How to Write an Art Critique Using Formalist Framework
How do we gauge the value of the work of art? And, no, nosotros are not talking almost its toll on the marketplace. One of the oldest answers to that question is that we estimate it by its form, by those structural elements that are always discernible to the eye - that which we telephone call formalism in fine art. This arroyo to deciphering artwork gave birth to art scientific discipline, art criticism, also as a specific manner of creating fine art past focusing on its visual, aesthetic quality.
The road to understanding what formalism in art really is nearly takes the states from philosophical ideas of Plato, Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, through the experiments of the avant-garde, all the mode to contemporary platonic of socially-engaged and conceptual art.
At the same time, at its heart, formalism holds that 1 question which stands in a higher place all others - what is art? How can we know when we are standing in the presence of something truly magnificent? Is there a universal manner to make up one's mind the quality of any single work and employ it to recreate the sublime?
Many believed that at that place is. They postulated that creative excellence tin can be found in the structure of its elements, that it can exist dissected and measured, like with all good science, but more chiefly, that it unveils the very essence of man creativity.
50'fine art cascade 50'art - What is Formalism in Art?
So, what are those compositional elements formalism places at the front? Or, better yet, what is not formalism? Every fourth dimension y'all stopped to capeesh the ultimate irony of Gustav Klimt'southward Death and Life (1908-sixteen) or profound social commentary of Banksy's Rage Flower Thrower (2003), co-ordinate to ceremonial doctrine you are missing the point. Everything in the work of art which is related to symbolism, context of whatever kind and iconography tin merely be secondary to what constitutes its form - line, shape, color, brushwork. Why is this so important? First, these are the elements that all artwork ultimately share, and so the only elements which tin provide a ground for agreement art in general. And secondly, putting these elements in focus means that fine art can become an democratic sphere of man cosmos - L'fine art cascade l'fine art.
"L'fine art cascade l'art without purpose, for all purpose perverts fine art." - Benjamin Constant, 1804
L'art cascade fifty'artis perhaps one of the about famous lines in all of art history and it is closely related to formalist motion. Meaning art for art'due south sake, information technology was an idea that went perfectly in manus with formalist view of value of art. Fine art needs no purpose other than its intrinsic beauty. If value of art can only be found in its structural elements, then surly cipher outside those elements can present motive for creating art. These ideas of grade at the center of artistic creation had different manifestations in different art movements. For Romantics, grade was where you search for fine art'south essence; For Symbolists and Impressionists, information technology was its superior power to convey creative person intention; For Abstract Expressionists, it was the raison d'être - for pregnant in art, 1 should look no further than the grade.
The Definition of Ceremonial in Fine art
History of Formalism - The Question of Aesthetics
Plato was the get-go thinker to introduce the concept of form. For him, course or appearance, was that i element shared by both tangible and abstract phenomena in the earth. His ideas framed how we sympathize human perception, why is a portrait or a shadow equally important to usa every bit the real thing. Plato'south theories were the basis for birthing the aesthetic field of study - the written report of cute. Aristotle believed that catharsis in art can only be achieved if the work is dominated past its structure. Immanuel Kant, on the other manus, was more concerned with universality. His philosophical quests for universal truth atomic number 82 him to conclude that only class of an art object can exist judged equally by different people, equally leading to pleasure. For what kind of world it is we alive in, if we all come across things differently, if there's no objective knowledge? From Kant we inherited that idea of form as shape, which volition later lead to analysis of what today we call manner. It was through reading of Kant that aesthetics of art, and art criticism with it, was gradually formulated by Eduard Hanslick (1891), Clive Bell (1913) and Roger Fry (1920).
As an thought, formalism reached its pinnacle in the period of loftier modernism, betwixt the final decades of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. This is non surprising if nosotros recall that outset works of abstract art appeared during this flow. Non-representational fine art brought this new style of expression where often nothing is discernible except its structure, inspired profoundly by development of aesthetic thinking on the expressiveness of form. Works of Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock, together with their thinking about fine art, pushed an American fine art critic Clement Greenberg (1960) to fortify this formal arroyo for analyzing modern art merely through those elements used to create it.
Philosophy of Ceremonial - Class in Literature and Music
A large office of philosophy of ceremonial is related to 19th century striving for scientific truth. People then believed that in art, like in physics or architecture, we demand to learn to recognize formalistic aspects of the work in order to report art as a scientific field of study. Such field of study would written report how art is fabricated in order to empathise what it is we are looking at. Formalism is the reason why today we tin can enroll into Literary Theory, Musicology and Art History programs and courses at universities. It is the reason why in that location are still people effectually who are trained to trace back every brushstroke of Mona Lisa. This philosophy, governed past 19th century logical thinking, enabled u.s.a. to understand the syntax in a literary masterpiece, succession of chords in an orchestral symphony, every jiff in actor'south performance. Formalism brought discourse of color, texture, rhythm, composition and menstruation into the earth, concepts we all use when nosotros endeavour to depict the beautiful.
