Revising Formalism

Historical background C18• Plato’s ‘Forms’: formal, abstract elements, enduring, eternal, studied through disinterested contemplation• Aristotle: discusses the importance of form in tragic drama…• 18th century in Europe

• Hume, ‘Essay on Taste’: experts have a key role to play, aesthetic appreciation is subjective. • Shaftesbury (England), Baumgarten, Kant (Germany) isolate aesthetic pleasure (as different to our moral and cognitive faculties)• Kant (1724-1804)

•focuses on ‘free beauty’ of nature rather than art. •The Critique of Judgment: aesthetic experience = disinterest, contemplation, being open and receptive to the object.

Hume on Aesthetic Judgement

• Hume = mid C18 thinker• sentiment is at the root of our aesthetic judgements: ‘feeling

constitutes praise or admiration’ (‘A Treatise of Human Nature’)– rationales come only later– but not a subjectivist view, since there are ‘standards of taste’, or broad

agreement about common human sentiments.• the ‘test of time’ is one way of examining the universal potential of a

work of art: if it has intergenerational appeal, then this must be because of its quality.

• the standard of taste is also established by the collective wisdom of highly competent critics, who have ‘delicacy of taste’, or an ability to make refined judgements through experience.

• critics must avoid prejudices and use reason to be calm and neutral about the objects themselves.

• But their response to art is really based in feeling.

Kant on Aesthetic Judgement

• Kant – later C18 thinker – seeking more rational analysis of value in art.

• His Critique of Judgement (1790) is where this is attempted. • It is still hugely influential in our thinking about beauty and

sublimity. • Famously, Kant describes four stages or ‘moments’ in the

aesthetic judgement of beauty. A beautiful object produces: – a feeling of disinterestedness not strong emotion– a feeling of universality – the object is beautiful to all without fixed rules

saying why this is so– the form of purposiveness – it seems purposive even though it isn’t.– a sense of necessity. We cannot but make them.

Hume, Kant Bell

• C20 Formalists were influenced by Kant’s disinterested contemplation and by Hume’s emphasis on a community of experts who set taste.

• formalism = the theory that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form: its compositional elements such as colour, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content.

• [Syllabus] ‘We value art because of its particular artistic quality’

• [Syllabus] Good art has balance, structure, proportion, harmony, wholeness ‘Significant Form’ the peculiar ‘aesthetic emotion’ of calm contemplation sense of being in touch with eternal

Historical background: C19 C20

• Hanslick (late C19) argues that music is pure form or pure sound – hearing music as expressive of emotion or representational is simply a distraction all vocal music is a failure!

• Clive Bell (early C20) put forward a similar view of painting in order to defend the new style of Post-Impressionist painting (Cezanne, Matisse, early Cubism).

• Bell argues that modern, ancient, primitive art (and key art works of Renaissance) are best appreciated through notion of ‘significant form’

• ‘Significant form’ is constituted by the shimmering arrangement of solids, planes, lines and colours that make up the structure of the artwork and is recognizable by our experience of a distinctive ‘aesthetic emotion’.

• This emotion is a non-possessive delight in the perceptual richness of the art object. A calm ecstasy (oxymoronic?)

• Art may have representational content but only as a peg on which to hang SF.

• If such content is the main focus, then the painting is merely ‘anecdotal’, having no more aesthetic interest than did vocal music for Hanslick.

Clive Bell (1881-1964)

• ‘Art’ (1914)– Nothing else about an object other than its

formal or aesthetic qualities matters.– Representation in art is simply irrelevant.– The worldly emotion that art provokes is

simply irrelevant.– ‘Significant Form’ is the essential quality that

all art possesses.

What does Bell think about:

• The nature of the aesthete or art-lover?– ‘He who would establish a plausible theory of

aesthetics must possess two qualities – artistic sensibility and a turn for clear thinking …theories not based on broad and deep aesthetic experience are worthless…

– ‘massive intellect and slight sensibility’ is possible, as is ‘immediate and sure response’ whilst ‘wanting the power to draw correct inferences from true data’

What does Bell think about:• The characteristics of the aesthetic

emotion?– ‘a peculiar…emotion is provoked by every kind of

visual art… the aesthetic emotion [of calmness and detachment]…if we can discover some quality common and peculiar to all the objects that provoke it…the essential quality…we shall have solved the central problem of aesthetics.’

