoughts and the ideas of things are arranged and connected in the mind.’ (2002: 365). Spinoza argues that the mind consists of a richness of associations. The popping up of a specific idea is itself the first phase of a cooperative organic, bodily process of which external action is the integration between body and mind.

External action relates to what Spinoza defines conatus. It is an essential aspect of a spectator (2002: 283). This original Latin word means ‘effort’. It endeavours to continue to exist and enhance its human existence. The conatus is a drive toward self-preservation. The conatus is driven by passions. Passions express the human conatus. Passions arise in a visual confrontation with the external cause of the contemporary artwork. If passions grow in this visual encounter between the artwork and the spectator, they implicate desire. Spinoza defines ‘desire’ as: ‘appetite accompanied by the consciousness’ (2002: 284). Thus, there is a relation between the conatus, passion and desire, driven by ideas that pop up in reasoning during the visual encounter with the artwork. Appetite / will is the innate striving of a spectator to persevere as a human being (2002: 284). This appetite / will motivates the spectator to pursue aspects in life that increase his/her power of acting. Spinoza develops a catalogue of human passions to substantiate this perseverance. He argues that it is necessary to ‘know both the power of our nature and its lack of power, so that we can determine what reasoning can and cannot do in controlling the passions’ (2002: 330)₇ .

There are two premises. First, through every new visual encounter a spectator’s mental and physical capacities change. Spinoza speaks of the human body that can be affected in many ways ‘by which its power of activity is increased or diminished’ (2002: 278). Second, a spectator is naturally endowed with this effort, defined as conatus: his/her power of striving. We already discovered that the conatus, with which each thing endeavours to persist in its own being, is the actual essence of the thing itself’ (2002: 283). The conatus constitutes the ‘essence’ of the spectator as a sort of existential inertia, an effort. It’s an irrepressible urge that a spectator has to maintain him- herself in life, to preserve him- herself, to prevent him/her to lose forces of existing. How does the conatus relate to passion? In order to analyze this connection we first need to look at the relation between idea and affect. The process of reasoning is lead by ideas that pop up. How idea and affect connect in Spinoza’s theory?

5. Idea and affect₈
There is a difference between idea and affect in Spinoza’s theory (24/01/1978:1). Because his original Ethics is written in Latin, we already noticed that ‘affect’ has different translations: the noun ‘affectio’ and the verb ‘affectus’. ‘Affect’ involves Spinoza’s affectus.₉ ‘Affection’ belongs to Spinoza’s noun affectio. Idea refers to an objective, visual reality of the contemporary artwork: a mode of thought which represents the visual appearance. The verb affect (affectus) involves a mode of thought which is non- representional: a collective of affective associations, in opinions, affinities and intuitions. The verb ‘to perceive’ and the noun ‘perception’ clarify this visual process, consisting of body and mind activities. ‘Perceiving perceptions’ imply to aim at an object of representation, given in an idea. But the very act of perceiving itself is affectus because it is non-representational. (Bohm about perception!)

Idea and affect operate in two parallel ways in the spectator’s visual encounter with an artwork. The connection between them has three characteristics (24/01/1978:2):

1. Idea and affect(us) differ in nature
2. Idea and affect(us) are irreducible to one another
3. Affect(us) presupposes an idea (just as effect presupposes a cause)

Second, idea, as a mode of thoughts, is different from the verb affectus. Idea has two characteristics:

1. Idea has an objective reality, its representational, extrinsic character
2. Idea has a formal reality, its non-representational, intrinsic character

For example, in the visual encounter with the spectator the objective reality of an idea of an artwork is the idea of an artwork insofar as it represents the artwork as a material thing. But the spectator’s idea of a formal reality is the idea of this idea, as such, in its internal, intrinsic world, not directly related to the material artwork in the outside world. Spinoza refers to this formal quality, as the degree of perfection the idea possesses in itself.

Affect presupposes an idea and is dynamic in: ‘the continuous variation or passage from one degree of reality to another or from one degree of perfection to another’ (24/1/1978: 4). This definition includes a spectator as becoming a spiritual automaton, following Spinoza’s way of thinking. Varying ideas and passions, process in time, within a passage of transition. In this varying process of ideas and passions, the spectator’s power of acting as a force of existing increases or diminishes in a continuous manner, on a continuous line.

Affect is that ‘force of existing’, determined by the variation of ideas (2002: 324). Again, in this sentence the word ‘determined’ does not mean that the variation of ideas is limitary to the ideas the spectator has. For, the variation has two characteristics: first, one idea that pops up in the spectator does not clarify its sequence which can have two directions:

1. Increase of the spectator’s power of acting in relation to the idea
2. Decrease of the spectator’s power of acting in relation to the idea

Second, this passage of varying ideas is not a ‘question of comparison, it’s a question of a kind of slide, a fall or rise in the power of acting’ (24/1/1978: 4). Thus, according to Spinoza’s Ethics, the ideas that pop up in the spectator in the visual encounter with a contemporary artwork, determine affect. Simultaneously, affect is irreducible to these ideas.

How do modes of thoughts and corresponding affects form a ‘regime of variation’ (2002: 7 – 9)? We turn to our example to investigate this question. The spectator enters the Millennium Park in Chicago. (S)he turns the head and encounters the big lustrous object. In the visual encounter, (s)he and the artwork attach. The spectator instantly receives ideas. Simultaneously (s)he experiences bodily sensations, such as skin shivers. Because of the sculpture’s measures and open structure, (s)he consciously feels as if it’s going to absorb his/her view. The radiant surface of the polished material reflects clouds, buildings, in the eyes of the spectator. The desire to just wandering in and out, under this sculpture for some moments of time pops up. (S)he starts to get curious of what’s in the inside of the sculpture’s arc bow. This constant flow of varying thoughts does not only consist of logical thoughts but also applies perceptual change in his/her emotional state. Because of the visual encounter with the sculpture, his/her perception of the surroundings changes. The sculpture makes his/her feel good and energetic. (S)he also discovers that it’s a sculpture, titled Cloud Gate. (S)he walks down the Millennium Park and every now and then (s)he turns to look again. Little by little (s)he realizes that it diminishes and its features change, loose details. While walking away from the sculpture a series of successive ideas and affects that started to pop up earlier, coexist. Thus, in this perceiving process ideas and affects interfere.

6. Regime of variation
Regarding this visual encounter with a contemporary artwork in a park in everyday life, Spinoza applies the term ‘automaton’ in Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Spinoza Complete Works 2002: 16,17). Two suggestions:

1. Spectators look at artworks as spiritual automata. In the perception process the succession of ideas affirm in the spectator, more than the spectator having the succession of ideas
2. Within the succession of ideas there is a ‘regime of variation’ which differs from the succession of ideas themselves (2002: 7 – 9)

Spinoza puts this melodic line of continuous variations in the centre of his thoughts about affect. He structures affect, divides it in two poles: joy – sadness.₁₀ This division shows us how affect, besides an individual indication of a visual encounter with an artwork, becomes an attribute of a collective of spectators, constructed as ‘being’ through ‘feeling’ (Sarah Ahmed 2004: 2). In order to elaborate on a first operation of affect we turn to a visual encounter between a spectator and two artworks (s)he views one after the other. They need to show how a ‘regime of varying’ affects grows, simultaneously with ideas. Again the spectator enters Millennium Park. But in this case (s)he first encounters a big cannon. At that moment (s)he is not aware that it’s an art installation, with the title Shooting into a corner (Plate 2). The cannon is immense and unstable. It makes noise and it looks like it’s going to shoot. The spectator’s ideas rapidly are varying within each other, popping up in the head, such as ‘What to think of this?’ Simultaneously, (s)he starts to experience anxiety and discomfort in bodily gooseflesh. (S)he desires to rapidly pass the cannon. Walking further, again unexpectedly, (s)he encounter a marvellous big bean shape, made out stainless steal. (S)he stops to enjoy what she looks at. For the second time, ideas varying within each other, rise in her/his mind. Simultaneously, feelings of wonder and sympathy arise.

The looking processes in these two visual encounters generate opposite variations of ideas, which we defined as a mode of thought stemming from the visual features of the artworks. Besides, something else happens. Passions accompany an idea stemming from the visual features of the bean and cannon. Affect, operates as a ‘regime of variation in passions’ in the spectator while perceiving ideas in looking at these art installations. Now, here we reach a core notion of Spinoza’s Ethics. Spinoza defines this ‘regime of variation’ as a ‘variation’ of a force of existing […], vis existendi, or my power of acting, potentia agendi (Spinoza 2002: 279 and Deleuze 24/1/1978: 3). The core characteristic of these variations is that they are perceptual. Existing is characterised by a continuous variation, which inherits a force of existing or a power of acting. Joy is any affect involving an increase of a spectator’s power of acting. Sadness is any affect involving a diminution of a spectator’s power of acting.

Let’s take a closer the ‘regime of variation’ in the examples of the two art installations. When the spectator saw the cannon, she experienced passions of anxiety and discomfort, simultaneously the idea of the cannon was given in his/her mind. When (s)he saw the bean, which moved him/her, the idea of this bean form, was given to him/her. Each one of these ideas and corresponding sensations vary. The idea of the bean has more intrinsic perfection than the idea of the cannon. For, the idea of the bean contents the spectator and the idea of the cannon upsets him/her. When the idea of the bean succeeds the idea of the cannon, the spectator’s force of existing as a power of acting increases or improves. On the contrary, when the idea of cannon, which frightened the spectator, succeeds the idea of the bean, which pleases, his/her force of existing or power of acting inhibits or obstructs.

Thus, these consecutive visual encounters with two different contemporary artworks is characterised by a continuous variation. It is an increase-diminution-increase-diminution of a force of existing or the power of acting of a spectator according to ideas, which pop up. Each succeeding idea has its own degree of perfection. The spectator, in who the ideas and corresponding sensations vary, never stops passing from one degree of perfection to another. Affect (affectus) is this melodic line of continuous variation. Affect correlates with ideas and simultaneously it differs in nature from ideas. Affect is a continuous variation of the force of existing, insofar as this variation is determined by the ideas one has (Deleuze 24/1/1978: 3).

It is important to stress Spinoza’s argument that affect does not depend on a comparison of ideas (2002: 319, 320, 367). To Spinoza the idea, defined in its mode of thoughts with both an objective and formal reality, is primary in relation to affect. Both differ in nature. Affect is not reducible to an intellectual comparison of ideas and vice versa. Affect and idea are of the same impact and order. Deleuze summarizes ‘affect is constituted by the lived transition or lived passage from one degree of perfection to another, insofar as this passage is determined by ideas’ (24/1/1978: 4). However, the passage in itself does not consist in an idea. This passage constitutes, composes affective power.

