Formalism

The term “formalism” can refer to many different things. In art criticism, it has been used to refer to the important writings of Clement Greenberg (1961); in literary history, it has been associated with the influential school of Russian formalism; and in art history it has been used to refer to the writings of Alois Riegl (1992) and Heinrich Wolfflin (1950). For the purposes of this chapter, however, attention will be paid to its usage in philosophical aesthetics, where “formalism” denotes a position on the nature of art which has important implications for the limits of artistic appreciation. Historically, the formalist position finds two of its strongest early polemical state-

ments in Eduard Hanslick’sOn the Musically Beautiful (Hanslick 1986), first published in 1854, and in Clive Bell’s Art (1914). In both cases, it is possible to see formalism as a historically situated response to significant artworld developments: to the triumph of absolute or pure orchestral music, on the one hand, and to the emergence of modern painting, on the other hand. Both books signaled a revolution in taste with regard to their respective art forms. Hanslick questioned whether all music trafficked in the arousal of garden-variety or everyday emotions (such as fear, anger and joy) and argued instead that the proper object of musical attention should be musical structure. Bell denied that painting was an affair of representation and of the emotions associated with the representation of events, places and people, and in contrast maintained that the real subject of painting was what he called significant form: the play of striking arrangements of lines, colors, shapes, volumes, vectors and space (two-dimensional space, three-dimensional space and the interaction thereof). Bell’s statement of the formalist position has been particularly important for the

development of philosophical aesthetics in the twentieth century. Perhaps the leading reason for Bell’s influence has been the fact that he connected his version of formalism with the project of advancing an explicit definition of art. For this reason, Bell can be considered one of the major forerunners of the twentieth century’s philosophical obsession with discovering an essential definition of art. According to Bell, we “gibber” if we do not base our theories and prognostications

about art and its relevant forms of appreciation in an explicit definition of art. Unless we establish what art is, what we say about the value and importance of art, and what we think we should attend to in artworks, will be wildly off the mark. We will, from his point of view, go on blathering about the drama and anecdote of

something like Poussin’s Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes, rather than attending to its pictorial structures. As a result, Bell is eminently straightforward about what, in essence, he takes

painting-as-an-artwork to be. Essentially, it is significant form. That is, where a painting is a genuine artwork, it addresses the imagination like the figures of Gestalt psychology, prompting the viewer to apprehend it as an organized configuration of lines, colors, shapes, spaces, vectors and the like. Bell’s conception of painting is a rival to other general theories of art. Bell rejects

the traditional view that the art of painting is essentially an imitation of nature, a practice defined by a commitment to verisimilitude: to the production of recognizable depictions of persons, places, actions and events. Bell, of course, does not deny that many paintings are representations, but he argues that where paintings qualify as art, that is due to their possession of something other than their representational content. It is due to their possession of significant form. Indeed, according to Bell, whether or not an artwork possesses representational content is always strictly irrelevant to its status as an artwork. That is, a painting’s being a painting of a horse counts not at all towards its classification as a work of art; only its possession of significant form, if it has any, does. Similarly, though less explicitly, Bell’s theory contrasts with expression theories of

art, which maintain that what makes something art is its expression of the emotions of its creator. For Bell believes that a painting, such as a neo-Impressionist still life by Cézanne, can be remarkable for its invention of an arresting formal design, while expressing no detectable garden-variety emotions. With Bell, formalism found its natural home in the realm of painting. Nevertheless, it

is easy to extend his view to the other arts. Obviously, most orchestral music is not representational. This was always a vexation for philosophers in the lineage of Plato and Aristotle, who supposed that all art is essentially representational. But it scarcely seems controversial to describe music, especially after the popularization of pure orchestral music, in terms of the temporal play of aural form. In dance in the twentieth century, due to the influential writings of critics like André Levinson (1991), a kind of formalism not unlike Bell’s came to be a leading position with regard to ballet, while in modern architecture the idea of form became a shibboleth. Literature might appear to be a more intractable art form to explicate exclusively

