DOCSLIB.ORG

“Art and Significant Form”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
“Art and Significant Form” “Art and Significant Form” Clive Bell Summary of the Argument Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — Essentialism Bell claims that “[t]he starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion”. [2] Bell’s Assumptions 1. Aesthetic experience is essentially private and personal. 2. “The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art” — a fact acknowledged by “all sensitive people”. [2] The job of aesthetics is to find the one quality common to all objects that produce this kind of emotion. Roger Fry, Portrait of Clive Bell, c. 1924 Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — Essentialism Background Bell’s project is not unlike Plato’s attempts to discover the essences of phenomena such as beauty, justice, knowledge, love, and truth. Plato Given that there are many different kinds of things that we call beautiful — beautiful songs, beautiful people, beautiful buildings, beautiful sunsets — what is it that makes all these beautiful things beautiful? What is it about these things that justifies our calling them beautiful? Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — Essentialism Bell holds an essentialist view of art and follows Plato’s lead here in the search for the philosophical definition of “Art”. Bell’s Assumption: Art has an essence. PROBLEMS Bell’s assumption is not necessarily true. It’s certainly not self-evident. In fact, it’s highly controversial. Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — Essentialism It could just as easily be true that there are many things we call “art”, but only some of them share a common property. Analogy What is it that all games have in common? Is there one thing that an activity must have in order to be called a game? Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — Essentialism Analogy What is it that all works of art have in common? Is there one thing that an object must have in order to be called art? Unknown, Fang mask, Gabon, Unknown, Throne of Ivan the IV of Russia, mid-16th c. 19th c. Discobolus, Roman copy, 5th century BC Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1923 Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — Essentialism Analogy What is it that all works of art have in common? Is there one thing that an object must have in order to be called art? Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 Piet Mondrian, Composition, 1921 William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Birth of Venus, 1863 Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form Significant Form According to Bell, there must be one quality which is the essence of Art and is found in all works of art. He calls this essential quality significant form. But what does he mean by “significant form”? And how do we come to experience and know this quality? Features of Significant Form “Lines and colors combined in a particular way” and “certain forms and relations of forms” that produce the aesthetic emotion are the features of significant form. Problems... Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form Problems 1. Bell says nothing about the specific nature of the lines, colors, and relations of form. 2. The way that we detect them is not by means of description but by feeling alone — the particular kind of feeling referred to as “aesthetic emotion”. But how do we know that • a particular emotion is an aesthetic emotion and • not some other kind of feeling that we are confusing with aesthetic emotion? Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form Problems We can gain some insight into Bell’s view of aesthetic experience by noticing how he distinguishes aesthetic emotion from our feelings about natural beauty. Some people may be surprised at my not having called [significant form] “beauty.” Of course, to those who define beauty as “combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion,” I willingly conceded the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet “beautiful” to objects that do not provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art. Everyone, I suspect, has called a butterfly or a flower beautiful. Does anyone feel the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or a picture; surely, it is not what I call an aesthetic emotion that most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty.... Why these beautiful things do not move us as works of art move us is another, and not an aesthetic, question. For our immediate purpose we have to discover only what quality is common to objects that do move us as works of art. [4, emphases added.] Here Bell suggests that beauty is a more general phenomenon than aesthetic emotion and significant form. Natural objects can be beautiful, but they are not works of art. Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form Problems With regard to Bell’s formalist claim — that lines and colors are the only things necessary for visual art — he’s not claiming that representational artifacts depicting objects and events cannot be works of art. Let no one imagine that representation is bad in itself; a realistic form may be as significant, in its place as part of the design, as an abstract. But if a representative form has value, it is as form, not as representation. The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. [8, emphases added.] Piet Mondrian, Trees, c. 1912 Camille Pissarro, The Factory at Pontoise, 1873 Henri Matisse, Piano Lesson, 1916 Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — The Subjectivity of Aesthetic Experience Ontological Argument — The Defining Feature of Art 1. All works of art must have in common a defining property. 