I have never been enthusiastic over significant form. If there is such a thing it would be consistent over all periods and cultures and there isn't any sign of it. As far as embodying the artist's emotional experience-no. A particular arrangement etc doesn't signify a particular emotion or any emotion really. As far as de Pury yes,that was a very Kantian description of his aesthetic reaction. What I don't understand is why this instant knowing or whatever can't be thought of along the neurological lines mentioned earlier, connecting the abstract with the concrete in a way Kant would have appreciated. I do think that significant form could be classified as a game-very Bloomsbury- and it is entirely probable that under this guise that Wittgenstein would accept the concept f significant form. However,to assume that some arrangement etcs carry emotional meaning has a close resemblance to the idea that the characters of of some nations are incompatible with some acts. Kate Sullivan-----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, Jun 21, 2011 10:09 am Subject: Re: "I am looking for quality first of all...It has to stir up your emotions and it has to have something which is timeless."
For Bell and later formalists the aesthetic experience relied on the experience of 'significant form' a particular arrangement of line, shape, color that embodied the artist's emotion and transfers it to the viewer. The form then becomes the vehicle of this experience and thus it can be objectively measured. But of course it really can't be objectively measured because there's no way to objectify a purely subjective feeling and there are no rules that are universally recognized to independently construe significant form. The only benefit of Bell's idea is to recognize the value of the art process in stimulating some experience in the artist and viewer, different experiences for each and different experiences moment to moment, all of which are complicated by intentional and unintentional associations. The relationship between Bell's formalism and Wittgenstein's ideas is worth exploring. I'm not prepared to do that. But I do think W would agree that there are some essentials that do remain independently of how we use them. He used the notion of games to explore that. One can have great latitude in games but only within the limits prescribed by the rules. If rules are changed, so too is the game. If the game rules do not have latitude, then it's not a game but a prescribed ritual. In that respect he would seem to be in agreement with Bell; namely, that there are essentials that remain independent of our experience. In the same way Bell claims that there is 'significant form' that exists independently of our recognizing it but if we focus on that instead, he said, on subject or utility, then we can obtain the genuine aesthetic experience. If Wittgenstein allowed that different uses can be made in accordance with a given set of objectively stated rules and Bell asserted that significant form embodied the artist's aesthetic which can be re-experienced by the viewer, and within some subjective latitudes, then the two, W and Bell, are in basic agreement. But as I said, this issue deserves a closer look. Why don't you do it? wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, June 21, 2011 6:50:18 AM Subject: Re: "I am looking for quality first of all...It has to stir up your emotions and it has to have something which is timeless." Are you saying that the idea of significant form is one of those assumptions which Wittgenstein got so angry about, like the essential nature of the English not including vile barbarity? Kate Sullivan -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Jun 20, 2011 10:50 am Subject: Re: "I am looking for quality first of all...It has to stir up your emotions and it has to have something which is timeless." This article is a clear example of why the current artworld is in steep decline. I am convinced that the decline is due to the redundant and unexamined persistence of two ideas that have been exhausted. One of them is what I call the fallacy of 'significant form'. This is the idea formulated by Clive Bell that identified an inherent order of form -- visual form -- to be the marker of art and quality irrespective of subject matter or anything else. Just what the markers of significant form are is the subject of much debate in aesthetics. The problem is in finding universal, necessary and sufficient features of significant form that are objective and thus noticeable by all. Since none can be found the objectivity of significant form is falsified and this has led to the notion that anything at all can be art because anything at all can be claimed as having significant form (and the opposite ids also true). The fall-back is to rely on Kantian notions of involuntary aesthetic experience; generally meaning an unexplained and unpredicted emotional-feeling of aesthetic surprise, elation, etc. But these reactions are also so subjective as to be unreliably related to any objective cause, whatever claim is otherwise made. Nevertheless, the objective cause of this purely subjective experience is said to be "art" in an instance of significant form. Thus the other fallacy is the total subjectivity of the aesthetic experience and hence the identity of art being predicated on the 'objectivity' of significant form (the visual order regardless of subject and context). Simon de-Pury is only one of the majority of art world powers (critical and marketing) who subscribe to these twin fallacies. "All you need to do is look, look, look, and see, see, see" they say. He says he relies on that immediate and involuntary "hit" of aesthetic experience. He mimics Kant and more likely, Greenberg and his defunct formalist theory, to determine what a real artwork is. There is no "seeing" without a context. When we see something our brains instantly contextualize it with previous "mappings" which are flooded with all sorts of associative neuron firings and that includes language. The cliche "we see what we know" is almost 100% true. The uniqueness of every glimpse is simply the ever changing mappings in the brain (think of rubber-bands flexing and overlapping constantly) more of less different from previous similar experiences (combined with cultural bias). When de Purry and his privileged and unaccountable peers pronounce something as art they are merely exercising their authority and imposing their subjective maps onto others as if those maps were mirrors of objective "significant form". None of us can do any better since we too are subject to the twin fallacies and so we submit to power and authority (of critical acclaim and monetized quality) and the goofy game of art goes on and on.