in terms of form. However, formalists can point to the centrality of features in poetry like meter, rhyme and generic structures (such as the sonnet form), while stories also possess formal features, such as narrative structures and alternating points of view, which theorists can claim lay at the heart of the literary experience. Such formalists, of course, cannot deny that most literature possesses representational content. Instead formalists, notably the Russian formalists, argue that such content only serves to motivate literary devices, and add that ultimately it is the play of literary devices that accounts for the artistic status of poems, novels, dramas and the like: at least in the cases where the works in question are artworks. Thus the kind of formalism that Bell introduces with reference to fine art (notably

painting and sculpture) can be (and has been) turned into a comprehensive theory of art, a competitor to other major philosophies of art, such as the representational theory of art and the expression theory of art. Where those philosophies maintain

respectively that art is essentially representation or that it is by its very nature expressive, the formalist says that art is form. Or, to state the matter more precisely, anything x is an artwork if and only if x possesses significant form. The possession of significant form is a necessary condition for status as an artwork: that is, something is an artwork only if it possesses significant form. And significant form is a sufficient condition for status as an artwork: if something possesses significant form, then it is an artwork. To take something of a departure from Bell, it is possible to reconstruct a series of

initially compelling arguments in support of formalism. The formalist alleges that a candidate is an artwork only if it possesses significant form; this is a necessary condition. But why suppose that this is so? Here the formalist mobilizes what can be called the common denominator argument. The common denominator argument begins with the unobjectionable presupposition

that if anything is to count as a necessary condition for art status, then it must be a property possessed by every artwork. This is just what it means to be a necessary condition. Next the formalist invites us to consider some of the leading competing proposals for the role of necessary criteria for art status. The two which are most relevant for the formalist debate are that something is art only if it is representational, and that something is art only if it is expressive. However, not all artworks are representational. The bejeweled patterns on Islamic

funeral monuments, Bach’s fugues and Ellsworth Kelly’s wall sculptures are all pertinent examples here. They are not representational but they are undeniably art. Thus it cannot be the case that representation is a necessary condition for status as an artwork. Similarly, not all art is expressive of the emotions of its creator. Some artists, like

John Cage, have adopted aleatoric methods of composition in order to remove any trace of authorial expression from their work. Many of George Balanchine’s abstract ballets also attempt to erase expressive qualities for the sake of exploring pure formal qualities. Thus expression is not a necessary condition for status as an artwork. That leaves us with form as the most viable candidate. Moreover, though we have

reached this conclusion indirectly by negating the most prominent competing alternatives, the result, it might be said, rings true directly, since all artworks do seem at the very least to possess form. It appears obvious that form is the common denominator among all artworks, the property that they all share whether their medium is painting, sculpture, drama, photography, film, music, dance, literature, architecture or whatever. In searching for a necessary condition for art status, we are looking for a property possessed by every artwork. Formalism seems to make the most promising proposal, especially in contrast to rival theories like representationalism and expressionism. The common denominator argument suggests that form is the most plausible

contender we can find for a necessary condition of art status. But this argument does not provide us with a sufficient condition for art status, since many things other than art also possess form. Indeed, some might argue that in some sense everything possesses form. That, of course, is why the formalist speaks of significant form. But even with this ostensible refinement, it is still not the case that the formula “x is art only if it possesses significant form” will differentiate art from many other things. An effective

political speech and a theorem in symbolic logic may possess significant form, but they are not art. In order to block such counterexamples, and to establish the sufficiency of the theory, the formalist needs to add something to his or her view. Here the formalist may advert to an hypothesis about the function of artworks. Political speeches and theorems in logic may possess significant form, but it is not