6. Passive and active passions, joy and sadness
Spinoza argues:

“[…] Nature is always the same, and its force and power of acting is everywhere one of the same; that is, the laws and rules of Nature according to which all things happen and change from one form to another are everywhere and always the same. So our approach to the understanding of the nature of things of every kind should likewise be one and the same; namely, through the universal laws and rules of Nature.” (2002: 278)

Reality in which we look at art can be perceived as one process determined by the rules of Nature. From this follows that the passions joy and sadness stem from and act in accordance with the necessity and force of nature in all singular aspects. Therefore, a spectator can perceive passions in two ways. Passions in action occur when the cause of an event lies in a viewer’s own inner nature, consisting of memories, affects and ideas. In this case the mind acts from within. On the contrary, passions appear when something happen in a spectator from which the cause lies outside of his/her nature and (s)he is being acted upon, for example, in a visual encounter with a contemporary artwork.

We distinguish two kinds of affects: active and passive affects. First there are active affects. The changes in the active affective power have their source, an adequate cause, which resides in our inner nature alone. These active affects exist within the spectator and are independent. The second type are passive affects, the passions, these cause changes in power of acting that originate outside of the spectator. Passions originate within an affective powerful encounter between the artwork and the spectator. Thus, in a visual meeting with an artwork, passions will constitute affective power. Spinoza divides the two core passions in joy and sadness. The characteristic of these two main passions is that their affect on the viewer are always brought about by the external artwork. Spinoza argues that these passive transitions (passiones) explicate for a spectator the emotions of Pleasure (laetitia) and Pain (tristitia) (2002: 285). Pleasure is a ‘passive transition of the mind to state of greater perfection’. Pain is ‘the passive transition of the mind to state of less perfection’ (2002: 285). The spectator can moderate his / her passions in perceiving a work of art. This desire through appetite assists the viewer to grow as an active, autonomous being. The passion joy is the spectator’s: ‘transition from a state of less perfection to a state of greater perfection (2002: 311).’ The passion sadness is the spectator’s: ‘transition from a state of greater perfection to a state of less perfection’ (2002: 311). If the spectator achieves a transition, (s)he will experience a transformation, for example, become more or less ‘free’. That is, whatever happens to him/her will result from his/her own nature, in an increase of his/her adequate ideas that remove inadequate ideas, puzzles in the mind.

Passions of joy and sadness arise in the visual encounter between the artwork and the spectator. We return to the two examples. A spectator walks into the Millennium Park in Chicago. In starting the looking process, the spectator becomes affected by passions of joy or sadness. (S)he strives to advance the manifestation of Kapoor’s Cloud Gate of what (s)he imagines will lead to joy. The viewer will at a first stage avoid to further look at the cannon (Plate 2), an artwork of what (s)he imagines will lead to sadness (Plate 2). (S)he looks at Cloud Gate (Plate 1). Aroused by his/her passions of joy (s)he eventually approaches this sculpture.

In the looking process Cloud Gate becomes the object of the spectator’s passions. The growing passions of joy in perceining the sculpture fluctuate. The spectator’s bodily movements of coming near depend on whether (s)he regards the artwork with intensifying joy. The art installation is external to the viewer. The looking process connects the viewer to the art installation and ‘controls’ affective power. Hence, the more the viewer allows him- herself to be controlled by Cloud Gate, the more (s)he is subject to the passions of joy. Following Spinoza from this it is clear that a spectator of Cloud Gate is in many respects at the mercy of this artwork as an external cause. The spectator is unsure of the outcome and of his/her change through the artworks amount of affective power (2002: 310). The viewer becomes subject to the affective power of Cloud Gate. In a first phase of the looking process (s)he becomes under control of joy. The artwork affects the spectator’s passion of joy in body and mind, in so many variations that cannot be numbered (2002: 310).

Thus, a spectator can not control affective power of the artwork that (s)he tends to value and that influences his/her. Instead, the viewer ought to try to control his/her evaluations themselves. This internal action allows the viewer to coordinate affective power that the outer artwork has on the spectator’s occurring passions. (S)he can never eliminate passions caused by affective power of the artwork entirely. Thus the outer material art object will affect and cause a change in the viewer’s passions. The spectator actually is part of nature, both in bodily existence and mind. (S)he can never fully remove him- herself from the causal series that link him/her to the external artwork.₁₁

7. Joy and sadness
Affective power in the visual encounter between the spectator and the artwork adapts the two main passions, joy and sadness. They are two basic affective tonalities, which cover Spinoza’s theory of affect(us) (20/1/1981: 19). Both connect toward desire, the appetite that drives joy and sadness. Spinoza’s philosophy of affect connects body and mind. The mind of the spectator is constituted by its idea of the body. A viewer becomes aware of his/her body through its changes. The passions, both passive and active, constitute the body and mind of the viewer.

The passions joy and sadness are two interrelated lineages: joy expressed by pleasure and sadness experienced by pain. When the viewer is affected with the passion of sadness, his/her power of acting decreases. This is because the images of the relations presented by Kapoor’s cannon, Shooting into the corner do not compose with the image of the viewer. When I pass from the idea of the cannon to the idea of the bean, Cloud Gate, my power of acting increases, because the smooth and reflecting bean feature of Cloud Gate affects me with joy. When I pass from the affective power of the visual encounter with Cloud Gate to the affective power of the visual encounter with Shooting into the corner, my power of acting diminishes, because Shooting into the corner affects me with sadness.

Passion and power connect in the visual encounter between the spectator and a work of art. Power is always topical and it is always exercised (Deleuze 12/12/1980: 13). It is the affect that exercises power. Passion is the exercise of power, what the spectator experiences in action. It is the passion, which exercises the viewer’s power, at every moment of looking at the artwork. According to Spinoza reason indicates a certain type of affect (2002: 334). To be reasonable consists of a variation of affects, because it is precisely the forms under which power exercises. Affect indicates social moments and spaces, while the spectator experiences the artwork. The temporal concept of affect is duration and its spatial concept is the interval: the interstice between the different stages of affective perception.₁₂ The process of affective looking locates apart from everyday life, an intervening period in-between. Passion mediates and communicates between the varying affectio(n)s in the looking process.

8. Body – mind
Passion is an affectio(n)-idea, an idea of an effect. The body of a spectator is the extensive part of his/her passions that belong to him/her. The object of the idea that represents the work of art, constitutes the human mind (2002: 251). The spectator’s body generates effect, through the experience of passions in viewing an artwork. Passions are defined by the relation of movement and rest, which belongs to the spectator, but are affected by looking at the artwork. This is an extrinsic, external determination: causality. Hence, a spectator who experiences passions is affected by a work of art in a regime of variation.

The extensive parts in the body of the spectator express movement or rest in the mind. These extensive parts also have an effect upon one another. They are inseparable from the effect that they have on one another. Isolated extensive parts do not exist. At least one set of extended parts belongs to the spectator, again. We must realize however that this set of extended parts that belong to the viewer is not separated from other sets, equally infinite, that act on the viewer’s set of extended parts. The extensive parts belong to the spectator insofar as they perform a certain relation of movement and rest that characterize him/her. They execute a relation since they define the terms between which the relation applies [joue]. The body of a spectator is defined by a certain power of being affected by the artwork.

For example, in the visual encounter the bodily particles of the viewer’s eyes and skin are not separable from the material features of the sculpture Cloud Gate that strike the spectator’s eyes and skin. They are connected to each other in a looking process. Thus, passion is precisely this idea of the effect of the image of the artwork on the body of the spectator. At this stage, it is necessarily a disordered and puzzled idea of a first growing opinion since the viewer has no idea of the cause of this first passion that strikes upon him/her. This striking passion is the reception of the effect: the spectator looks at the artwork. That’s it.

We already noticed how Kapoor’s Shooting into the corner affected the viewer with bodily shivers. Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project, further reveals how the looking process discloses passion through the viewers extensive parts in bodily effects (Plate 3). This art installation was exhibited in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in 2003. It depicted the sun and earth’s atmosphere. Both representations of nature expanded the total exhibition space. The giant semi-circular form of the artificial sun at the far end of the hall consisted of mono-frequency lamps. These lights compressed radiances, which effected in colour reduction. Only yellow and black colours were visible. Thus, the visual range around the artificial sun was transformed into a spacious duotone panorama. The space of the Turbine Hall was infused with fine mist, accumulating during the day into hazy and foggy formations. These cloud-like appearances disappeared one by one, replaced by a reflection of the lower area.

Compare these completely different moments: instant A: a spectator lies on the ground in the Turbine Hall where The Weather Project is exhibited. (S)he catches the tiny little particles of fog. There is no shelter, only space. The body of the spectator has no other resource than that of experiencing the fog and waning light ball. (S)he lies there, in a solitude body, unprotected, fully surrendered to experiencing The Weather Project. Instant B: now the spectator opens up. Now the tiny little drops of fog transform in little and soft pinholes. It’s a wonderful sensation. The body of the spectator opens up and tends to fully be capable of spreading out towards this art installation. The spectator should not be fooled, however. In both cases his/her power of being affected by passion of joy is necessarily fulfilled. Plainly, a viewer always has the passion that (s)he deserves according to the circumstances, both internal and external. But a passion only belongs to the viewer to the extent that is actually contributes to the spectator’s power of being affected (24/3/1981: 25). At this point we need to further investigate how passions and reasoning through ideas that pop up relate in the visual encounter between a spectator and an artwork.

9. Reasoning
Following reasoning is following the laws of our own nature, acting on the conatus for self-preservation. This is a ‘fundamental law of nature’ (2002: 367). Spinoza states: ‘if we consider the mind, surely our intellect would be less perfect if the mind were in solitude and understood nothing beyond itself’ (2002: 331). Reason implies that a spectator adapts an affective procedure that meets many intuitive examinations of virtue. Therefore, contemporary artworks, which are material objects outside the spectators self, can function advantageously. For example, in viewing Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, a spectator’s inner bondage of a painful passion can be transformed by the affective joyful power of this art installation. The affective cheerful force of Cloud Gate can overrule a viewer’s inner melancholia. As such, artworks can affect a spectator in increasing or decreasing his/her power of acting in today’s world.

Thus, reasoning is an active regime of varying ideas that pop up. It is an active force of the mind that helps a spectator to become conscious of his/her inner passions in the process of viewing Cloud Gate. Exercising reason improves understanding the nature and connection between the viewer and this artwork. It can further generate passions of joy that can overcome a viewer’s bondage of sad passions. This process leads to an increase of the viewer’s power of acting in today’s world, a passage to a state of greater perfection (2002: 367). For example, we see that excitement over the spectator’s increase of understanding what is happening in the radiances of light beams diminishes as soon as the viewer realizes that this is the effect of interaction of Cloud Gate with the weather conditions. It is part of the installation (and could not have been prevented in any way).