2. That property is significant form. 3. Significant form produces an aesthetic emotion in sensitive viewers. 4. Thus, all works of art have the capacity to produce an aesthetic emotion. Epistemological Argument — Identifying a Work of Art 1. All feelings are subjective. 2. Aesthetic emotion is a feeling. 3. Aesthetic emotion is a necessary and sufficient condition for something's being a work of art. 4. Thus, the only way to identify a work of art is subjectively. In other words, there are no objective criteria for distinguishing works of art from other kinds of objects. Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — The Subjectivity of Aesthetic Experience The appreciation of art is a matter of taste. “We have no other means of recognizing a work of art than our feeling for it.” [Bell] The question of taste goes back to a philosophical tradition known as empiricism and theories of moral and aesthetic judgment. More on that later... Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — The Subjectivity of Aesthetic Experience Question If an aesthetic judgment about whether something is or is not a work of art is based solely on feeling, how could Bell’s theory of significant form apply “universally”? We may disagree about whether a particular object has significant form based on the differences in our feelings when looking at the object. But we can still agree that a thing must have significant form in order to be a work of art. To ask whether a particular painting has significant form is very different from asking whether the painting would need significant form in order to be a work of art. According to this way of thinking, universality and variability in judgments of taste are compatible. Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — The Autonomy of Art Bell’s Formalist Definition of Art and Its Implications “Art” is defined by Bell as 1. an artifact that 2. embodies significant form, 3. irrespective of content, representational features or information conveyed by the artifact to the viewer. It follows that art as such is independent of social relations and the conditions under which the art is produced. Thus, according to Bell, to the extent that we treat an object as art, we must necessarily bracket all concerns related to everyday life. Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Art and Significant Form — The Autonomy of Art Bell’s Formalist Definition of Art and Its Implications This thesis of the autonomy of art — its freedom from the social, political and economic aspects of life — is one of the central and most controversial aspects of Bell’s formalism. It deserves close scrutiny and careful consideration. “Art transports us from the world of man’s activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation... [I]t lifts us above the stream of life [to] a world with emotions of its own.” [9] Art carries us “out of life into ecstasy”. [10] Robert Delaunay, Joie de vivre (The Joy of Life), 1930 Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Timothy Quigley, 2012 Tuesday, February 7, 2012.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Review of Frances Spalding, Roger Fry: Art and Life
    Reviews The education ofRoger Fry by Andrew Brink Frances Spalding. Roger Fry: Art and Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. Pp. xvi+304; 97 illustrations. US $24.95. London: Elek, 1980. Pp. 256. £9.95. FRANCES SPALDlNG'S Roger Fry is a critical biography for which everyone interested in Bloomsbury culture should be grateful. Based on extensive correspondences, it is the fullest account ofhis life we are likely to see. And yet Spalding's biography should be taken in conjunction with Virginia Woolf's remarkable Roger Fry: A Biography (1940) which dis­ closes the sympathy offriendship no subsequent biographer can hope to regain. Frances Spalding ventured where Virginia Woolf had triumphed for two reasons: much more of Fry's private life now can be told safely, and a thoroughgoing critical estimate ofhis art, criticism and scholarship is in order. Not that Woolf avoided the critical personal or evaluative issues; for instance, her passage on the madness which overtook Fry's wife, Helen, is crafted for truthfulness and delicacy, extraordinarily moving in view of Woolf's own fate, the fate which overtook Woolf despite the solicitude ofher husband. Roger Fry, it can only be said, did all that he could to help his wife; his patience and sympathy were indefatigable, his resourcefulness beyond belief. But her obsessions increased. And finally, when they came back to England in the spring the blow fell. Madness declared itself. "I was a fool to be happy yesterday", he wrote to R. C. Trevelyan.... (P. 103) Spalding adds new information to this (that physiological causes were discovered at autopsy in 1937) but, despite skilful writing sometimes sounding like Woolfs own, she can't come close to the evocative power ofthese words.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origins and Meanings of Non-Objective Art by Adam Mccauley
