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Full Idea
The formal objects which individuate the aesthetic attitude may be narrowly aesthetic, as beauty, and its subspecies, such as grace and elegance, or more broadly by other formalist criteria, such as Beardley's unity, complexity and intensity.
Gist of Idea
Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity
Source
Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Objections 1')
Book Ref
'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art (Analytic trad)', ed/tr. Lamarque,P/Olsen,SH [Blackwell 2004], p.284
A Reaction
I'm not sure about unity or complexity, but intensity was endorsed by Henry James. Intensity doesn't sound very 'formal'. 'Beauty' doesn't seem the right word for the wonderful 'King Lear', or even for Jane Austen novels.
| 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] |