Spinoza explains this by using the metaphor of babies (2002: 367). Nobody feels sorry for a baby who cannot talk or walk. This is because we are conscious of the fact that at this natural phase a baby is ignorant of the self and relies on the help, concentration and attention of adults, it’s a necessary characteristic of a baby. In the same way the looking process between the spectator and a contemporary artwork is a necessary, cultural practice, relying on the attention and concentration of a spectator. In the visual encounter, affective power of Cloud Gate comes into being and merges with the affects of its spectator. At the moment the spectator understands his / her passions, their power over him/her neutralizes ( 2010: 6). This is a process of becoming conscious of affective power through a visual encounter with a work of art.

10. Conclusion
We analysed the Latin origins of the words that constitute affective power in section two. In section three the relation between affective power and Spinoza’s theory of affect was introduced, followed by the concept of passion and the conatus in section four. Section five focussed on the difference between affect and idea. Affect is a ‘force of existing’, determined by a variation of ideas. In section six the ‘regime of variation’ that characterises affective power comes into play. Section seven analysed how passive and active passions relate, followed by the division of joy and sadness in section eight. The interaction and attachment of body and mind was introduced in section nine, succeeded by the process of reasoning in section ten.

This chapter pointed out that affective power in visual encounters inherits qualities that count for more spectators, independently of individual differences. For example, all viewers perceive Kapoor’s Cloud Gate as a huge glittering bean sculpture. We also share an instant matching ‘image’ when we perceive a cannon. When we discuss ‘sadness’, we share a sensation of a painful experience and when we talk about joy we all sense pleasure. Spinoza’s calls these features ‘universal’. (2002: 267). The same counts for spectator’s capacity to reason in how to surpass obscurities and confusion which occur in visual encounters with contemporary art. That is why Spinoza’s distinction of three kinds of knowledge can serve to further investigation of affective power of contemporary art. This threefold division needs to overcome enslavements to partial and individual forms of affective knowledge supplied by the senses. Spectators gain balance in intellectual and affective consciousness through affective power of contemporary art, through three kinds of knowledge. We will discus them in chapter four.

References
Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotions, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2004.

Robert Atkins, Artspeak, 3rd Revised edition, Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S., 2014.

David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge Press, London, 1980.

Deepak Chopra, Spiritual Solutions, Harmony Books, Random House, 2012.

Robert Dale McHenry, ed., Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition, Benton Foundation and Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1985.

Gillez Deleuze, Cours Vincennes. Lectures Transcripts on Spinoza’s Concept of Affect, 24/01/1978, 12/12/1980, 20/01/1981, 24/03/1981: http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.html

Nels Dockstader, Benedict de Spinoza: Epistemology, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011: http://www.iep.utm.edu/spino-ep/

Will Durant, The Lives and Opinions of Greater Philosophers, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1962.

The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, Harlow, Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.

Amy M. Schmitter, Spinoza on the Emotions, Standford Encyclodedia of Philosophy, 2010, p. 1 – 8. : http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD5Spinoza.html

Spinoza, Complete Works, translations by Samuel Shirley, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis / Cambridge, 2002.

Steven Nadler, Baruch Spinoza, Standford Encyclodedia of Philosophy, 2013, p. 1 – 22.: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/

J. van Wageningen, Latijns Woordenboek, 4e druk, bewerkt door F. Muller, Wolters Uitgevers-Maatschappij, Groningen – Den Haag, 1929.

BARUCH DE SPINOZA (1632 – 1677). THREE KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE / IDEAS

1. Introduction
The previous chapter introduced Spinoza’s theory of affect and already connected it with the visual encounter between the contemporary artwork and the spectator. In order to outline puzzling effects of affective power of contemporary art on the perception of the spectator, we now elaborate on Spinoza’s analysis of the human intellect. He discerns three different types of knowledge, passive affection (affectio) ideas, common notion ideas and essence ideas (Spinoza 2002: 267). We apply this division in the visual encounter between the spectator and the artwork. It assists us to outline how our natural, rational powers and our knowledge supplied by the senses interact in a visual encounter with contemporary art. Besides, it prepares to improve the spectator’s mind to experience what Spinoza calls the ‘true good’ (2002: 3). It will be a challenge to search for true knowledge in the analysis of affective power of contemporary art. To what extend does contemporary art empower everyday existence by balancing senses and reasoning? How does a spectator use knowledge to notice and align passions in the visual encounter with a contemporary artwork? How does a visual encounter with actual art liberate us from everyday finite concerns to endow us with power and virtue of true blessedness?₁₃

In section two the first kind of knowledge, ‘opinion’ will be introduced in looking at a contemporary artwork. Section three discusses common notions, the second kind of knowledge, followed by an introduction of essence-ideas in section four. Section five focuses on passages and duration through time and space. The transformation from passions into intuition in looking at contemporary art is the subject of section six, succeeded by the characteristics of good and bad encounters in section seven. Section eight focuses on affect through passions. In the conclusion in section nine we define affective power of contemporary art as a passage.

2. Opinion
The first type of idea we adapt as a passive affectio(n); passion.₁₄ In this phase knowledge stems from casual experience (2002: 267). The spectator sees the art object at first sight. (S)he looks at it through his/her senses in a fragmentary, puzzled way. We return to our example. Walking into the Millennium Park in Chicago the spectator bumps into Cloud Gate (Plate 1). (S)he sees the art installation for the first time. This first exploring look is fragmented and is puzzled by what (s)he looks at. At this first stage there is no order of ideas, only puzzled incomplete knowledge: a first, random experience (2002: 262). Spinoza defines this kind of knowledge as opinion. Thus, in the looking process between the spectator and art a first kind; passions of ‘opinion’ arise (2002: 267).

A spectator develops an opinion in a visual encounter. An opinion pops up in this first living change encounter. Spinoza defines this process as ‘occursus’ (Deleuze 24/1/1978: 5). The spectator enters Millennium Park, encounters Cloud Gate and gets exited and curious. This is the function of the constitution of the body and mind of the viewer connecting with Cloud Gate. The art installation, consisting of features of a radiant bean, excites the viewer. This means, literally, that the effect of the art installation on the body of the spectator affects the mind of the spectator with the opinion of excitement. This is a first noxious encounter between sculpture and the spectator.

In a visual encounter, the body and mind of the spectator consist of relations of movement and rest ‘and the human body exists according as we sense it’ (2002: 251). In this case, an opinion of excitement of two values can pop up in this first kind of knowledge. The spectator experiences Cloud Gate as a contemporary artwork that (s)he likes, or else, (s)he experiences Cloud Gate as a contemporary artwork that (s)he dislikes. In the first case (s)he experiences joy, in the second case (s)he experiences sadness. In joy the spectator has a good visual encounter and in sadness (s)he has a bad visual encounter. These two relations belong to Spinoza’s category of occursus: encounters. When the spectator has a good encounter with Cloud Gate, his/her constituent relation improves. In other words, the spectator enters the Cloud Gate, passes through it and experiences the radiances of the brilliant surface. (S)he starts to feel moved in a pleasant way, (s)he experiences a passion of joy. The experience of this first passion of a pleasant opinion improves his / her power of acting, it increases. Affect is this continuous variation/passage of the power of acting, driven by passion. In this case there is a good mixture of the spectator and the artwork.

Thus, affect(us) is that continuous variation/passage of the power of acting. Opinion is a passion, within this ongoing passage. Passions of opinion pop up in the first phase of looking at an artwork. We already noted that passion is: ‘ a state of a body insofar as it is subject to the action of another body’ (24/1/1978: 4). Passions consist in ‘the affections of the body by which the body’s power of activity is increased or diminished, assisted or checked, together with the ideas of these affectio(n)s’ (2002: 278). Passions are the functions of the ways in which a contemporary artwork affects the spectator’s power of capacity in a visual encounter. The sculpture Cloud Gate represents an the overall influence of the sun, clouds, rain and the sky on the sleek steel surface of the art object (Plate 1) that enter the eyes of the spectator:

• Cloud Gate invites the spectator to feel the effect of the atmosphere of it upon his/her eyes and skin.
• This experience is the affectio(n) of the art installation on the spectator’s body. – This affectio(n) is the effective action of the art installation on the spectator, through a body experience.
• Affectio(n) is the effective action that the materiality of the art installation produces on the body of the spectator.
• This effective action does require attachment, that is, a direct visual encounter between the art installation and the spectator’s body and mind.

Passion of opinion grows in the mixing of the art installation Cloud Gate and its spectator. Cloud Gate acts on the spectator. The spectator receives the traces of Cloud Gate. Thus, a first opinion is a mixture of two bodies. Following Spinoza’s arguments, opinion indicates the nature of affected body of the spectator much more than it does the nature of the affecting body of Kapoor’s art installation (2002: 256). When the spectator in the Millennium Park experiences the first artificial created beams of sunlight, the spectator forms an opinion. This first look indicates much more fully the constitution of the spectator’s body. The look envelops the nature of this changing, modifying body of the experiencing spectator (2002: 256).

A major characteristic of this growing opinion is that it is a puzzled personal view: it does not explain the cause of the mixture of the art installation and the body of the spectator (2002: 256). The cause rises in a next phase. It consists of three interrelated parts: that which is the body of the spectator, second, that which is the material body of Cloud Gate, and third, the relation of attachment between these two bodies. Opinion in the first stage mainly represents a first effective action (2002: 256). For instance, the art installation produces reflections of the sky and people wandering around the sculpture. These reflections produce a sphere of dazzling radiance on the spectator. (S)he looks at the dazzling radiance, (s)he sees the changing of light intensities. This visual encounter produces an opinion. This is the opinion of a personal view of the dazzling radiance of the changing light beams. The spectator perceives effective actions of Cloud Gate. In this first encounter with the sculpture the spectator remains in forming this opinion. (S)he experiences the corporeal constitution of an opinion, a personal view that pops up.

In this first visual encounter opinion also triggers a rising awareness of the soul, but its concept is vague (2002: 264). What we can be sure of is that to Spinoza soul, body and mind relate. The spectator of the art object Cloud Gate gets a first excitement, an opinion while bumping into it. This means that the art installation mixes with the body and mind of the spectator in a manner by which the spectator is modified agreeably. But how there is a connection between this opinion, a spiritual empathy and bodily relations between the spectator and the artwork. An opinion rises in the spectator’s mind in the visual enconter: ‘this artwork excites me’, parallel to the body experience of the viewing eyes. Let’s assume that this connection between the mind and eyes composes a feature of what Spinoza mentions as the soul. At this first level the spectator only receives a first opinion, (s)he doesn’t yet know by virtue of what and how this encounter with Cloud Gate powers an affective experience. Opinion is knowledge (connaissance) of effective actions of the artwork, independent of the knowledge of causes. Hence, opinion is a chance encounter. We need to look at what can happen in the evolvement of this change encounter. Therefore we first need to explore Spinoza’s concept of the individuality of a body.

