Clive Bell Flashcards

1
Q

Clive Bell - background

A

-UK
-1881-1964
-Influenced by “all art conspires to the conditions f music”-walter
-

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2
Q

Aesthetics

- How is it experiences

A

must have artistic sensibility and a turn for clear thinking
The essential quality that distinguishes art from a ll other objects.
-starting point- experience of a particular emotion. Then figure out what is special about the things it gives you.

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3
Q

How does he define significant form?

A
  • Purposivness without a purpose
  • Lines and colors; the most basic stuff.
  • Form, composition, harmony, organically perceived
  • Can’t call it all beauty because beauty is just chatter/desirable
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4
Q

How important is content? (Bell)

A

-Content is irrelevant or it obscures the significant form unlike the formal qualities

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5
Q

Bell’s view on representation

A

He also agrees with disinterestedness, he things that representation is not bad…but it is irrelevant.

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6
Q

What does CB promise? Does he deliver?

A

He wants to be able to show the definite quality that all art has (significant form)
No because significant form is vague to work

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7
Q

What is the argument here about representational painting?

A

In paintings you have the ability to do whatever you want so why waste it on representing something

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8
Q

Bell’s view on the word beauty

A

Beauty is a word that has been used up. We talk about beauty with all kinds of stuff. -nothing to do with art. Need new word

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9
Q

Bell vs Kant on nature

A

Kant says that beauty is applied equally to nature and art. Bell says we don’t feel the same kind of emotion as we do with a butterfly vs. a painting. Art is better thrill than nature.

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10
Q

(Bell) What is the argument here about representational painting?

A

In paintings you have the ability to do whatever you want so why waste it on representing something
-it wil rarely have significant form but not indefinite.

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11
Q

Acc. to CB, is it impossible to find s.f. in picture-paintings?

A

Will rarely have sf but this is not an indefinite standard. Sometimes it will exist.

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12
Q

Where does Bell say we are likely to find s.f.?

A

Primitive art: art from ancient times and different cultures, he does not mean the literal definition
-as a rule art is good

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13
Q

What are the 3 characteristics often to be found there?

A

absence of representation, absence of technical swagger and sublimely impressive form

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14
Q

Can you guess CB’s feelings toward the then new ‘abstraction’ in painting?

A

Powerful argument. I feel like he’d be all for it because it is going back to more significant form

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15
Q

What was the Bloomsbury group?

A

“an influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists”

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16
Q

Who was his sister-in-law anyway?

A

Virginia Wolfe

17
Q

What is Susanne Langer’s fn. from Philosophy in a New Key all about?

A
Doesn’t agree with Clive Bell (significant form is a vague definition)
-Just because all things in a class have a certain quality doesn't make that quality specially unique.
18
Q

Can you use examples from class – animal painting, the Barnett Newman slasher, fakes, jack o’ lanterns, to talk about, use, evaluate significant form as a criterion?

A

Bad art could have significant form. Counterfeits could have significant form. A slashed painting could have significant for.

-An example is forgery: it has significant form but that does not mean it was art
Barnett Newman slasher: Cathedra was vandalized by a person who claimed to be an artist and further claimed that the act of slicing was art itself

19
Q

“Providence is irrelevant”

A

Providence is the history of where something comes from. You want to know is you are paying for it. As an appreciator that is irrelevant- the only imp thing is wether or not is delivers a feeling of beauty..

20
Q

How does his method seem similar to Kant and different from Kant. [he starts where K. ends, with experience?]

A
  • Disinterestedness: it is not that representation is bad, but it is irrelevant
  • Aesthetics must be the personal experience of a particular emotion
  • Aesthetic emotion
  • Beautiful does not mean that it can provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art
  • The art’s history only matters to historians