    The Origins and Meanings of Non-Objective Art The Origins and Meanings of Non-Objective Art Adam McCauley, Studio Art- Painting Pope Wright, MS, Department of Fine Arts ABSTRACT Through my research I wanted to find out the ideas and meanings that the originators of non- objective art had. In my research I also wanted to find out what were the artists’ meanings be it symbolic or geometric, ideas behind composition, and the reasons for such a dramatic break from the academic tradition in painting and the arts. Throughout the research I also looked into the resulting conflicts that this style of art had with critics, academia, and ultimately governments. Ultimately I wanted to understand if this style of art could be continued in the Post-Modern era and if it could continue its vitality in the arts today as it did in the past. Introduction Modern art has been characterized by upheavals, break-ups, rejection, acceptance, and innovations. During the 20th century the development and innovations of art could be compared to that of science. Science made huge leaps and bounds; so did art. The innovations in travel and flight, the finding of new cures for disease, and splitting the atom all affected the artists and their work. Innovative artists and their ideas spurred revolutionary art and followers. In Paris, Pablo Picasso had fragmented form with the Cubists. In Italy, there was Giacomo Balla and his Futurist movement. In Germany, Wassily Kandinsky was working with the group the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), and in Russia Kazimer Malevich was working in a style that he called Suprematism.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Make Analogies in a Digital Age*
    How to Make Analogies in a Digital Age* WHITNEY DAVIS I will start with a truism even though, like all truisms, it reduces and con- flates distinctions and nuances to which I will need to revert: painting—in the sense of “painting as an art”—has been a classic analog mode of representation, whether or not every painter in the history of art has used it this way. It cannot be a surprise, then, that it might be specifically in painting—in its specifically painterly and pictorial achievements and reversions—that we might best be able to gauge the depth and direction of digital technologies of image production, as well as notions of phenomena, appearance, and representation associated with them in their theoretical foundation and recent history. I The best logical analysis of the analog property of painting as an art—for him, defining depiction as a symbol system—remains Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art, published in 1968. It will be useful to recall Goodman’s terms, not least because “analog” and “digital” do not figure prominently among them despite their increasingly widespread circulation at the time his book was written.1 Indeed, Goodman seems to have intended Languages of Art partly as a founda- tional explication (and to some extent a critique) of contemporary vocabularies of information, computation, and representation—including a growing tendency to suppose that their domains of “analog” and “digital” exhaustively parse the * This essay originated in my response to a wide-ranging exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2003, from which I have taken my examples of contemporary painting; see Gijs van Tuyl, ed., Painting Pictures: Painting and Media in the Digital Age, exh.
    [Show full text]
  • Piet Mondrian, Early Neo-Plastic Compositions, and Six Principles of Neo-Plasticism
    Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935) Indexed by Web of Science, Scopus, DOAJ, ERIHPLUS Vol. 11, No. 3, October-December, 2019. 1-18 Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V11/n3/v11n312.pdf DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.12 Piet Mondrian, early Neo-Plastic compositions, and six principles of Neo-Plasticism Ali Fallahzadeh1 & Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof2 1Visual Art Department, Cultural Center, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, University of Malaya, Malaysia. ORCID: 0000-0002-0414-8702. Email: [email protected] 2(Corresponding author) Visual Art Department, Cultural Center, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, University of Malaya, Malaysia. ORCID: 0000-0003-3567-6812 Email: [email protected] Abstract In spite of the prominent role of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) as a pure abstract painter and writer of his theories who developed the abstract art into what he called Neo-Plasticism, little has been written about him compared to other painters such as Picasso and Matisse. Examining the past and recent literature published about Mondrian, some scholars examined the aesthetic evolution of Mondrian’s vision toward his Neo-Plastic art and theory within a historical context by depending on the influences he received from circle of thinkers, artists, and friends during his life. While other scholars analyzed the components of Neo- Plastic theory through formal tenets of De Stijl or a metaphysical lens through premises of western philosophies such as Theosophy, Hegel, and Platonism. Nevertheless, despite the emphasis of the majority of scholars on close relation between Mondrian’s paintings and writings, researchers showed little tendency to examine the development of core formal theories of Neo-Plasticism through a parallel analysis of his Neo-Plastic paintings and his theoretical writings.
