Fisher, Ch 10, Formalism
AUTONOMY AND FORMALISM
- Formalism and representation
- Because formalism is concerned with art's autonomy, formalism
rejects importance of representation in art
- Art as representation is not autonomous
- But subordinates art to truth and morality
- If art is rep, then art to be judged by accuracy and propriety by
which it represents its external subject
- Because art imitates (reps) life, it is answerable to it:
- Art must tell the truth about life, contribute to it or make it better
- So a representational view of art, subordinates art to truth,
morality and makes art dependent on something other than itself
- For formalist, representation does not add or subtract from merit of a
picture or statue
- Art is an autonomous realm (a new idea in the 19th century)
- Art's autonomy means "Art for art's sake"
- Art intelligible and valuable as such
- It is art's own intrinsic properties that matter
- Art has an internal subject matter sufficient to itself
- Art's relation to other things (creator, perceiver, subject matter)
not important
- Art is free from having to convey anything external to itself
- Art should be judged in own terms, by values inherent to artwork
itself and not by external standards
- Not by its representing qualities
- Georgia O'Keeffe
- Not by moral values, or any concepts of what the art ought
to be like
- Mushroom cloud
- Not by pleasure of audience
- How does art's autonomy get you to formalism?
- It is art's form that is independent of external considerations
- Thus concern with art's autonomy leads to formalism
NATURE OF FORM
- What is form in art?
- Organization of artwork
- Relation of parts/elements to each other to make valuable?
beautiful? whole
- Harmonious proportions (Spear Bearer p. 242)
- E.g., formal elements of a painting include colors, shapes,
patterns
- Form and Content: What is their relation?
- If form and content are independent,
- Same form could hold two different contents
- Analogy: Form as a bottle and content as what goes in it
- Wine/beer in same bottle
- Poem with same structure, about two different topics
- Same content could be contained by two different forms
- Same wine in two different shaped bottles
- Poem and novel and movie with same content: Make same
points (meaning) about same thing (referent)
- Oedipus story in a tragedy, ballet, novel
- Fisher is skeptical about independence of form and content
- Contrast arrangement of letters with literature
- Two letter arrangement with same content:
- A kissed B, B was kissed by A
- Can't find two poems or novels that have same content (have
same subject and say same thing about it)
- As many messages as there are artworks
- Perhaps because
- Each artwork has unique form
- And form generates content, not separate from it
- Form seems to determine/effect content
- Formal differences change the message
- Hard to separate the meaning of a poem from way it is expressed
- Artist can't do same (sort of) thing in different art media
- Objection: We do translate poetry into other languages, and this
presupposed content can be translated from one linguistic vehicle
to another
- Perhaps we shouldn't assume same poem?
- Fisher thinks Form/Elements (constituents, matter) better
distinction and holds for all artworks
- Form is the way elements/constituents/matter is organized;
- Their internal relations
- Form of a poem
- Relation of the sounds (elements?)
- Visual structure of work on page
- Form of a novel
- Point of view author chooses
- Manner of transition from scene to scene
- Proportion of description to dialogue
- FORMALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY OF ART
- Is form important, primary, or solely relevant?
- Most people who care about art say that formal relations and
properties are important in artwork
- Strong intriguing from is one of lst things critics look for
- Awareness and control of form is sign of mature artists
- Students learning about an art form lack this awareness/control
- Stronger claim is that formal properties are primary in artwork
- Other concerns, like subject matter or expressing emotions, are
secondary
- Def of Formalism: Only formal properties are relevant
considerations
- Representation and expression are irrelevant to work of art as art
- Formal properties and nothing else makes artifact a piece of art
- CLIVE BELL'S VERSION OF FORMALISM
- Art provokes emotions
- One kind is an "aesthetic emotion"
- It is "significant form" that provokes the aes emotions
- What allows us to know that something is art is that it has
significant form that provokes aesthetic emotions
- All and only art does this
- Aes emotion distinction from emotions of life
- Aes emotion far more profound than those come from description
of facts/ideas
- Aes emotions has form of artwork as object of emotions
- "A painter too feeble to elicit aes emotion will appeal to emotions
of life-such as pity or fear-and so he uses representation and
paints an execution"
- Fisher: Makes tragedy not art if it appeals to pity and fear
- "Good art takes people out of life into ecstacy"
- So must an aesthetic experience of real art always be
intense?
- "To use art as a means to emotions of life is to use a telescope to
read the news"
- Art is too powerful to be used to invoke ordinary emotions
- How to listen to music according to Formalists:
- Don't think about what it is about
- Don't feel emotions like sadness, joy, whatever
- Just be moved by the music's formal structure?
- Bell's formalism (unlike rep theory or expressionism) explains
transcultural appeal of great art
- Great art appeals to viewers in widely divergent cultural
situations
- Art has great appeal to many who don't understand it (don't
understand the represented subject matter)
- For both rep theory and expressionism, represented subject needs
to be understood
- But meanings and emotional response depend on cultural
circumstance
- And since we are not in same circumstance, we don't understand
the meaning (or if we do, it is not significant for us) nor do we
get the emotional response
- So what we are responding to is the formal properties of the
art which cross culturally gives us this powerful aesthetic
emotion
- Bell: Best observers don't understand artworks, for their responses
are purer and once understand subject matter/content it is hard to ignore
it
- "Primitive art" is more sophisticated as no representational content,
but only significant form
- Focus on rep, characteristic of European art, is distraction to
artist and viewer
- Why can't we explain the cross culture power of great art by claiming
it represents a universal message or conveys a human emotion that all
humans can feel?
- Fisher's use of Francesca's Flagellation of Christ (p. 254) to
question Bell's views
- Formal power of this painting depends partly on what it
represents
- Formal power here not just a function of geometrical shapes
- Can't see right hand objects as closer without knowing that
they represent people
- Distance between two parts of picture a function of what picture
represents
- Visual relations sometimes gain significance form object being
represented
- Without knowing objects represented, viewer can't perceive
certain visual relations (which are formal properties)
- So representation infuses form