Formalism was an endeavor on philosophical inquiry into the very nature of art, and as such was i arroyo among many others, like Voluntarism, Intellectualism and Naturalism. Just, it took all of the arts with a storm. Formalism was particularly stiff in music. It positioned music itself equally in a higher place history, composers and even text which is oftentimes nowadays in vocal works. It was much easier to gloat the abstraction in music than it was with the other arts, but also to diminish the value of anything outside the work itself. In literature, formalism meant focusing on exploring the pregnant of a literary work only from what we tin can experience while reading it, and then only considering those elements inherent in the text - grammar, syntax, tropes etc...
The Art Critics: Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg
One of the about important figures in formalism was Bloomsbury writer and art criticClive Bell. His 1914 book Fine art was first effort to define the form in visual art which he did through his notion of significant form. Reflecting the 50'art pour l'artideology, his goal was to give irrefutable proof that art class is different than what we find in all other objects. Bell believed that emotions we experience when looking at an artwork are incited past its formal quality and non its subject matter, sensation he called the aesthetic emotion. Significant class is actually a combination of formal elements, primarily lines and colors which Clive Bell thought are building blocks of all visual art.
Following Bell'south influential ideas, information technology was American critic Clement Greenberg who proved to be the strongest advocate of formalism and modern art inspired with it. It non for his striving to codify the expressive elements in not-representational art, it is questionable whether works of Pablo Picasso, Clyfford Yet, Mark Rothko and other Abstract Expressionist artists would be and so quickly accepted in the U.S. art community. For Greenberg, the rejection of representation by abstruse artists was a natural evolution of visual fine art. The manipulation of form was the male monarch of artistic expression.
The Formal Analysis of a Painting - What Constitutes the Form
As pertaining to the meaning of the word "formalism", the formal assay of the piece of work of fine art refers to description of purely visual elements. The Formal analysis function is to locate all the elements of fine art'south form and explicate their arrangement - the work'due south composition. Then, what are those elements? Explanations which can be institute differ in number, merely all concur on the near important: line , colour , shape, space and texture .
When we try to describe the line, nosotros ask ourselves is it straight, curved, flowing, and thick or sparse, horizontal or vertical. Shape and infinite represent the relationship of objects in the painting and infinite behind them. The principal question is whether the shape is geometric or organic, how many shapes are used to produce the desired image? In what dimension, form of space, are they placed? Colour is, besides the line, the most of import chemical element of a painting. We describe the color through concepts of hue (red, bluish, yellow etc.), value (brightness), intensity (purity), saturation, delineating betwixt primary and secondary colors and considering their complementarities. Texture is that terminal slice of the puzzle which gives us the idea of surface quality of an object. Is it silk the man on the portrait is wearing? What would the object feel like if we could bear upon it? In order to brand a successful analysis we must inquire that near important question - What is the limerick of the painting? It is the collective dance of all of these elements that constitutes the meaning form, that which provides its expressiveness.
Formalist Art - Creating the Absolute
The works of art that we could dub as formalist already achieved fame past other names - modern art, abstract fine art, the avant-garde, yet they here are presented in the context of their philosophical origin. After all, Clement Greenberg's famous essay Modernist Painting (1960) uses works of Jackson Pollock as The example of formalism. Greenberg saw Pollock'south mode as maybe the greatest example of that manipulation of pure grade. Simply perhaps, the best instance of formalist art would exist compositions of Piet Mondrian like his Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red (1937-42). Working with simple geometrical lines and primary colors, his paintings are the purest manifestation of that which Clive Bell considered pregnant form. Formalist approach to music, which produced the concept of absolute fine art, as unattached to anything outside itself, was a dandy inspiration for abstract artists who strived to achieve this lack of referentiality.
Even though formalism stared in many other arts, it was the painting that both Bong and Greenberg had in mind while formulating their theories. Not bad works of formalist art were produced by Expressionism, Cubism, Geometrical Abstruse Fine art, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Informal Art by artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malewitsch, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Jean Dubuffet and many others. But this purified painterly approach to form as well inspired artists in other media and continues to practise so today: Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling and their Abstract films, Minimalism of Yves Klein and Frank Stella, Vsevolod Yemilyevich Meyerhold's Formalist theatre, Land art etc.
Welcome to the Historic period of Post-formalism
Like with all good social theories, there is usually more criticism involved, than the actual content discussing the theory. Anti-ceremonial opinions appeared well-nigh instantly after first attempts of canonization. Questions enervating more detailed description of the grade, disputes over the historical function of art and what constitutes its value continue to inflame fine art critics and historians. Just the biggest challenge to ceremonial came with Postmodernism and Conceptual art. Works of artists like Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol brought the question of concept in play when nobody could've guessed that it would come to dominion contemporary art. Postmodernism on the other hand introduced that difficult critical reflection into the inner workings of the fine art earth, tearing downward all big narratives and search for universal truth. But in 2017, nosotros live in a truly Post globe, where Postmodernism is too something nosotros had to overcome, leading us to a whole new appreciation of the form.
Written by Vera Mevorah .
References:
All images used for illustrative purposes only.
Source: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/formalism-in-art
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