their primary purpose to display their form. The primary function of a political speech is to convince an audience. The primary function of a logical theorem is to deduce a conclusion. Speechmaking and logic may result in activities noteworthy for their form, but exhibiting their form is not what they are primarily about. If they lacked significant form, they could still be extremely successful in acquitting their primary functions. Art is different from these and other activities insofar as it is, so the formalist hypothesizes, uniquely concerned with displaying significant form. No other human activity, the formalist alleges, has the exhibition of form as its

special or peculiar province of value. Its primary preoccupation with the exploration of form demarcates the realm of art from other human practices.Whereas representational content is not irrelevant to political speeches or logical deductions, representation is always, the formalist says, strictly irrelevant to artworks. Likewise, though artworks may express the emotions, other things, such as battle

cries, do so as well. However, artworks can be differentiated from battle cries if one supposes that the primary function of art is to exhibit significant form, since battle cries are not uttered in order to foreground their rhythmic structures. Artworks may be concerned with religious or political themes, moral education,

philosophical worldviews, or martial emotions. But so are many other things. Indeed, many other things, including sermons, pamphlets, newspaper editorials and philosophical treatises generally do a better job of conveying cognitive and moral information and emotional contagion than does art. What is special about art above all else, according to the formalist, is its concern with discovering formal structures that are designed to encourage our imaginative interplay with artworks. The claim that the primary function of art is the exhibition of significant form can

be worked into what we can call the function argument. This argument is designed to establish that the exhibition of significant form is a sufficient condition for status as an artwork. The argument presupposes that only if x is a primary function that is unique to art can it be a sufficient condition for status as an artwork. As in the case of the common denominator argument, the formalist then goes on to canvass the relevant alternatives: representation, expression and the exhibition of significant form. As we have already seen, neither representation nor expression are unique functions of artworks. Other activities also share these functions. But the exhibition of significant form is a primary function unique to art. Therefore, it is a sufficient criterion of art status. Along with the function argument and the common denominator argument,

formalism also gains credibility from its apparent capacity to explain certain of our intuitions about art. For example, we often criticize certain films for being too messageoriented, while commending other films for being good of their kind. Why is this? The formalist has a ready answer: a dumb, amoral film may be formally interesting – it may deploy its formal devices (editing, camera movement, color schemes and so on) – in compelling ways. In many such films, the thematic content is negligible, or even

silly, but its formal organization is riveting, whereas a film with a big idea, however important and earnestly expressed, may strike us as altogether, as they say, uncinematic. Formalism makes sense of comparative judgments like these. Likewise, formalism explains why we regard much of the art of the past as worth-

while despite the fact that the sentiments it expresses and the ideas it represents are now known to be obsolete. This contrasts with physics, where discredited theories are long forgotten and rarely consulted. The formalist explains this phenomenon by reminding us that the primary function of physics is to give us knowledge about the universe. The information contained in many past artworks is believed to be wrong, but nevertheless we still read Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, the formalist hypothesizes, because of its evident formal virtues. Because of its explanatory power and because of arguments like the common

denominator and the function arguments, formalism is an appealing view. For those who expect an essential definition in response to the question “What is art?” it provides a tidy response: x is an artwork if and only if x is primarily designed in order to possess and to exhibit significant form. (Note: the inclusion of “designed” in this formula is intended to differentiate art from nature.) Additionally, formalism has important implications about art appreciation, properly so-called. If the essential, art-making characteristic of a work is its possession and exhibition

of significant form, then the pertinent object of our attention to an artwork qua art is significant form. Artworks may contain other features, such as representation and garden-variety emotions, but these are incidental and strictly irrelevant to their status as artworks. Thus, when it comes to appreciating artworks, attention should be focused exclusively on their formal properties. Formalism has been an influential doctrine. For decades schoolchildren were

taught not to let their attention wander away from the text: not to allow their concentration to become caught up in the story’s relation to real life, rather than to savor its formal organization and features (for example, its unity, complexity and intensity). But formalism does not simply advocate certain protocols for aesthetic experience. It also attempts to ground those protocols in an ambitious philosophical theory. According to formalism, the intended primary function of exhibiting significant