    [Show full text]
  • Piet Mondrian
    Piet Mondrian “Always further” Vica Hicks "I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects." -Piet Mondrian Avond (Evening): The Red Tree [1908] Oil on canvas 70 x 99 cm (27 1/2 x 39 in) Mill in Sunlight: The Winkel Mill [1908] Oil on canvas 114 x 87 cm (44 7/8 x 30 1/4 in) The Red Mill [1911] Oil on canvas 150 x 86 cm The Gray Tree [1912] Oil on canvas 78.5 × 107.5 cm. Still Life with Gingerpot 2 [1912] Oil on canvas 37 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (91.5 x 120 cm) Amaryllis [1910] Watercolour 49.2 x 31.5 cm Composition in Color A [1917] Oil on canvas. 50 x 44 cm Composition: Light Color Planes with Grey Contours [1919] Oil on canvas 49 x 49 cm Composition A [1923] Oil on canvas. Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue [1937] Oil on canvas. 23 3/4 x 21 7/8" (60.3 x 55.4 cm) Broadway Boogie Woogie [1942] Oil on canvas. 50 x 50" (127 x 127 cm) “To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.” - Piet Mondrian Bibliography Slide number - Citation 1. "15 Things You Should Know About Piet Mondrian." Mental Floss. N.p., n.d. Web. http://mentalfloss.com/article/66842/15-things-you-should-know-about-piet-mondrian 2. "Piet Mondrian. Pier and Ocean 5 (Sea and Starry Sky).
    [Show full text]
  • Roger Fry: Aligning Himself with the Half Idiot, Half Divine Sandra Boks, MA Curating the Art Museum ‘12
    Roger Fry: Aligning Himself with the Half Idiot, Half Divine Sandra Boks, MA Curating the Art Museum ‘12 ‘I am not a great artist; I am only a serious artist with some sensitivity, enough taste and more intelligence than average painters.’ - Roger Fry, 1920 In his writings, Fry makes a distinction between great artists, serious artists and average painters. This suggests that there is some essential quality that Fry recognises in great artists but does not possess himself. Fry’s conception of the ideal artist was embodied by Paul Cézanne, whom he described as ‘the perfect realisation of the type of the artist’.1 He rejected the conventional idea of the artist celebrated by Giorgio Vasari during the Renaissance in order to create a new and modern characterisation of the artist. Before looking at Fry’s writings about Cézanne it is interesting to look at the type of the artist that he rejects in order for Cézanne to take its place. During the 16th century, Vasari valued artists not only for their artistic achievements but also principally for their intellectual abilities. He saw these two skills as essential to artistic success. Vasari regarded Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his time; he even elevated him to a divine being. In his introduction to Michelangelo in Lives of the Artists he writes: [God himself] wanted to join to this [artistic] spirit true moral philosophy and the gift of sweet poetry, so that the world would admire and prefer him for the wholly singular example of his life, his work, the holiness of his habits, and all his human undertakings.2 Michelangelo’s personal life and additional talents for philosophy and poetry were seen as inextricably intertwined with his artistic output, and the totality of this resulted in his reputation as a divine being.
    [Show full text]
  • The Significance and Insignificance of Clive Bell's Formalism I
    Navorsingsartikels/Research articles The significance and insignificance of Clive Bell’s formalism i Johan Snyman Dept, of Philosophy Rand Afrikaans University JOHANNESBURG Abstract Clive Bell coined the phrase significant form. The way he initially defined the phrase and the way he implemented it were two different matters. In this article Bell's procedure is analysed as a characteristic of late moder­ nist aesthetics, i.e. an attempt to come to terms with the challenge o f the radically new in art. It is suggested that one should bear in mind that formalism in this sense is a theory of artistic material which explains how meaning is communicated and perceived through non-discursive qualities o f the artistic material. That is the relevance o f Susanne K. Longer's re- interpretation o f Bell's phrase. 1. Introduction Clive Bell’s aesthetics does not make for profound reading. Why bother then? The least one can say is that Bell contributed towards the modem aesthetic vocabulary by coining a phrase that has since become a cliché or hackneyed for that matter, viz. significant form. On the other hand, if one reflects from a distance on the Wirkungsgeschichte of Bell’s phrase as well as on the Wirkungs- geschichte of the problem he wanted to solve, significant form has an intriguing logic. Significant form as an aesthetic category has spawned quite a generation of related concepts, from Clive Bell to Susanne K. Langer’s unconsummated symbol, up to Nelson Goodman’s languages of art (Goodman, 1976), Peter A revised version of a paper read at a 2nd International Symposium on Formalism, organized by the Slovenian Society of Aesthetics in Ljubljana, 14-17 May 1992.
