Clive Bells Aesthetic Theory of Significant Form Indicates That Visual Art Should

A Newer Olympia
by Eamon Everall

According to this theory, all objects that evoke aesthetic emotion in u.s.a. share one quality - significant form - which can be divers as significant relationships between lines, shapes, colors, and other sensory properties.
Like Kant, proponents of this theory come across the aesthetic judgement based on a universal standard and the origin of the aesthetic emotion inside the object itself.

The theory of "Significant form" equally propounded by Clive Bong in 1914 was that:

"There must be some one quality without which a work of fine art cannot be; possessing which, in the least degree, no piece of work is birthday worthless. What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Farsi bowl , Chinese carpets, Giotto 's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? Only 1 answer seems possible - meaning form. In each, lines and colours combined in a particular mode, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call "Significant Form"; and "Significant grade" is the one quality common to all works of visual art."

Bell's exam for great art was the examination of time:

"It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.............. Bully art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that information technology awakens are independent of time and identify, considering its kingdom is not of this world. To those who take and hold a sense of the significance of grade what does it matter whether the forms that motility them were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries agone? The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy."

Nigel Warburton writes in "Philosophy: The Nuts" (P122) about ii criticisms of the significant course theory. The kickoff objection is that the theory involves a circular statement:

"The argument for the significant form theory appears to exist round. It seems only to be saying that the aesthetic emotion is produced by an aesthetic-emotion-producing property about which nothing more can exist said. This is like explaining how a sleeping tablet works by referring to its sleep-inducing property. It is a circular argument because that which is supposed to be explained is used in the explanation. However, some round arguments tin be informative; those which cannot are known every bit viciously circular. Defenders of the theory would argue that it is not viciously circular every bit it sheds light on why some people are better critics than others, namely because they have a amend ability to detect significant course. It also justifies treating works of fine art from different cultures and ages as similar in many ways to present-twenty-four hour period works of art."

The second objection to the theory is that it cannot exist refuted. If according to the theory those who experience the aesthetic emotion are deemed to be appreciative and sensitive critics and those who practise non experience the aesthetic emotion are accounted to exist inexperienced or insensitive critics then the theory cannot be refuted because both supportive and unsupportive observations are used as show for the existence of the artful emotion.

"this is to presume what the theory is supposed to be proving: that there is indeed one aesthetic emotion and that it is produced by 18-carat works of art. The theory, and then, appears irrefutable. And many philosophers believe that if a theory is logically impossible to refute because every possible observation would ostend it, then it is a meaningless theory."

And all the same......it is immediately clear that this theory does have at least one enormous strength. It is an embracing, inclusive theory which, whether you fully support it or not, enables you to view, compare and capeesh the entire stock of world fine art objects over the ages from a known and positive point of view.This is no mean achievement and sets this theory apart from many others which offer their insights on a narrower front. Of class, the Meaning class theory is open to the accuse that information technology pays picayune attention to the ideas backside the work of art. It also pays footling attending to field of study matter and content. Information technology does nonetheless retain that foundational quality of dealing with the identification of what is the unique common quality to all works of art and therefore succeeds in achieving a neat deal.

Form however has been identified by many others every bit a key component of the creative process. For case, in "The Necessity of Art, A Marxist Approach" Ernst Fischer wrote in 1959:

"In order to be an artist it is necessary to seize, hold and transform experience into memory, memory into expression, cloth into form"

and further:

"Fine art is the giving of form, and form alone makes a product into a piece of work of art. Form is not something accidental, arbitrary or inessential (no more than than the course of a crystal is any of those things). The Laws and conventions of class are the embodiment of human's mastery over matter; in them, transmitted experience is preserved and all achievement is kept safe; they are the order necessary to art and life."

One does not need to exist a Marxist to respond to these ideas which set out every bit clearly as Clive Bong the case for the importance of course. For form is indeed no trivial item only rather a determining part of the artistic process which requires work on the part of the creative person.We are not talking about an creative person coming upon a pile of bricks and arranging them into a keen rectangle on the floor of a gallery equally being an instance of form. That is non an example of form. That is merely a tidying activity akin to safe working practice by a worker in a building supplies warehouse. No, by form, I mean........ the form that Cezanne imparts to a humble apple by the use of colour lonely.

At present turning to Conceptual art we can brand the following points:

1 Conceptual art proclaims the primacy of the artist's idea. Therefore the art object and the form contained within information technology are secondary.

2 Where a textile object is involved, the position of form is further demoted past the emphasis of Conceptualists on implementation being merely the perfunctory realisation of their previously conceived idea. Examples of this would be where Conceptual artists leave "instructions" for the actual production of the work, by anyone, fifty-fifty indeed in the absenteeism of the artist.

3 In the instance of ready made art or the found object, the Conceptual artist does not create or transform the form of the existing objects, which remain dull inhabitants of a textile world. A brick remains a brick with the form of, you guessed it, a brick. Unsurprisingly, a dead shark remains a dead shark with the course of a dead shark. Every bit the Stuckist Manifesto says:

"True art is non the exhibition of existing objects just the transcendence of them through interpretation in some other medium. This is the difference between life and art. Some people say that life and art are the aforementioned, in which example art is redundant as we already have life. This position is patently cool. No one would sensibly propose that Van Gogh's bed is of equal value to, or greater value than, his painting of it. This clearly illustrates the lie to the found object equally art."

Practise we follow the Conceptualist flow and virtually omit considerations of form? Or do we proceed in broad agreement with Clive Bell, Ernst Fischer and many others who saw form as crucial fifty-fifty if nosotros don't take their formulations in entirety?
We take no pick simply to uphold the idea of form confronting Conceptualism.

Interpreting Poetry by George Wolff

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Source: https://stuckismwales.co.uk/theory/tblast/significant.php