The individuality of a spectator’s body is a conglomerate: a very complex relation of movement and rest, both in body and mind, preserved through the changes, which affect the parts of the spectator’s body (2002: 252). In other words, this individuality of a spectator’s body is the permanence of the relation of movement and rest through all the changes, which affect the parts, of the spectator’s body under consideration (24/1/1978: 6). For example, the spectator looks at Cloud Gate. In this attachment, the looking eyes define a relation of movement and rest through all the modifications of the diverse parts of them. But these eyes themselves also already have infinity of parts. Besides, these eyes are two parts among the other parts of the spectator’s body. The spectator’s eyes, in their turn, are a part of the face and the face, in its turn is a part of the spectator’s body, and so on. Hence, the body of the spectator consists of all sorts of relations. Thus, the spectator’s body is necessarily composite to infinity (2002: 252). These interwoven bodily connections will be combined with one another to form an individual spectator. Deleuze argues that ‘Each one of these levels or degrees will be defined by a certain relation composed of movement and rest’ (24/1/1978: 6).

Here we return to the two core opposing passions, which arise in the visual encounter between the artwork and the spectator: either joy or sadness (2002: 285):

1. The idea of an effect of a contemporary artwork which benefits or favours the spectator’s own characteristic relation gives a positive passion of opinion
2. The idea of an effect of a contemporary artwork which compromises or destroys the spectator’s own characteristic relation gives a negative passion of opinion.
   The two movements, as poles of variable passages in the affect correspond to these two opposing passions: joy and sadness. In one case the spectator’s power of acting increases, while meeting a contemporary artwork. If we now recapitulate our investigation of this first type of knowledge ‘opinion’ we unfold the relation and specific difference between Spinoza’s distinction between affect(us) and passive affectio(n); passions. When a spectator has a positive opinion (s)he experiences joy. In the case of a negative opinion the power of acting of the spectator diminishes, while viewing a contemporary artwork. In that case (s)he will experience a passion of sadness.

Spinoza engenders all the passions ‘on the basis of these two fundamental affects: joy as an increase in the power of acting, sadness as a diminution of the power of acting’ (24/1/1978: 7). The spectator’s body is an ensemble of relations, which composes it, that is, by its amount of power of being affected by a contemporary artwork. Thus, the passion of joy increases a spectator’s power of acting and sadness decreases the power of acting. The corresponding affect to the power of acting in this first stage is always a passion, whether the power of acting increases of diminishes. There are joyful passions and sad passions. In the first phase of the looking process these form a growing opinion. They are passive, consisting in an increase or decrease of the spectator’s power of acting, affected by the affective power of a contemporary artwork, a stimulus from the outside.₁₅

In this first phase of opinion, affective power of the artwork in the visual encounter remains inefficient. For example, even when the spectator’s power of acting increases on this segment of a variable passage, nothing guarantees him/her that, in viewing Cloud Gate in this first glance (s)he is going to increases his/her power of acting, through a growing opinion. This is why the spectator is passive. The opinion is the mixture, the rising personal view of the external Cloud Gate on the body and mind of the spectator. As long as it is puzzled to what extend the spectator becomes affected in this first change encounter (occursus) with the artwork, (s)he will not be able to unravel affective power of Cloud Gate.

The difference between this first rising opinion, and growing visual consciousness in the second phase, lies in the fact that the rising opinion alone cannot yet provide an adequate idea. An adequate idea contains a clear map of how an artwork follows necessarily from an opinion, through growing awareness’ (2002: 270). This is because opinion, the personal view of the spectator only presents a work of art as it appears from a first opening perspective at a given moment in time. An adequate idea grows between the second and third stage of knowledge. The spectator starts to imagine what (s)he sees in Cloud Gate. Thus, consciousness, growing in the second stage, contains both: opinion and awareness through growing affinity. The spectator starts to perceive Cloud Gate under the species of ‘eternity’, the necessity of an artwork as it is in itself (2002: 231).

In the first stage of viewing, the spectator’s personal view of the contemporary artwork grows from the common order of nature. (S)he does not have an adequate idea yet, but only a puzzled opinion of the external art object: ‘The idea of the idea of any affectio(n) of the human body does not involve adequate knowledge of the human mind’ (2002: 262). In other words, at this first look the spectator simply forms his/her opinion. It pops up in a random first encounter. There is no plan of how to organize what he/she looks at in the external world. This first opening encounter of the spectator with the artwork does not provide him/her yet with consciousness of affective power of this interaction. This is the stage of inadequate ideas: of opinion, through random looking experiences.

3. Common notions
Passions of opinion are followed by passions of common notions in the second stage (2002: 265). In this phase the spectator starts to comprehend not just that the artwork exists as such, but also how it exists and why. (S)he starts to apprehend the features of the artwork through a discursive procedure. The looking activity grows. The spectator no longer views the artwork as contingent, accidental and spontaneously, but it becomes a conscious visual affective experience in growing passions of common notions. These common notions pass the effect of an artwork on the body of the spectator. They concern agreement through passions of affinity or disagreement through passions of dissimilarity, affecting a decrease or increase in the power of acting. This movement develops affect as a continuous variation or passage from one degree of looking at the artwork to another or from one degree of perfection to another. Common notions in this second stage already contain an opinion of the contemporary artwork on the spectator, and go a step further, beyond opinion. They concentrate on the internal agreement or disagreement of the encounter between the spectator and the artwork through passions of affinity or dissimilarity.

We return to our example. In this second phase the spectator already formed an opinion of excitement in the visual encounter with Cloud Gate. (S)he now grows to passions of common notions. These concern the impact of the opinion. The sculpture increases the spectator’s power of acting. Here we can unravel the difference between opinion and common notions. Opinion concerns a visual effect of Cloud Gate on the spectator. In other words, it regards the seizure of the extrinsic relation of the artwork with the body and mind of the spectator. In addition, common notions rise to the comprehension of the cause. Specifically, the mixture has effect in two ways:

1. By virtue of the nature of the relation of the artwork and its spectator.
2. Of the manner in which the relation of the artwork is combined with the relation of the body of the spectator.

Common notions of affinity or dissimilarity indicate that there is always a composition of relations. When the spectator’s power of acting increases, Cloud Gate induces parts of the spectator’s body to enter into a relation other than the eyes. In this second phase more parts of the body of the spectator enter into a new relation with Cloud Gate. Thus, common notions are inevitably adequate since they consist of knowledge (connaissance) by causes (24/1/1978: 10).

A passion of common notions of affinity or dissimilarity has two features (2002: 266, 267):

1. It is common to all bodies or to several bodies – at least two –
2. It is common to the whole body and to the part of the body, the eyes

There will be common notions, which are common to all spectators, to the extent that they are first the ideas of something, which are common to all bodies of spectators. For example, all spectators share a visual encounter with Cloud Gate. It is a sculpture, which is viewed by all spectators through the eyes. Common notions are actually the statement (ÈnoncÈ) of what is common to spectators viewing Cloud Gate. Spectators view the artwork, stop for a moment or walk on, both body and mind in movement or at rest. They all move or rest while looking at art. Bodily movements and looking eyes are common to spectators (2002: 267). Spectators experience passions of affinity or dissimilarity while looking at Cloud Gate. Therefore there are common notions. They designate common passions shared by spectators.

But there are also common notions, which designate common features to a specific spectator who looks at Cloud Gate (Deleuze 24/01/1978: 10). (S)he starts to wonder about the specific bean feature of it in this second phase and develops passions of affinity or dissimilarity. Once again, passions of common notions are not abstract. They have nothing to do with species or genera. Within the several parts of the spectator’s body and mind one can say that there are common notions. In the first stage the spectator was affected in a chance encounter with the art installation Cloud Gate and formed an opinion of wondering excitement. Now, in this second stage a growing passion of common notions of the cause and consequence of this connection envelops. For example, (s)he feels attracted to the reflecting surface of the giant bean and his/her affinity grows. This grow further moves the spectator towards his/her power of acting.

A passion of common notions has two sides of one coin, affinity or dissimilarity. The cause and consequence in this second kind of growing common notions is due to the first joyful opinion on the one hand, (as is the case in viewing Cloud Gate) and growing excitement of sadness on the other hand. When an artwork further affects the spectator with joy through this second kind of knowledge, it only affects the spectator with joy to the extent that it agrees with the joyful wonder of the viewer. A passion of affinity makes the viewer more conscious (24/1/1978: 10). In sadness, the spectator feels miserable, in joy (s)he feels wonderful. As long as the viewer has this joyful affect, an artwork acts on the body of the spectator. Cloud Gate acts on the body and mind of the viewer in conditions and in an encounter, which does agree with that of the spectator. At this specific point, every aspect of the first exciting opinion of joy induces the spectator to experience grow in affinity between the artwork and his/her body and mind.

We recapitulate. The viewer looks at the sculpture Cloud Gate, (s)he gets affected with an opinion of excitement in the first phase of knowledge. His/her power of acting increases. However, this does not mean that (s)he possesses this power of acting yet. To be affected with exciting joy by this artwork indicates that the artwork affects this spectator in a visual encounter, which combines with a cause, to a positive opinion located in the viewer. Accordingly, in this positive opinion Cloud Gate affects the viewer. It composes its relation with the spectator’s own. In the second kind, the spectator experiences, a passion of affinity, common notions, a cause of what is common between Cloud Gate and to the spectator’s own body and mind. The passion of affinity makes the viewer more conscious, experiences that this joy concerns him-/herself. Spinoza argues: ‘The more we are affected with joy, the more we pass to state of greater perfection (2002: 345)’.

Passions of opinion and common notions appeal to a specific way of looking, as a living experience. Thus, this way of looking implicates a way of living. Affects of joy can function as springboards. They make the viewer pass through something that (s)he would never have been able to pass if there had only be sadness. Cloud Gate invites the spectator to form the idea of what is common to the affecting body of the artwork and the affected body of the spectator. This can fail but it can also succeed and in that case the visual encounter provides an intensification of affinity between the spectator and Cloud Gate.

The intensification of affinity through affective power of Cloud Gate grows through common notions. The spectator starts to notice causes and consequences of the looking process. (S)he makes progress through a variation of looking acts in the encounter with Cloud Gate. The exciting opinion within the bodily features of the artwork releases a trigger through affective power. How does it appear? What unblocks the first kind of exciting opinion in the encounter of Cloud Gate and its spectator? In the looking process, the first exciting opinion crystallizes and accelerates the viewer into growing of affinity. These succeeding popping ups of concrete ideas become part of the continuous variation. But simultaneously, affinity drives the spectator somehow beyond the continuous variation. The growing joyful passion makes the viewer acquire at least the potentiality of common notions. Thus, if affinity grows in the spectator, (s)he starts to form common notions and understand something (s)he wasn’t aware of before. In the looking process (s)he becomes more conscious than before (s)he viewed Cloud Gate in this second phase, experiences that this joy concerns him-/herself.

