William wrote: > Alas, Michael has fallen for the Significant Form Theory of Clive Bell (1914) > Bell argued, just as Michael does, that form is superior to subject and it's > form, visual form (or literary form) that is the core of aesthetic value and > meaning.
Not so. Bell claimed that "For a discussion of aesthetics, it need be agreed only that forms arranged and combined according to certain unknown and mysterious laws do move us in a particular way, and that it is the business of an artist so to combine and arrange them that they shall move us. These moving combinations and arrangements I have called, for the sake of convenience and for a reason that will appear later, 'Significant Form.' As I read it, he asserted that *certain* forms and combinations of forms evoked an aesthetic emotion, and it was those combinations that he called "Significant Form." I say that all of the devices, forms, shapes, and other components of paintings and sculptures are freely adjustable and arbitrary, which means that the artist can (and does) value those discrete formal components for their own sakes, as shapes and colors, etc., and it is that entire arbitrariness of representations that gives works of art their aesthetic power. Even the extrinsic matters, the story, the referred subjects, the scenes and sitters are subordinated to the completely free direction of the artist. You greatly admire Goya's "Third of May": Every detail of that picture was chosen, shaped, and disposed by Goya arbitrarily, including the subject matter itself. A nude figure, a subject that easily commands great attention, shares the viewer's attention with the artist's manner of depiction, as we can see from our reactions to Titian, Rubens, Schiele, Modigliani, Pearstein, Neal, and all the others. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