    [Show full text]
  • PIET MONDRIAN. PROTO-FASHION THEORIST// ------SUBMISSION DATE: 08/01/2015 // ACCEPTANCE DATE 13/05/2015 // PUBLICATION DATE: 15/06/2015 (Pp
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert LAUREN PALMOR // PIET MONDRIAN. PROTO-FASHION THEORIST //PIET MONDRIAN. PROTO-FASHION THEORIST// ---------------------------------------------- SUBMISSION DATE: 08/01/2015 // ACCEPTANCE DATE 13/05/2015 // PUBLICATION DATE: 15/06/2015 (pp. 39-50) LAUREN PALMOR UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON [email protected] /// KEYWORDS: Fashion theory, Piet Mondrian, J.C. Flügel, Thorstein Veblen, Georg Simmel, Sonia Delaunay. ABSTRACT: This paper attempts to contextualize Mondrian‘s few writings on fashion within his larger interest in oppositions and the work of early fashion theorists, who similarly framed dress in terms of binaries and antonyms. Like Mondrian, early fashion theorists were invested in ideas of opposition and universality, similarities that suggest that Mondrian may find conceptual allies in the first generation of fashion theorists, particularly J. C. Flügel, Thorstein Veblen, and Georg Simmel. Mondrian‘s largely overlooked approach to fashion theory sheds light on the understanding of his complex aesthetic philosophy, and, while much has been written about Mondrian‘s influence on fashion, there remains a need to navigate Mondrian‘s own inspiration by fashion. /// Piet Mondrian‘s legacy has escaped the historical limits of his own discipline—his influence has been felt in nearly every sphere of the visual arts, seemingly by osmosis. He has had a demonstrable visual impact on graphic design, home decor, and fashion, and his presence can be experienced by any hapless shopper who finds himself in a department store surrounded by handbags decorated with divided planes of red, yellow, and blue. Mondrian‘s uncompromisingly abstract, neoplastic style has long oscillated between high art and popular culture (Troy 2006: 15-36), and when one is determined to find an elegant intersection between Mondrian and design, the most frequently cited example is that of his influence on fashion.
    [Show full text]
  • Art and Form: from Roger Fry to Global Modernism by Sam Rose.’ Estetika: the European Journal of Aesthetics LVII/XIII, ESTETIKA No
    Gal, Michalle. ‘Art and Form: From Roger Fry to Global Modernism by Sam Rose.’ Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics LVII/XIII, ESTETIKA no. 2 (2020): pp. 183–188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/eeja.223 THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS BOOK REVIEW Art and Form: From Roger Fry to Global Modernism by Sam Rose Michalle Gal Shenkar College, IL [email protected] A book review of Sam Rose, Art and Form: From Roger Fry to Global Modernism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. 208 pp. ISBN 9780271082387. In view of the current progress of what has been named the ‘visual turn’ or the ‘pictorial turn’,1 it is exciting to witness Sam Rose’s return to early aesthetic formalist-modernism, which was so passionate about the medium, its appearance, and visuality. Rose’s project shares a recent inclination to think anew the advent of aesthetic modernism.2 It is founded on the presump- tion that visual art ought to be – and actually has always been – theoretically subsumed under one meta-project. This meta-project does not necessarily have a clear telos, but it does have a history. In support of this view, Rose appeals to Stanley Cavell’s claim that ‘only mas- ters of a game, perfect slaves to that project, are in a position to establish conventions which better serve its essence. This is why deep revolutionary changes can result from attempts to conserve a project, to take it back to its idea, keep it in touch with its history’ (p. 155). According to Rose’s post-formalist view, the idea of art’s meta-project is the idea of form.
