Readings

Theories about Formalism

- scrupulous of excessive adherence to outward form at the expense of inner reality or content.

- (in Marxist criticism) excessive concern with artistic technique at the expense of social values.

- a stylized mode of production.

Interesting views from different people about Formalism:

Clive Bell (1881-1964)

"Does anyone feel the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or a picture?"  - extract from Clive Bell's Art.

Beliefs of Bell:

- we respond to instances of natural beauty differently from how we do to examples of art.

Formalism emphasizes on the appearance and composition of artwork(its form) rather than its narrative content. The properties of its form are: line, colour, shape, tone

"What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions?" - Clive Bell

my questions are:

- doesn't all art work have aesthetic values?

- what are the special features or the values that put into territories for some work as formalism and others aren't?

- is it important to have narrative content in the work that they take up the majority part of the work rather than aesthetetically pleasing? 

*Bell claimed that such an aesthetic response was intuitive and involuntary. - significant form

significant form: simple, sensual pleasure derived from actually looking at aesthetic objects, regardless of their purpose, previous categorization or status.

again, from my point of view, art can just be something that can provide pleasure to the spectator, does it have to have theory behind it to support the work or the work has to be dependent on?

isn't that why Kraus has mentioned:

"anything is permissible in the contemporary art world so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialized?" 

- Chris Kraus Bad Nostalgia, Cast Away, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and The Triumph of Nothingness, New York: Semiotext(e), 2004, pp.111-114 & 145-150. 

how then is art becoming more theoretical and why is art emerging into that category; contemporary art(from aesthetically pleasurable to theoretical)? 

perhaps it has effects from the economy? change of people's views of art? globalization?

R.G.Collingwood (1889-1943)

"Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease of mind, the corruption of soul." - Collingwood

According to theory of expression:

art should clarify and refine ideas and feelings which are shared with the spectator.

- interaction with the viewer and the work. (no interaction, no value of the work)

Collingwood argued that art proper is distinguished by a particular and unique emotion, not possessed by either craft or art as amusement, which describes as lesser forms of technical art.

"It is through imaginative construction that the artist transforms vague and uncertain emotion into an articulate expression."

 

art should convey fundamental truths and insights about what it means to be human and in the world.