In Spinoza’s contra-rationalist thinking abstract formulas about passions do not exist. There is no general formula of sadness or joy, which increases or decreases a spectator’s power of action. What counts is what the power of action indicates for every individual spectator. Cloud Gate, that can become too intense for the eye of one spectator, will not make this viewer say it’s joyful (Plate 1). But perhaps Cloud Gate will become joyful to another viewer. Thus, within one artwork there can be increasing power of acting for all, because the powers of being affected are combined (24/1/1978: 11).

In the second phase the viewer integrates the opinion of the first phase into a growth of affinity. (S)he passed the first phase of a change encounter with Cloud Gate. The exciting joyful opinion formed a springboard, towards common notions that grow. What are these common notions in this sculpture, which affects him/her with joy? How does his/her own body connect with Cloud Gate? What cause composes the grow of affinity in this visual encounter? A spectator who receives common notions, experiences that this joy concerns him-/herself. From this point on (s)he develops an immediate affectio(n): the dimension of instantaneity. This effects in a consequence. The encounter between the image of the spectator and Cloud Gate composes or does not compose affective power of joy. In the case of composing (s)he experiences joy that it truly concerns him/her. The viewer integrates the joyful exciting first opinion with a growing common notion of affinity. This increases his/her power of acting, (s)he acquires formal possession of it. The spectator makes use of the opinion, from the first kind, to envelop affinity; the cause of what there was in common between the artwork and its viewer. (S)he forms a common notion of the visual encounter with Cloud Gate, tries to win locally, to open up his/her joy, through a growing of affinity.

Thus, an opinion, the first kind of knowledge prepares this composition of common notions through affinity or dissimilarity, the second kind. Common notions are collective and refer to multiplicity. Simultaneously they are individual. These common notions focus on the individual spectator. They exercise internal agreement or disagreement. Common notions characterise the connection between the spectator and the artwork. They concern the extensive parts of the spectator’s body and mind. Common notions unfold the causes: the relations of movement and rest in the visual encounter between the artwork and its spectator. They regulate the agreement or disagreement between them, in the extended parts of the spectator’s body. Affinity determines how the body of the spectator and the artwork agree or disagree, connect or disconnect. In this second phase the spectator doesn’t have possession of his/her essence-idea, that envelops in the third stage. The essence-idea grows, the third kind, to the extent that it is intensity. In the second phase of knowledge common notions make the spectator discover that Cloud Gate affects him / her with joy, through growing affinity. (S)he can relate affinity to other affective experiences. The causes of what engenders passions of joy come into being.₁₆

4. Essence-ideas
The third kind of knowledge transforms opinion and common notions in active affects. Spinoza calls it intuition (2002: 267). This point starts where the power of acting of the spectator is conquered by all the continuous variations of opinion and affinity in the first and second phase of knowledge (24/1/1978: 8). The question of what a spectator is capable of starts. What is in his/her power, in stead of asking what a spectator should do, how to (re)act morally. Thus, Ethics outlines a challenge of power, never a challenge of duty. Following Spinoza there exists no moral issues considering good and evil in affective power of contemporary art, but only good or bad encounters (2002: 342).

What is the relation between opinion and common notions and affective variations of the two basic affects, joy and sadness occurring in the third kind of knowledge? Opinion, a passion of the first kind, appears in an enclosed world of the encounter between the artwork and its spectator (24/1/1978: 9). The spectator does not possess the opinion yet, because (s)he’s still separated from his/her power of acting, is not attached to it yet. When the spectator’s power of acting increases through common notions, (s)he starts to compose causes, through a growth in affinity. (S)he becomes less separated from the artwork, but (s)he still does not possess this power of acting. The spectator still is not the cause of his/her passions. Something else produces active affect(u)s, something on the threshold of the third phase (2002: 375). Spinoza calls it our intuition. Intuition takes what is known by reason and grasps it in a single act of the mind as essence-idea (20/1/1981: 22). Intuition is both eternal and particular. The viewer experiences intuitive power in the sense that (s)he is eternal and ‘affected by the highest joy, a pleasure being accompanied by the idea of him/herself and his/her own virtue’ (2002: 375). (S)he contains a specific quantity of power, a certain quantity of intensity. Spinoza assigns the term eternity to this constant possible growth and claims that ‘from this kind of knowledge there arises the highest possible contentment’ (2002: 375).

Intuition, the third kind of knowledge, originates from an adequate idea, attached to ‘the essence of things’ (2002: 267). Intuition affects into reflexive knowledge through viewing Cloud Gate. A spectator starts to comprehend a spiritual essence of the sculpture and what it means for his/her own understanding of today’s globalizing world. Spirituality is a growing of consciousness about the connectives of different perceptions, opinion, assumptions, and expectations that affect a spectator’s living experiences (Deepak Chopra 2012: 21). If one or more of these aspect change through the visual encounter, a shift in affective consciousness starts. The artwork is not longer seen in its temporal and spatial dimensions; in the duration of time and location of space while looking at it. Besides, the spectator no longer sees it in relation to other artworks or it’s surroundings. Intuition assists the viewer to abstracts Cloud Gate from all consideration of time and place. It now situates in a broader universal context. As Spinoza puts it: ‘this kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things’ (2002: 267). In the case of a visual encounter between the spectator and the sculpture intuition is the viewer’s conceptual and causal relationship to this universal essence (thought and extension) and the eternal laws of nature (Nadler 2013: 12). In other words, intuition knows the essence of each and every thing as a way that the universe causes itself to exist, eternally and infinitely.

How does intuition that grows in a present perception process relate to Spinoza’s claim that this essence-idea simultaneously is eternal? To the letter of Spinoza’s text: the essences are eternal, but those things, which belong to the essence, are instantaneous. (Spinoza 2002: 236). Intuition of the viewer consists only of what (s)he experiences actually insofar as (s)he experiences it actually. Following Spinoza’s formula: the viewer of Cloud Gate is as perfect as (s)he can be according to the intuition which determines his/her essence in that strict momentum, restricted time of viewing the art performance. However Spinoza knows very well that there is duration. Let’s first recollect and take a closer look at the passage from opinion in the first phase to common notions of affinity or dissimilarity in the second and intuition in the third phase of knowledge.

5. Passage, time and space
The third kind of the essence idea has three characteristics (20/1/1981: 18):

1. The essence belongs to itself under the form of the eternity
2. The affectio(n) belongs to the essence under the form of instantaneity
3. The affect belongs to the essence under the form of duration

Time consists of three distinctive but interrelated terms: eternity, instaneity and duration (2002: 230, 231). Instaneity is the modality of affection of essence. A viewer of a contemporary artwork is always as perfect as (s)he can be according to the passions that (s)he has there and then, while looking at the work of art. Therefore opinion, growing in the first phase of knowledge, is actually an instantaneous cut. In effect it is the species of horizontal relation between a power of action from the looking spectator and the artwork as an image of a thing. This constitutes three dimensions in the looking process, Deleuze states (20/1/1981: 16):

1. The viewer’s power of action, in viewing the artwork
2. The looking process
3. The viewed work of art as an image of the art object

These three dimensions also constitute space. This three-dimensional space belongs to the essence-idea, and vice-versa. The three dimensions above correspond with the three dimensions of the essence:

1. The essence itself, the eternal
2. The affections of the essence here and now: which are like so many instants, that is, what affects the spectator when looking.
3. Duration: the envelopment of affect through the instant cuts of succeeding passions (the passive affectio(n) ideas)
   

Now we can formulate as more accurate definition of active affect(us: in a lived passage from the preceding state to the current state, or of the current state to the following state in looking at a contemporary artwork passions of different natures envelop.

Through defining opinion and common notions in the visual encounter we already noticed that time and space shape the growing of these passions. We take a closer look at the interaction between time, space and de grow of affect through passions. The three kinds of knowledge inherit space and time. There is a movement from the first to the second to the third phase. This motion is progressive. An opinion, the first kind develops through common notions, the second kind into affect-ideas, the third kind. This implicates that opinion and common notions, passive affectio(n)-ideas of the first and second kind, also belong to the third kind. They contribute to transformation into intuition as active affects. Thus, in the visual encounter between the spectator and the artwork passions of opinion and common notions powerfully envelop a passage as a transition. However, this is not a comparison of connections between the spectator and artwork in two kinds but a movement, a change from one stage to another. Every instantaneous passion envelops a passage. This passage is a lived transition. The character of this lived passage does not indicate the spectator of being conscious. To experience this lived transition is something else.

For instance, the spectator who views Cloud Gate experiences an instantaneous opinion at moment A and immediately after this passion A, common notions, the second form of passive affectio(n)s B pop up: within two very close moments in time. Here we locate a passage from passion A, which is preceding (antérieur) passive affection B in a current (actuel) state, to moments, two instants. Spinoza defines this specific transition ‘duration’. Duration is the lived passage from opinion to common notions insofar as it is irreducible to one state as to the other. This ‘duration’ happens between the cuts. The in between states, caused by its cuts of transition, are always of space, even if they are instants of a thousandth of a second. Thus, the cuts which characterise the passage from the preceding passion to the actual passive affectio(n) are always spatial, ‘as a really profound statute of living’ (20/1/1981: 17).

In one sense duration is always a cut that happens behind our backs. It is between two blinks of the spectator’s eye (20/1/1981:18). Let’s for instance pinpoint an approximation of duration. The spectator looks Cloud Gate, wink ones eyes and looks at Cloud Gate. In this transition, duration is neither here nor there. Duration is: what has happened between the two visual encounters at Cloud Gate. Even if the viewer would have gone as quickly as (s)he would like, duration goes even more quickly as the spectator goes. However quickly the viewer passes from one state to another, the passage is irreducible to the two states. Precisely this envelops every passion. In other words: every passive affectio(n) envelops the passage by which the spectator arrives at it, and by which the viewer leaves it, towards another passion, however close these two passions exist, separately (20/1/1981: 18). Thus, even if these passions are as close as possible, the lived phenomenon of passage always separates them. In short summary, this lived phenomenon of passage as a transition is duration.

