Clive Bell Research Paper

Clive Bell’s theory of art is a formalist view, appreciating art for its visual aspects and disregarding any context behind the piece. His goal was to find the common trait among all works of art. He believes that for something to be considered art, it has to have specific necessary and sufficient features. It is necessary that the piece has significant form in order for it to be art. Significant form provides us with an aesthetic emotion, which is only brought on by visual art. Representation, or seeing a piece of art for what it truly is, is contrary to Bell’s theory because he believes it is irrelevant and that the true meaning of the visual art is found by detaching yourself from all previous knowledge. Bell doesn’t totally reject that …show more content…
Anything that is naturally occurring is not art, though it may still be beautiful. When creating art, the artist must be in a particular state of mind that allows him to create such an admiring piece. The artist’s experience of an aesthetic emotion while creating the piece is what gives it significant form. An aesthetic emotion can only be felt towards art. It is not a type of emotion that occurs regularly. He also believes that you must have a sensitive eye to be able to detect significant form. Bell provides us with the definition of significant form as ‘a combination of lines, shapes and colors in certain relations’. He argues that not everything with form is significant form and the aesthetic emotion is what gives a piece it’s significant …show more content…
It is essential that you look at the artwork for what it is and solely seek significant form rather than seek emotional expressions by the artist. These are Bell’s beliefs. He gives us an example of a painting of a chair. For one to fully appreciate the beauty of the painting, they must disregard its function. Alternative emotions may alter one’s perception of what the artwork is trying to tell them. The only knowledge that one can have when looking at an artwork is a sense of form, color and three-dimensional space. There lies a problem with this aspect of his theory as well. One person may feel an aesthetic emotion towards a certain artwork and believe that it truly does have significant form; whereas, another person could disagree and sincerely believe that it doesn’t. This would mean that the artwork has the ability to provide an aesthetic emotion while simultaneously not being able to provide an aesthetic emotion. Bell would not view this as a problem to his theory but just associate those people as “deaf people at a musical concert”, but in reality it is because Bell has an honorific definition of visual art (indirectly implying that there is no such thing as bad art because only true art has significant