criticisms of formalism

Outline two objections to the claim that significant form is the value of art.

Firstly, Bell's description of significant form and aesthetic emotion is unclear, and thus flawed. He describes significant form as being lines, shapes and colours of certain relation, however, this is basically what form is anyway, therefore making it a meaningless account. He also states that significant form is detected by aesthetic emotion, however, the definition of aesthetic emotion is a reaction to significant form, therefore making his definition circular, and thus vague and meaningless. However, Bell could reply in defence of this flawed explanation by saying that we can only identify the value of an artwork through intuition/feeling, therefore significant form can only be understood through experience for it to be valued, thus explaining why his explanation is vague.

Secondly, it could be argued that Bell's account of formalism is actually a part of expressionism - he states that what makes significant form significant is the expression of the artist's emotions in response to their glimpse of the pure forms of reality, therefore value of form depends on the value of the emotions express, rather than being valuable in its own right. Thus, Bell is describing expressionism (valuing art through the expression of the artist), rather than formalism (valuing art because of its formal properties).

Furthermore, Bell argued that art which doesn't produce 'aesthetic emotion' isn't art at all - they are either descriptive or exist to cause emotions directly (not through significant form). This is flawed as it means he rejects a great deal of art as of secondary value. Therefore, it could be argued that formalism isn't an account of what we value about art, but rather, what formalists say that we should value.

Assess the claim that we value art because it produces an aesthetic enjoyment of form.

The claim that we value art solely because it produces an aesthetic enjoyment of form, firstly, fails to recognise the place that art has in life. Formalism is focused on the form of art alone, a completely unique aesthetic response that cannot be felt elsewhere, and ignores the role of representation. This account of why we value art appears to detach the role art plays in many areas of life, and for many reasons - such as, the importance of context and what the artist is expressing; the importance of the lives of artists and how it affects their work (e.g. cultural and historical context); how art can contribute to self-understanding and illuminate our experience of life in general; it ignores commissioned artworks, such as private portraits and statues. Furthermore, Tolstoy argued that art creates a bond between the artist and the audience, which is ignored by formalists. 

Because of this, formalists reject a huge amount of art, simply because, according to them, it is too tied to life through representation and emotion; this doesn't seem like a complete account of why we value art, thus formalism is flawed.