To discover what Spinoza exactly defines as time and space within the envelopment of affect(us), through passions we summarize. We defined affect(us) in part one as a: development in the lived transition (or lived passage) from one degree of perfection to another, insofar as this passage is determined by passions’ (24/1/1978: 4). However, the passage in itself does not consist in a passion. This passage constitutes, composes affect. Affect(us) rises out of the envelopment of passions. Passions unfold affect. These passive affectio(n)s are the instantaneous effect of an image of an artwork on the viewer. Thus, the looking process is a mode of passions. The first image-experience of Kapoor’s sculpture Cloud Gate associated with the spectator’s power of action is an opinion. Spinoza’s stresses that this passive affectio(n) envelops and implicates affect(us). Thus, within the passive affectio(n) there grows affect(us). Between passive affectio(n)s and affect(us) there is a difference in nature. Although, affect(us) is enveloped by passive affectio(n)s, affect(us) is not dependent on them. Dependence is not the case. There is a fundamental difference in nature between affect(us) and these passions. Opinion and common notions, passions of the first and second kind of knowledge envelop a passage of transition towards intuition in the third phase, in a very strong sense (20/1/1981: 17).

The passage from opinion and common notions towards active affections is an increase or decrease of the power of acting of the spectator. This passage is infinitesimally. This is the basis of Spinoza’s theory of affect(us). In order to take a closer look at how this passage proceeds, we look at Bruce Nauman’s art-installation Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care (Plate 4). It is an architectural sculpture, made from three interlinked corridors. The installation is exposed permanently in the National Gallery in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. The spectator can enter the monumental sculpture through two of the horizontal corridors. At the meeting-point of the corridors, a metal grid directs our glance downwards, towards the third vertical corridor. This art installation is part of a series of works inspired by one of Nauman’s dreams, brought together under the title of Dream Passage, created in 1983, 1984 and 1988.

The spectator enters one of the horizontal corridors of the dark hollow cross of Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care. Being within this art-installation (s)he first only sees features, because of the darkness. But at that particular moment (s)he is as perfect as (s)he can be according to the first opinion (s)he envelops, although (she) can not see detailed information of the spatial surrounding environment. This first opinion bothers. In a second stage the spectator’s eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Features rise into more details. The bothering first opinion becomes even uncannier. The spectator perceives two states, the dark state and the lighted state. They both are part of the viewer’s body in experiencing the art-installation. The two states of passion are close together. In other words, in experiencing the art installation, the viewer goes through a lived passage from disturbance, caused by the initial darkness, to an even more disturbing passion. In Spinoza’s terms this is an example of the body. The whole body of the spectator has a kind of mobilization in itself, in order to adapt the new darkened state. The affect(us) is the passage. The disturbed passion is the dark state and the more disturbed passion is the more darkened state. Experiencing Nauman’s art installation evokes two successive passions, in cuts. In this lived passage from one passion to another there is a biological transition, it is the spectator’s body, which makes the shift. In this, affective power becomes the transition, the lived passage from one passion to the other. In this case it is a decrease of the spectator’s power of action, from the first and second towards the third phase of knowledge. In the case of the encounter of the spectator with Cloud Gate the spectator’s power of action increases because of the growing affective powerful encounter with the artwork.

Hence, there are two directions, decrease or increase in the viewer’s power of action. If a spectator increases passion of which (s)he is capable, there is an increase of his/her power of acting. If a spectator decreases passion of which (s)he is capable, (s)he experiences a decrease of his/her power of acting. Note again that every passion is instantaneous in the passage between the three kinds of knowledge. At every phase, the viewer is always as perfect as (s)he can be according to what (s)he has in the instant. This is a sphere of attachment to the instantaneous essence. But this instantaneous passion always has an increase or decrease of power. In this sense there are good or bad encounters rendering either affects of joy or sadness, in Spinoza’s words: ‘Whatever things cause men to live in harmony cause them also to live by the guidance of reason, and so are good, while those things that introduce discord are bad’ (2002: 343).

The passage enfolds opinion, common notions and affect through duration. There is a look that bothers because of the initial darkness within Nauman’s art installation, and there is something even worse in becoming sharper in seeing more features within it. This is because, in this case, a decrease of power starts. Note that this passage from an initial bothering opinion towards a more bothering passion is not a comparison of the mind between two states. This is the domain of the lived passage from one state to another. In this case of Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care , it’s affective power is sadness. The spectator experiences sadness through opinion, common notions, into an active affection. Affects áre the decrease and the increase of the spectator’s lived power of acting.

Intuition, the third kind is twofold. Intuition is either based on joy, or else based on sadness. In other words, sadness is the intuition that corresponds to the spectator’s decrease of power. Joy is the intuition that corresponds to the spectator’s increase of power. Sadness and joy, through intuition, are active affections developed by passive affectio(n) of opinion, and common notions the first and second kinds of knowledge. Nauman’s Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care causes the spectator sadness. A bothering opinion of the first kind and disturbing common notions of the second kind envelop intuition: the third kind. We need to remember that it is the image in the visual encounter, which shapes the passage of affect.

What is affective power of the art installation, which gives the viewer sadness and decreases his/her power of acting? First, the lived passage of passions is the image of the artwork Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care, looked at through the eyes. This image affects the viewer with sadness in a decrease of a power of acting. The spectator’s eyes look, and look again. The images of the artwork tend to decompose the spectator’s totality of the visual encounter because the art installation affects him/her with sadness. At this point there is a strict correspondence, in terms of passions: the connection between Nauman’s art installation and the spectator decomposes with the spectator. This is caused by the succession of saddening passions. In terms of affect(us) we state: the image of Nauman’s art installation affects the viewer with sadness, therefore, in the same way it decreases his/her power of acting. Here we note a double, simultaneous language of:

1. Instantaneous passions
2. Affect(u)s of passage / transition

The spectator enters the inner space of Nauman’s art installation. When his/her eyes become used to the dark, they see more detailed features. These features compose the viewer’s opinion. They make the viewer want to draw back because it makes him/her feel more and more unpleasant. His / her extended parts of the body tend to draw back. The viewers becomes affected with succeeding passions which envelop common notions of sadness, (s)he feels disturbed. This image develops a lineage of affect(us). The spectator feels a growing of uneasiness, cannot have peace with the image (s)he created of the art installation. Passions of disturbance engender sadness, a decrease of the viewer’s power of acting. His/her power of acting decreases because (s)he tends to decompose the image of the art installation.

Contrary to the image of Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care, the image of Cloud Gate composes the image of the spectator’s body. In this case a living encounter occurs, defined by Spinoza as ‘occursus’. The viewer encounters the ‘body’ of Cloud Gate in a ‘fixation’: a part of the power of the spectator becomes entirely devoted to investing and isolating the trace of the art object on him/her. It is as if the viewer relaxes his/her muscles, in the evolving visual encounter with the sculpture. A whole part of his/her power of acting is there in order to enjoy the effect of the image of the artwork on him/her, of this agreeable art installation. The spectator invests the trace and effect of the artwork on him / her, in order to expand it, to put it closer, to allow it. This quantity of power is the amount of the viewer’s power that increases, which engages with him / her, which it mobilizes.

This is what is meant by: the spectator’s power of acting increases (Deleuze, 20/01/1981: 20). It is not that the viewer has more power; it is that a part of his/her power enlarges and expands in this sense that it is necessarily allocated to allow the affective power of this art installation. Everything happens as if a whole part of the spectator’s power becomes more at his/her disposal (20/01/1981: 21). This is the tonality of affective joy: a part of the viewer’s power of acting serves this worthy need which consists in enjoying the image of the artwork. To enjoy the image of Cloud Gate is to allow it to improve the spectator’s relations with it. (S)he softens and tenderizes his/her relations in the looking process. Following Spinoza this art experience of an increase of the viewer’s power of acting is a valuable investment in time. In this way a part of the spectator’s power is fixed: a part of his/her power increases, expands, and invests a softening to the point that it is good, positive grow of bodily energy. The relations of the image of the sculpture and the images of its viewer resonate in the looking process, passions of affinity rise.

Spinoza always pinpoints the direct composition of relations (2002: 217). In the looking process the spectator experiences a transformation, in an increase or decrease of the power of acting. To increase a viewer’s power (puissance) of acting is precisely to compose relations such that the image of the artwork and its viewer, which together compose the relations, become two sub-individualities of a new transformed spectator.₁₇

6. From passion to intuition of essence
Every passion simultaneously is a possible affect of essence if it affects the spectator in an affective force. Passions of opinion and common notions locate in the first and second of the three kinds of knowledge, described above. They are passive, inactive experiences because they grow through puzzled, inadequate ideas while viewing an artwork (2002: 319). Through these puzzling passions the body and mind pass to a greater or lesser perfection through intuition. The cause and composition of the passions become clearer. These causes of the bodily increase or decrease of power are externally formed in the visual encounter between the spectator and the artwork. Bodily reactions stem from this attachment. Passions of opinion and common notions transform into intuition, an adequate, clear and distinct idea, from the second towards the third kind of knowledge. Intuition empowers its possessor. (S)he no longer gets disturbed or puzzled by hovering collisions of passions. His / her inherent consciousness grows in ability to check and control his/her reactive and passive passions and drives. This affective force is a power of being involved in intuition. It liberates the spectator from finite concerns: ‘riches, honour, and sensual pleasure’, matters that distract the mind and prevent it from thinking of any other good (2002: 4). Intuition endows the viewer with the power of virtue and true blessedness, expressions of conscious love towards wholeness in the way David Bohm defines it ‘the unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders’(1980: 218).

At no moment (s)he has to miss it. For instance, when the spectator feels the fog in perceiving The Weather Project and (s)he starts feeling moved, (s)he literally lacks nothing in that moment of affectio(n). At that moment his/her power of being affected is fulfilled in every way. In every split of perception of The Weather Project, nothing is ever expressed or founded in expressing itself as a lack. It is the formula ‘There is only Being’. At every moment in the looking process every passion forms a passage towards possible affect(u)s of essence, the third kind, a spectator’s intuition.

A more detailed investigation in this relationship between the three kinds that produce active affection through passions, can be made by translate Spinoza’s use of ‘insofar as’. This refers to the distinctions between opinion, common notions and active affect, distinctions that are not perceptible in the concepts themselves. In analyzing these concepts by way of distinctions we can say for instance: this particular common notion ‘insofar as’, that is to say the conceptual aspect of the concept ‘common notions’ discussed. Thus, every opinion and common notions simultaneously are already part of active affect; intuition.

In the encounter between the spectator and art, affective power belongs to intuition of essence. Plainly this affective power comes from the encounter between the spectator and the artwork. Thus, affective power does not come from the essence. It grows in the looking process between the spectator and the artwork. Nevertheless this affective power is an affect of essence, because it fulfils the power of being affected of intuition, which is essence. So, remember well that affective power grows in the encounter between the viewer and the artwork.

