Clive Bell Flashcards
Clive Bell - background
-UK
-1881-1964
-Influenced by “all art conspires to the conditions f music”-walter
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Aesthetics
- How is it experiences
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.
How does he define significant form?
- 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
How important is content? (Bell)
-Content is irrelevant or it obscures the significant form unlike the formal qualities
Bell’s view on representation
He also agrees with disinterestedness, he things that representation is not bad…but it is irrelevant.
What does CB promise? Does he deliver?
He wants to be able to show the definite quality that all art has (significant form)
No because significant form is vague to work
What is the argument here about representational painting?
In paintings you have the ability to do whatever you want so why waste it on representing something
Bell’s view on the word beauty
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
Bell vs Kant on nature
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.
(Bell) What is the argument here about representational painting?
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.
Acc. to CB, is it impossible to find s.f. in picture-paintings?
Will rarely have sf but this is not an indefinite standard. Sometimes it will exist.
Where does Bell say we are likely to find s.f.?
Primitive art: art from ancient times and different cultures, he does not mean the literal definition
-as a rule art is good
What are the 3 characteristics often to be found there?
absence of representation, absence of technical swagger and sublimely impressive form
Can you guess CB’s feelings toward the then new ‘abstraction’ in painting?
Powerful argument. I feel like he’d be all for it because it is going back to more significant form
What was the Bloomsbury group?
“an influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists”
Who was his sister-in-law anyway?
Virginia Wolfe
What is Susanne Langer’s fn. from Philosophy in a New Key all about?
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.
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?
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
“Providence is irrelevant”
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..
How does his method seem similar to Kant and different from Kant. [he starts where K. ends, with experience?]
- 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
