The Hagia SophiaThe Hagia Sophia

Bell on Significant Form

Art is significant form Art is significant form caused by the Aesthetic caused by the Aesthetic

emotionemotion

Bell, Art

That there is a particular kind of emotion provoked by works of

visual art, and that this emotion is provoked by every kind of visual

art, by pictures, sculptures, buildings, pots, carvings, textiles, &c.,

&c., is not disputed, I think, by anyone capable of feeling it. This

emotion is called the aesthetic emotion; and if we can discover

some quality common and peculiar to all the objects that provoke

it, we shall have solved what I take to be the central problem of

aesthetics.

Bell, Art

...it is useless for a critic to tell me that something

is a work of art; he must make me feel it for myself.

This he can do only by making me see; he must get

at my emotions through my eyes. Unless he can

make me see something that moves me, he cannot

force my emotions.

Bell, Art

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Windows at Chartes

Mexican Sculpture

Mexican Sculpture

José Luis Cuevas, La Giganta

José Luis

Cuevas, La

Giganta

Mayan

Sculpture,

King Pakal

Serpent

Sculpture,

Aztec

Persian Bowls

Scrovegni Chapel

In every istoria variety is always pleasant. A painting in which

there are bodies in many dissimilar poses is always especially

pleasing. There some stand erect, planted on one foot, and show

all the face with the hand high and the fingers joyous. In others the

face is turned, the arms folded and the feet joined. And thus to

each one is given his own action and flection of members; some

are seated, others on one knee, others lying. If it is allowed here,

there ought to be some nude and others part nude and part

clothed in the painting; but always make use of shame and

modesty.

Alberti, De Pictura

Giotto’s Lamentation

Thus I desire, as I have said, that modesty and truth should be

used in every istoria . For this reason be careful not to repeat the

same gesture or pose. The istoria will move the soul of the

beholder when each man painted there clearly shows the

movement of his own soul. It happens in nature that nothing more

than herself is found capable of things like herself; [Cicero, De

amicitia, xiv, 50] we weep with the weeping, laugh with the

laughing, and grieve with the grieving.

Alberti, De Pictura

Giotto’s Betrayal

These movements of the soul are made known by movements of the

body. Care and thought weigh so heavily that a sad person stands with

his forces and feelings as if dulled, holding himself feebly and tiredly on

his pallid and poorly sustained members. In the melancholy the

forehead is wrinkled, the head drooping, all members fall as if tired and

neglected. In the angry, because anger incites the soul, the eyes are

swollen with ire and the face and all the members are burned with

colour, fury adds so much boldness there. In gay and happy men the

movements are free and with certain pleasing inflections.

Alberti, De Pictura

Nicolas Poussin

Rape of the Sabine Women

Venus and Mars

Judgment of Solomon

Piero della Francesca

Baptism of Christ

Resurrection

Flagellation of Christ

Cezanne

The Bathers

Skulls

Mont Saint-

Victoire

Still Life

My immediate object will be to show that significant form

is the only quality common and peculiar to all the works of

visual art that move me; and I will ask those whose

aesthetic experience does not tally with mine to see

whether this quality is not also, in their judgment,

common to all works that move them, and whether they

can discover any other quality of which the same can be

said.

Bell, Art