7. Good and bad encounters
The envelopment of affective power in the visual encounter between an artwork and a spectator has an ethical dimension (2002: 321). Eventually the encounter with the artwork becomes part of his/her looking experience and leads to an increase or decrease in his/her power of acting. Good aspects of affect lead to perfection, bad aspects of affects lead to imperfection. Spinoza defines ‘good’ as: ‘that which we certainly know to be useful to us’ and ‘bad’ that which we certainly know to be an obstacle to our attainment of some good (2002: 321). Through restrain and moderation bad passions can neutralize and lead to virtue. In the looking process (s)he can never fully (re)move him- herself to / from the visual encounter that links him/her to an artwork. But (s)he can transform the passions of opinion and common notions into active affections. What does this implicate?

We return to the spectator who visits the art installation Cloud Gate. Picture this. Just the day before visiting it the (s)he had a sorrowful experience with a family member in his/her network who (s)he really likes. While visiting Cloud Gate (s)he already is led by a basely unconscious sensual appetite, let’s say a desire for a better life of his / her family member. As such, (s)he is guided by passions, a tendency towards the good. In the visual encounter with the sculpture it can grow from a passion into an expression of affective power, led by desire. It rises in association with a looking process between the spectator and Kapoor’s sculpture. The viewer’s latent action as a tendency of good is a virtue because it is something that the spectator’s body and mind can activate. Virtue is to behave from the laws of a spectator’s own nature, acting on the conatus for self-preservation (2002: 330). This desire is the power of the spectator’s body and mind, a motivation to act towards the good (20/1/1981: 14). How does this virtue grow?

The spectator experiences Cloud Gate. In the looking process the viewer starts to compose his/her visual encounter with the sculpture. The viewer’s look composes opinion, common notions and intuition. This process is a physical, bodily action, associated with a growing mental image of it (2002: 360). Kapoor’s sculpture directly composes in the visual encounter with the viewer’s action (2002: 360). When the spectator gets affected with joy, his/her power of acting increases. In sofar as far as this power inherits a liberating force to others’ capacity to act, it contains an ethical aspect (2002: 358).

Spinoza distinguishes sensual love and what he calls love that is caused by ‘freedom of the spirit’ (2002: 360). Look at Cloud Gate. The viewer’s bodily action is associated with an image of the art installation. In the looking process this relation is directly combined. The visual encounter between the spectator and the art installation directly composes a relation between the artwork and the viewer’s bodily action. In the his/her associating imagination, the reflections of this sculpture generate space and imagination. Spinoza claims that in a basely sensual affect, the first kind of affectio(n), there is no union yet. In the connection the sculpture possibly assists the spectator, the viewer possibly constructs Cloud Gate. In other words, a whole process of composing of relations can occur in a first phase of looking (20/1/1981: 14).

The image of Cloud Gate with which the spectator’s action associates, engages a range of causes and effects. Some of them escape the viewer in the first phase of the looking process. Thus, in sofar as the viewer is dominated by a basely sensual appetite in viewing (s)he is as perfect as (s)he can be, as perfect as it is possible, according to the passions this spectator has in this first phase of knowledge. (S)he is as perfect as it is in his/her power (pouvoir) to be, while experiencing Kapoor’s sculpture. At this first stage we cannot say that this spectator is deprived of a better state because according to Spinoza that doesn’t make sense. This is because of this opinion, knowledge of imperfection. There is no connection with the second kind of knowledge. This is a major point: the viewer looks according to the images of the passions of which (s)he is capable at a given first kind of knowledge in the looking process. However, this opninion already is preparing passive affectio(n)s through common notions towards his/her power of essence affect(u)s, intuition.

The third kind of idea, the singular essence-intuition, is a degree of power (puissance) (2002: 307, Pr. 54). How is intuition connected to the common notions? These first two types of passions; opinion and common notions are compositions of relations. They characterize the spectator at the limit. They function as the thresholds of the intensive intuition in the third phase. The first two types passions, opinion and common notions, concern the extensive parts of the viewer’s body. These parts enter into a good or bad visual encounter with artworks, which correspond to the essence of the viewer. But these parts cannot be confused with the viewer’s essence. For, the relations that characterize the viewer still rule under which the extended parts of the spectator’s body are associated. Between the viewers lowest and the highest, between the spectator’s birth and death, locate his/her intensive thresholds. Thus, Deleuze interprets Spinoza’s concept of intuition as an intensive quality, a kind of complex of intensities, which refer to the viewer’s essence (24/1/1978: 12). What happens to the cuts from opinion and common notions to active affections?
The three kinds of knowledge, opinion, common notions and intuition, attach. In the third dimension of attachment active affection grows: Affect(us) develops each time that a passion executes the spectator’s power of action as perfectly as is possible. The passive affections of opinion and common notions attach to execute of the viewer’s power of action, through intuition. These passions realize the spectator’s power as perfectly as it can, according to the circumstances in the there and then, for instance, in the process of looking at Cloud Gate. Passions execute the viewer’s power, there and then, according to his/her relations with the art object. In the third dimension, the attachment consists of each time passions executes the viewer’s power of acting. Passions stemming from intuition, the third kind of knowledge, do not do this without the viewer’s power increasing or decreasing. Here passions transform into active affection. Thus, a viewer’s power is an eternal degree. This power doesn’t prevent succeeding passions from ceaselessly, in duration, increasing and decreasing. This same power is eternal in itself. It varies in duration, doesn’t stop increasing and decreasing. The essence-idea of intuition is a degree of the power of action. As such it is an intensive quantity. This intensive quantity differs fundamentally from extensive quantity. An intensive quantity is inseparable from a threshold: already in itself a difference (20/1/1981: 23).

8. Affect through passions
Every passion is a passion of essence. The passages of passions are caused by perceptions and representations (Deleuze 24/3/1981). ‘Desire is a man’s very essence, insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any given passion of it, to do something’ (Ethics 2003: 110-111). Thus, even a passion is a passive affectio(n) of essence. What truly belongs to intuition of essence is the active affection through adequate ideas, that is intuition. This belongs to essence (Deleuze 24/3/1981). But as Deleuze states, Spinoza seems to say the opposite:

1. All the passions are affectio(n)s of essence
2. Among the passions, every active affection affects essence

Deleuze proposes to solve this contradiction (24/3/1981: 24), by taking Spinoza’s text literally.

Ethics teaches us that every passion prepares and enfolds intuition. Hence, just as the power of actions, passion belongs to essence, intuition. Every passion that belongs to inadequate ideas belongs simultaneously to intuition no less than the adequate ideas (see Stanford, Baruch Spinoza p. 9!). But there also is a difference. Passions still reside within the inadequate passive affectio(n)s, the puzzled ideas of the first and second kind of knowledge that must not belong to essence in the same way that the actions and adequate affect(u)s ideas belong to essence.

Deleuze demonstrates the literal implication of active ‘affectio(n) of essence’. The genitive ‘of’ indicates that the words ‘passive affectio(n)’ and ‘passion’; belong to something or someone else, in this case, essence. If we make this genitive a locution of attachment, this doesn’t prevent the attachment from having very different senses. The genitive ‘of’ in active ‘passion of essence’ can indicate two different things:

1. That passion attaches to the essence of someone and belongs to him/her insofar as it comes from this essence of someone
2. That passion attaches to the essence someone insofar as this essence of someone undergoes the something
   

In other words, ‘the locution ‘of’ does not choose the direction [sens] in which essence is inflected, if it’s a genitive of passion or a genitive of the power of action’ of passion. How can we apply these connections in the visual encounter with contemporary art?

What happens with the passions when a spectator succeeds in rising to the second and third kinds of knowledge: where intuition grows into existence? Intuition composes passions that no longer come from the artwork Cloud Gate. This third kind becomes part of the spectator’s looking process inside the body, mind and soul of the spectator. Through intuition opinion and common notions transform into intuition, an active affection. Common notions are perceptions of common encounters: a relation common to the viewer and the artwork. These passions of common notions are attached to opinion. But both are also passions of essence. Opinion and common notions belong to essence of intuition, insofar as intuition is conceived as expressing itself in an attachment. In the third stage the affective power of Cloud Gate and the power of action of the spectator merge. The spectator raises to the comprehension of relations that are causes, thus the viewer raises to another aspect of essence. This new form of essence is no longer essence in so far as it actually possesses infinity of extensive parts; it’s essence insofar as it expresses itself in an encounter (24/3/1981: 26).₁₈

This essence stems from intuition. It is the kind of knowledge a spectator desires for him- herself and others. In it, a viewer experiences a clearness that unlocks the different features of the look. Through intuition the viewer achieves what Spinoza calls the state of ‘beatitude’. This is a state of blessedness, a ‘self-contentment that arises from intuitive knowledge’ (2002: 358). This intuitive knowledge provides, insight in the spectator’s own passions. We return to Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. Its spectator starts to grasp his/her happy passions as affects that happen according to the order of nature, imbedded in his/her being in today’s globalizing society. At this phase the viewer of Cloud Gate will patiently bear whatever happens to him/her that is contrary to what is required by consideration of his/her own advantage, if (s)he is conscious that (s)he has done his/her duty and that his/her power was not extensive enough’ (2002: 362). Intuition can involve the experience of joyous affects in looking at Cloud Gate. But in case of the opposite, as we discussed in experiencing Bruce Nauman’s art-installation Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care, the viewer experiences resignation, a desire to leave and will endeavour to persevere it. For, insofar as (s)he experiences what (s)he sees, (s)he can desire nothing but that which must be at that moment in that visual encounter. Both, the endeavour of the better and inferior parts of the viewer are the degrees of his / her being in that encounter with the affective power of an artwork, embedded in a wider context of today’s world (2002: 362).

9. Conclusion
In this chapter we focussed on affective power of contemporary art through Spinoza’s philosophy of three kinds of knowledge. The passions joy and sadness evolve in the three kinds of knowledge in the visual encounter between the spectator and a contemporary artwork. In section two we analysed opinion as a first passion, followed by common notions in section three. Common notions are defined by affinity of dissimilarity. Section four analysed intuition, the third kind of knowledge, an idea of essence. Contrary to opinion and common notions, intuition is an active passion, coming both from inside and outside the spectator. In section five we discussed how space and time interfere with affective power of contemporary art. They delineate the passage of passions in a regime of variation. Section six related passion to intuition of essence. The ethical dimension of affective power was introduced in section seven, followed by section eight which provided a description of the interrelation between opinion, common notions and intuition.