– ‘A good work of visual art carries a person who is capable of appreciating it out of life into ecstasy’…art is a ‘telescope’ directed at a world of ‘aesthetic exaltation’

What does Bell think about

• The nature of ’Significant Form’?– the one quality common to all works of visual art.’– ‘lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms

and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions’… ‘concerned only with lines and colours, their relations and quantities and qualities’

– ‘Art translates us to a world of aesthetic exaltation’…’we are shut off from human interests…lifted above the stream of life’…maths comparison

– ‘raised above the accidents of time and place’…’appeal is universal and eternal’ …‘carries [us] out of life into ecstasy’ …‘intense and peculiar significance…unrelated to the significance of life’

What does Bell think about:

• What is wrong with some art?– ‘In descriptive painting form is not used as an object of

emotion, but as a means of suggesting false emotion’ = manipulative.

– ‘The emotion it suggests is false… complacent… sentimental.’

– ‘Such works can be judged morally, historically, psychologically etc…they are not art’.

– Some bad abstract art is ‘descriptive because it aims at presenting in line and colour the chaos of the mind; their form is not intended to promote aesthetic emotion but to convey information.’

What does Bell think about:

• The kind of art that is to be valued?– ‘As a rule primitive art is good’…’absence of

representation, technical swagger’, has ‘sublimely impressive form’, ‘moves us profoundly’…‘They have created the finest works of art we possess.’

What does Bell think about:

• The importance of other factors besides form in understanding art?– ‘…we have neither right …nor necessity, to

pry behind the object into the state of mind of him who made it.’

– ‘We need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions’

What does Bell think about:

• The strengths of his view?– Defines essential quality of art which all art has: all art has form,

including music, abstract art…

– Explains why some visual art is rubbish – it is ‘descriptive’ (although some narrative art can have SF…).

– Allows Bell to defend non-representative art he likes e.g. Primitivism.

– Develops idea of disinterested contemplation and of community of expert taste

– Explains specific and peculiar artistic emotion.

– Explains atemporal/universal appeal of great art: ‘what does it matter whether the forms that move them were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries ago?’

Art Bell Hates

Edwin Landseer, ‘Monarch of the Glen’, 1851

Luke Fildes, ‘The Doctor’, 1891

William Powell Frith, ‘The Railway Station’, 1862

Art Bell would love

Ancient Art, Primitive /non-European Art

Abstract art

Discussion topics• What is ‘significant form’?

– Some commentators have characterised it as balance or proportion or structure or harmony or wholeness…do you agree?

– Is the notion clear to you? – How might you go about defining it?

• Can you make sense of the idea of ‘significant form’ across all genres of art? – Where might the idea have purchase, where might it struggle?

• Are there ‘formal universals’ which have qualities of timelessness and universality? – Are these present in art from all cultures, and in all kinds of art? – Is the fact of art enduring across time explicable only through formalist

theories?– …or could it be explained in other ways?

Discussion Topics

• Is form important enough to be the essence of art? – Is it necessary to art? – Is it sufficient? – Does all art have ‘significant form’, or is the term just

empty in that all it signifies is approval?• Does formalism make too little of the role of art in

society, or of other factors which influence our understanding of art? – What would a Marxist say?– Can art really be separate from societal concerns?– Isn’t art valued for its emotional, mimetic qualities?

Discussion Topics

• How can Bell claim that art is known both only subjectively and that there is an objectively present common quality underlying all art?

– Do you accept his ideas about exceptional individuals having a greater sensibility than others?

– Or might sociological explanations of the impact of the critic be just as good?

• What kind of art is well-explained by this theory, and what kind of art less successfully so?

– Is the art that the theory discounts sufficiently important to show that the theory does not have adequate explanatory power?

Critiques

Form is too inclusive a criterion

– It collapses the art/aesthetic distinction.

– Like Hanslick, Bell fails to distinguish between aesthetic interest (Kant pointed out that most features of our perceptual environment may stimulate this interest) and art (which typically combines aesthetic interest with interpreting the world).

Form is not art’s essence

– it is necessary but not sufficient.

– Bell is right that aesthetic interest in surface appearance is a feature of all art and we do value formal or compositional features.

– Yet art without reference to emotion or representation pretty patterns/ ‘wallpaper’…

– A major role of art is to express emotion and offer us interpretations of the world.

