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Full Idea
By 'form' Bell means the relations of lines, colours and shapes. Forms are 'significant' when the relationships of lines and so on move us aesthetically. If something is art it must have, to at least a minimum extent, significant form.
Gist of Idea
'Form' is visual relations, and it is 'significant' if it moves us aesthetically; art needs both
Source
report of Clive Bell (Art [1913], p.17) by Susan Feagin - Roger Fry and Clive Bell 3
Book Ref
'Key Thinkers in Aesthetics', ed/tr. Giovannelli,Alessandro [Continuum 2012], p.119
A Reaction
So art has two necessary conditions - that it move us aesthetically, and that it does so by means of its form. The obvious problem is to explain which forms are 'significant' without mentioning the aesthetic feeling they have to invoke.
| 636 | Beauty involves the Forms of order, symmetry and limit, which can be handled mathematically [Aristotle] |
| 8118 | Beauty is an order between parts, and in relation to the whole [Baumgarten, by Tolstoy] |
| 20431 | Art needs a mixture of order and variety in its sensations [Fry] |
| 8115 | Only artists can discern significant form; other people must look to art to find it [Bell,C, by Gardner] |
| 23924 | Maybe significant form gives us a feeling for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| 23931 | Significant form is the essence of art, which I believe expresses an emotion about reality [Bell,C] |
| 20434 | 'Form' is visual relations, and it is 'significant' if it moves us aesthetically; art needs both [Bell,C, by Feagin] |
| 20347 | If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim] |
| 22686 | Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity [Gaut] |
| 24173 | We can only understand form if we grasp the whole of which things are parts [Cochrane] |