We now recapitulate affective power of contemporary art in a visual encounter. In a first glance the spectator forms an opinion. Common notions, the second kind of knowledge, pass the viewer from opinion to a next phase. (S)he has acquired this opinion of Cloud Gate, Kapoor’s artwork we applied as example. This indicates that the viewer gets ahead, (s)he knows what such a miniscule event linked to Cloud Gate means, such a little tiny reflecting sun beams, at a certain moment, the viewer knows what it announces. (S)he no longer record the effects of the art installation on his/her body. (S)he acquires a comprehension of causes and knows how to compose the relations of his/her body with the features of the art installation. This second kind of knowledge, common notions, affinity grows between the viewer and Cloud Gate. (S)he starts to enter a communication with it.

Opinion and common notions transform into intuition, the third kind of knowledge that fulfils the spectator’s power of being affected. Passions are the sense experiences through mind activities that evolve in affective power. Cloud Gate (understood in the third kind) appeals to joy by which life enjoys itself and the viewer enjoys it. This means that at the level of the third kind, all the essences that construct intuition are internal to one another and internal to the power, called transcendent power. The spectator includes intuition as essences. However, this does not implicate that they merge (24/3/1981: 27).

The third kind of knowledge transforms the spectator and artwork into an independent encounter from time and space. Both exist within the same causal connections as the artwork perceived. This perspective has implications for our view on affective power. In preface to book three Spinoza starts:

“Most of those who have written about the emotions (affectibus)₁₉ and human conduct, seem to be dealing not with natural phenomena that follow the common laws of Nature but with phenomena outside Nature. They appear to go so far as to conceive man in Nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. They believe that he (man) disturbs rather than follows Nature’s order, and has absolute power over his actions and is determined by no other source than himself (2002: 277).”

The third kind of knowledge inherits a system of intrinsic distinctions: from this point on intuition affects the spectator’s essence. But since intuition is internal, this essence that affects the viewer is simultaneously a way in which the viewer’s essence affects itself. For example let’s return to Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. What does ‘enjoyer of this sculpture’ mean? How do people who call themselves ‘Enjoyers of Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, perceive this work and apply it in their lives? There are at least two ways of becoming in relation to the Cloud Gate. There are spectators walking through the Millennium Park, who are indifferent to it. They pass it unnoticed. Its affective power on these viewers is weak. What do these viewers make of the sculpture? They remain in the first kind of an opinion of disinterest. On the contrary, the spectator in ‘I enjoy this sculpture’ is a viewer who forms a positive opinion and expresses relations of extended parts of the focussing and narrowing and simultaneously widening eyes. This opinion expresses itself directly in an external act. It puts the extensive parts in play (24/3/1981: 27). In that sense these focussing eyes become particles of the sculpture that act on the ‘particles’ of these viewer’s eyes. The effect of the Cloud Gate on the spectator who appreciates the work is a joy. This is the visual encounter between the art work and the spectator in the first kind of knowledge: the spectator claiming, under an opinion: ‘I enjoy this Cloud Gate’. In fact these are extrinsic mechanisms of the viewer’s body that play, and the visual encounter between parts, parts of the sculpture and parts of the spectator’s body.

In abstract terms intuition would be a mystical union: the spectator gets the impression that the sculpture reflects and envelops something that goes beyond bodily experiences and visual actions. At this third level the viewer arrives at this mode of intrinsic distinction: at the same time the essences are distinct, only they distinguish themselves on the inside from one another: the spectator and the artwork observed. So much that the reflections of the sunbeams, which the sculpture affects upon the viewer are the radiances by which the spectator affects him- herself. The radiances by which the spectator affects him- herself are the radiances of Cloud Gate that affect its viewer. It’s sunbeams are auto-affection. Still, there remains an internal distinction between the viewer’s own singular essence, the singular essence of Kapoor’s work and a universal world.

References
Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotions, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2004.

Robert Atkins, Artspeak, 3rd Revised edition, Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S., 2014.

David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge Press, London, 1980.

Deepak Chopra, Spiritual Solutions, Harmony Books, Random House, 2012.

Robert Dale McHenry, ed., Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition, Benton Foundation and Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1985.

Gillez Deleuze, Cours Vincennes. Lectures Transcripts on Spinoza’s Concept of Affect, 24/01/1978, 12/12/1980, 20/01/1981, 24/03/1981: http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.html

Nels Dockstader, Benedict de Spinoza: Epistemology, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011: http://www.iep.utm.edu/spino-ep/

Will Durant, The Lives and Opinions of Greater Philosophers, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1962.

The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, Harlow, Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.

Amy M. Schmitter, Spinoza on the Emotions, Standford Encyclodedia of Philosophy, 2010, p. 1 – 8. : http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD5Spinoza.html

Spinoza, Complete Works, translations by Samuel Shirley, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis / Cambridge, 2002.

Steven Nadler, Baruch Spinoza, Standford Encyclodedia of Philosophy, 2013, p. 1 – 22.: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/

J. van Wageningen, Latijns Woordenboek, 4e druk, bewerkt door F. Muller, Wolters Uitgevers-Maatschappij, Groningen – Den Haag, 1929.

Footnotes

[1] Spinoza’s ultimate goal is to explain freedom and ‘blessedness’ [beatitudo] as the knowledge of God. It is the result of what Spinoza defines as the third kind of knowledge. He investigates the bodily causes and effects of affects insofar as their parallelism is explanatory of the operations of the mind (2010: 1). Spinoza’s philosophy of affect is a meditation on life and not on death. For, death is always a bad encounter. This project adapts Spinoza’s three stages of knowledge but takes another approach. This research applies the method of an Intertwined Map. It envelops affect through three stages of knowledge of affective power: opinion, affinity and intuition.

[2] Cloud Gate was constructed between 2004 and 2006 in the Milennium Park in Chicago. The elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates and weighs 110 short tons. The artwork reflects Chicago’s famous skyline and the clouds above. It measures 10 by 20 by 13 meters. The 3,7 meters high arch provides a “gate” to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, the “omphalos” (Greek for “navel”). It encourages spectators to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives. Cloud Gate reflects and distorts Chicago’s skyline. The sculpture was inspired by liquid mercury.

[3] Spinoza wrote in Latin. Thus he compelled himself to express his modern thought in medieval and scholastic terms. There was no other language of philosophy, which would then have been understood. So the following list of words reflect his terms translated into today’s usage (Durant 1962: 160):

Spinoza:                                                                                                          Translation into this research:

Substance                                                                                                        = Reality / Essence

Perfect                                                                                                              = Complete

Ideal                                                                                                                  = Object

Objectively                                                                                                      = Subjectively

Formerly                                                                                                          = Objectively

[4] These two different ways also grasp and embrace that one Nature and an Intertwined Map, discussed in the introduction.

[5] Passions are synonyms of Deleuze’s and Spinoza’s definition of (passive) affection-ideas.

[6] As mentioned earlier, Shirley translates the Latin word ‘passionis’ as emotion. This project will further note ‘passion’ where Shirley translates Spinoza’s ‘passionis’ as ‘emotion’ (Spinoza 2002: 278).

[7] Shirley translates the Latin word ‘passionis’ as emotion. This project will note ‘passion’ where Shirley translates Spinoza’s ‘passionis’ as ‘emotion’ (Spinoza 2002: 278).

[8] Contrary to what might be expected, this essay does not solely follow the primary text of Spinoza’s Ethics, but also encloses fragments of close readings from philosophers who read Spinoza, for example French philosopher, Gillez Deleuze (1925 – 1995). Deleuze carefully and clearly unravels ideas and affects in Spinoza’s geometrical treatise. Ethics consists merely of definitions and axioms. Deleuze’s lectures, held between January 24, 1978 and March 24, 1981, titled and transcribed as Cours Vincennes delineate Spinoza’s notions of affects and the way they operate between the human body and its surroundings.

[9] This article will further refer to affect, when it mentions the verb affectus and to affectio(n) when it refers to ‘affectio’.

[10] Joy is expressed by experiencing pleasure and sadness is expressed by experiencing pain

[11] But (s)he can, eventually, transform passions and achieve new kinds of affective knowledge. Spinoza denies that we can gain control over our passions. Since it is metaphysically impossible for the human mind to be autonomous. Also Spinoza argues that constructive behaviour (good) is the result of attainment by external causes, just as the opposite of destructive behaviour (bad), for example, suicide, is the result of defeat by external causes (2002: 331).

[12] The concepts of time and space will be further discussed in chapter four, page…

[13] Spinoza writes in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect: After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life, and I realised that all the things which were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofar as the mind was influenced by them, I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity (2002: 3, 1)

[14] When this research uses the word passion it refers to ‘passive affection ideas’ growing through opinion and common notions.

[15] Only in the third kind of knowledge, intuition, affective actions occur and grow, in developing adequate ideas (2002: 279).

[16] The formation of common notions can transform in rules of life because they give the viewer possession of the power of acting. In this sense a an encounter of a spectator and an artwork simultaneously concerns the whole world, which is an individuality (Bohm, chapter 7!).

[17] The process of reaching ‘occursus’, a lived transition results in a transformation of the spectator. This relates to what Nietzsche claims in his Will to Power. Nietzsche is a Spinozist: what Nietzsche calls affect is exactly the same as what Spinoza calls affect(us): the decrease or increase of power. However, we must realize that their concept of affect(us) as an increasing or decreasing power has nothing to do with a conquest. Their concept of power (puissance) composes out of two sub-notions, a wholly new notion of a transforming spectator. When the encounter between a viewer and an artwork functions well, a part of the spectator’s power of action increases. A part of his / her power is enlarged, becomes an extra possession, energy, an investment in time. The spectator is the one who experiences and values to what extent the artwork (s)he perceives decreases or increases his/her power of acting.

[18] The third kind is a spectator’s experience of intuition insofar as this intuition of essence is in itself and for itself a degree of power. Through intuition every passion is: affectio(n) of essence, affect(u)s. But we need to distinguish two senses. The genitive has two implications. The passions of the second type prepare the transformation of passions in the third kind. We can call them auto-affectio(n)s. For auto-affectio(n) Spinoza employs the term active affect(us). Ultimately, throughout the notion ideas and the ideas of the third kind, it is intuition that is affected by itself.

[19] Shirley translates the Latin word ‘passionis’ as emotion. This project will further note ‘passion’ where Shirley translates Spinoza’s ‘passionis’ as ‘emotion’.

Appendix. Images part 4. Spinoza, Affect and Art Cora Westerink 2016

1. Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, stainless steel, 10 x 20 x 12,8 m., Millennium Park, Chicago, 2004.
2. Anish Kapoor, Shooting Into the Corner, Mixed Media, Dimensions and Locations Variable, 2008-2009.
3. Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project, Installation, 16 October 2003 – 21 March 2004, Tate Modern, London.
4. Bruce Naumann, Room with my Soul left out, Room that does not Care, Installation, Celotex, steel grate, yellow lights, 408 x 576 x 366, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 1984.

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Cora Westerink (1965), alumna Tilburg University and Arts Academy

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