Critiques

Formalism is simply ‘elitism’• Bell values the art of his avant-garde friends, and devises a theory

(and a role for the elite critic) to account for it. • But art’s emotional and mimetic qualities have hugely important

social roles for all…

‘Form’ makes the artwork unnecessary• ‘Significant Form’ is universal and atemporal.• The feeling of calmness, contemplation etc that SF produces is the

thing that matters. • So, just as for emotivism, perhaps the artwork is merely a vehicle

and therefore can be discarded.

CritiquesForm isn’t universal• Are there formal qualities that apply to all the arts? • How do compositional or formal features in different art forms relate to

one another? • Each art form has its own range of techniques and its own scope of

possibilities. • Do Bell’s ideas about shape and colour in visual art work more widely? • (A reply: actual sensations produced by different arts differ, but the

emotion of aesthetic appreciation is the same)

Is the concept of ‘Significant Form’ clear?• Can we define it?• Can we ‘deflate’ it by suggesting that it is simply a term of (emotive)

approval…• is the concept of ‘significant form’ simply a way of trying to explain that we

like something?

Critique 7

Form is reducible to skill.– Does form exist, or is it collapsible to simpler concepts? – Is form, for example, any more than ‘skill’? – Isn’t a great artist just a skilful one?

‘Significant Form’ is culturally relative.– Is appreciation of form a subjective or culturally relative

matter? – Clive Bell says that only some can appreciate ‘significant form’ in

art but that this judgment is universal. – Isn’t this just empty subjectivism, or, alternatively, a refusal to

see that ‘universal’ just means ‘approved of by my culture’?

Reasons to be a formalist• ‘Significant form’ = the relationship between the parts and a unified perceptual

whole. Form is the necessary, intrinsic common feature of all art, abstract and representational e.g. in visual art, the patterning of lines, sheens, hues; in music, temporal patterns (melodies and rhythms); in writing, word sounds/rhythms and quasi-perceptual mental imagery.

• All great art has SF: tidy/balanced works (i.e. Vermeer portrait), precarious or sprawling works (Kandinsky, modern classical music, Dickens).

• Considers specific aesthetic and formal qualities of art-works (balance, symmetry, coherence, order, structure, harmony and proportion) , so focuses on the importance of the art-work itself: ‘Art for art’s sake!’

• Everything necessary to understand a work of art is contained within the work of art, so context, representation, rationale, artist biog., emotions - all are irrelevant simple theory that allows appreciation of art for itself, even decontextualised art such as ancient or transcultural art.

• Form and beauty are connected, and beauty is the core feature of art. • Form is basic: it explains how art conveys information or emotion. • Our appreciation of form leads to the aesthetic emotion of reflective calm which

we all feel.• The trained critic (lots of exposure to great art + a refined intellect + sensitivity)

can identify Significant Form at a glance…

Reasons not to be a formalist• Over-inclusive: just about everything has a form - even a screwed

up piece of paper or a spilled drink- so what is so special about Significant Form in art?

• Under-specifies: Even if ‘form’ matters is, it the ‘essence’ of art? Actually, we value art because it represents or makes us feel, or is expensive, or a part of the everyday.

• Emotive/subjectivist: approving of an art-work by saying it has SF = merely a term of (emotive) approval given by a (self-appointed?) critic?

• Cultural relativism: appreciation of ‘SF’ as ‘universal’ just means ‘approved of by my culture’? cultural subjectivism.

• Form = skill. Does form exist, or is it collapsible to simpler concepts such as e.g ‘skill’? (Great art = skilful art?)

• Notion unclear: Is the notion of ‘form’ clear? How can SF be identified (by the critic?)

Assessment and Evaluation:• For: Allows for an objectivity of aesthetic judgement. Formalism is

the only theory to take seriously the view that what we value in art is the art work itself, rather than the more ‘utilitarian’ view presented in expressivism and representationalism (in these theories the artwork is treated as ‘a means to an end’, an expendable vehicle of communication).

• Yes and No: Can we appreciate ‘significant form’ without entertaining at least some background understanding of what the artwork is about? Surely the author’s intention and the cognitive features the artwork seeks to convey have to play some role here?

• Against: Can we really listen to a piece of music and hear just ‘sound’ or appreciate a painting for the perceptual richness of its colour alone? Ignoring expressive and representational qualities trivialises our reasons for valuing an artwork. Aesthetic delight is an important feature of art appreciation, but it should only ever be regarded as a secondary function and never the primary purpose of such appreciation.