    [Show full text]
  • Piet Mondrian's Modern Masterpiece
    PRESS RELEASE | NEW YORK FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : 9 A P R I L 2 0 2 1 PIET MONDRIAN’S MODERN MASTERPIECE COMPOSITION: NO II, WITH YELLOW, RED AND BLUE, 1927 IN CHRISTIE’S NY 20TH CENTURY EVENING SALE THIS MAY ON VIEW AT CHRISTIE’S HONG KONG APRIL 12-14 ON VIEW AT CHRISTIE’S LONDON APRIL 20-22 Property from an Important Private Collection PIET MONDRIAN (1872-1944) Composition: No. II, with Yellow, Red and Blue signed and dated 'PM 27' (lower right); signed and inscribed 'P. MONDRIAN HAUT No II Bovenzijde' (on the stretcher) oil on canvas 19 3/4 x 14 in. (50.5 x 35.2 cm.) Painted in 1927 Estimate on request NEW YORK - Christie’s is pleased to announce the inclusion of Piet Mondrian’s Composition: No. II, with Yellow, Red and Blue, 1927 in it’s upcoming, newly-introduced 20th Century Evening Sale at Christie’s New York on May 11, 2021 (estimate on request; in the region of US$25M). The painting is a rare and exceptional example of the artist’s revolutionary abstract aesthetic, made during a pivotal time in his career. Composition: No. II, with Yellow, Red and Blue will be unveiled for viewing at Christie’s Hong Kong from April 12-14 and at Christie’s London April 20-22 before returning to New York for the full exhibition of May sales property at Rockefeller Center in May. In Hong Kong, this modern masterpiece will be exhibited alongside Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, effet de brouillard, 1899-1903, (estimate in the region of US$35 million) and Pablo Picasso’s iconic portrait Femme assise près d'une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse), 30 October 1932 (estimate in the region of US$55 million).
    [Show full text]
  • The Mosaic of Aesthetics: the Manifestation of Clive Bell's and Roger Fry's Theories in the Waves
    Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism Volume 13 Issue 1 Winter Article 8 4-2020 The Mosaic of Aesthetics: The Manifestation of Clive Bell's and Roger Fry's Theories in The Waves Nina Katarina Štular Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion Part of the English Language and Literature Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Štular, Nina Katarina (2020) "The Mosaic of Aesthetics: The Manifestation of Clive Bell's and Roger Fry's Theories in The Waves," Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 13 : Iss. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol13/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The Mosaic of Aesthetics The Manifestation of Clive Bell’s and Roger Fry’s Aesthetic Theories in The Waves Nina Katarina Štular In Roger Fry’s “An Essay in Aesthetics,” published in 1909, he explores the question of what art truly is. A year after the paper’s publication, Fry met Clive Bell on a train and they struck a conversation about aesthetics that marked the beginning of Fry’s life-long friendship with the Bloomsbury group—a group that gave home to many influential modernist thinkers and writers. The aesthetic theory that Fry explains in “An Essay in Aesthetics” influenced Bell’sArt , published in 1914, which in turn affected Fry’s Vision and Design, published in 1920, in which Fry fully elaborates his aesthetic theory.
    [Show full text]
  • Art in the Fourth Dimension: Giving Form to Form – the Abstract Paintings of Piet Mondrian
    Art in the Fourth Dimension: Giving Form to Form – The Abstract Paintings of Piet Mondrian Runette Kruger Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa Citation: Runette Kruger, “ Art in the Fourth Dimension: Giving Form to Form – The Abstract Paintings of Piet Mondrian ”, Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal , nr. 5, Summer 2007, pp. 23-35 <http://ler.letras.up.pt > ISSN 1646-4729. The aim of this paper is to explore the art and utopian ideology of early-twentieth- century Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. As an idealist, Mondrian believed that his art would be instrumental in establishing the utopia he conceived of, and his writings and art are the painstaking and eloquent manifestations of his efforts in this regard. Mondrian is a key figure in Modernist art, as co-founder, with Theo van Doesburg, of the Dutch De Stijl movement (1917-1924), and as a pioneer in the development of twentieth-century abstraction – it was Mondrian who took non- representation further than even the revolutionary Picasso, with his cubist compositions, had. The background against which Mondrian formulated his notions on utopia is markedly dystopian. The turn of the twentieth century was a time in which the gap left by loss of faith in the Church could be only partially filled by a belief in positivism. The result was a fin de siècle characterised by a pervasive nihilism (Tuchman 1986: 19). This ideological impasse was exacerbated by the outbreak of the First World War. The turmoil and cruelty engendered by this event created a Spaces of Utopia 5 (Summer 2007) 24 fertile basis for the development of new and radical ideologies (Long 1986: 206).
    [Show full text]