form is a necessary condition for art status. But this cannot be right. Many of our greatest works of art were produced with patently different primary intentions, such as many military monuments whose primary function was to commemorate great victories. In response, the formalist may attempt to modify this condition, arguing that an artwork is something that has among its primary functions the exhibition of significant form. But this too seems unlikely. Modern art is full of examples of what are called found objects, or ready-made

objects, such as Duchamp’s Why Not Sneeze? These ordinary objects are selected and put forward as artworks in order to provoke conceptual insights. Frequently, such objects are chosen expressly because of their palpable lack of what can be called significant form. Inasmuch as these found objects are art, it cannot be the case that the exhibition of significant form is a necessary condition for art status. Moreover, counterexamples to the formalist thesis can also be located in tradi-

tional art. Many cultures produce statues of demon figures whose intended function

is to frighten intruders who wander into forbidden precincts. Such figurines are art, coveted by museums and collectors alike. But it is unimaginable that their creators could have in any way intended them as vehicles for the exhibition of significant form. Such an intention would be at odds with their intention to scare off viewers. So, once again we must conclude that the intended function of exhibiting significant form cannot be a necessary condition for art status. Is it a sufficient condition, however? Here let us return to the case of the theorem

from symbolic logic. Such theorems may possess significant form. The formalist, however, maintains that they are not artworks, because the exhibition of significant form is not among their intended primary functions. However, consider the case of a theorem whose proof has already been established, but by means of a lengthy or cumbersome set of steps. Suppose some logician decides to find a more elegant way of solving the problem, and succeeds in doing so. “Elegance” is surely a formal property, and in this case the point of the exercise is that the theorem in question possess and exhibit formal beauty. The formalist would appear to be compelled to recognize this as an artwork, but this is a fallacious result. Thus, the intended function of exhibiting significant form is not a sufficient condition for art status. Nor does our argument hinge on this one example. An athlete may have among

his or her primary intentions the desire not only to win, but to do it with arresting visual style. And though a baseball catch can be a thing of nearly balletic beauty (and be intended as such), it is not a work of art. (If we refer to it in this way as we often do, we are, of course, only speaking metaphorically.) If the intended exhibition of significant form is neither a necessary nor a sufficient

condition for art status, what are we to make of the common denominator argument and the function argument? These arguments can be stated in ways that are logically valid, yet logically valid arguments can reach false conclusions when their premises are false. The problem with the common denominator and the function arguments is that both contain false or misleading premises. The common denominator argument presupposes that the possession of either

representational, expressive or formal properties constitutes a necessary condition for art status. This presupposition can be criticized from two different directions. First, it can be pointed out that this array of alternatives does not spell out all of the relevant options, and that consequently the argument lacks proper logical closure. Unless we know that these are the only candidates available as necessary conditions for art status, we have no reason to accept formalism as the result of an argument by elimination like this one. Furthermore, we have every reason to believe that there are other candidates, such as certain historical properties (Danto 1981) and/or institutional properties (Dickie 1984). These possibilities, especially given the consensus, as already discussed, that “found objects” can qualify as works of art, may be even more comprehensive than the exhibition of formal properties. Thus, the common denominator argument is false because one of its central premises misleadingly insinuates that it has exhausted all the pertinent alternatives. A second frequently mentioned, though very different, line of objection to the

common denominator argument is that it presupposes that there must be a necessary feature shared by all artworks. Followers of Ludwig Wittgenstein such as Morris Weitz (1956) have questioned this. Believing that all artworks necessarily possess a

common feature seems to be more an article of faith than an established fact. What we call art seems so very diverse. There are so many different art forms and so much variety within art forms. Why suppose that they share a single common property or even a single set of common properties? Is it plausible to suppose that John Cage’s 4’ 33” has an essential property that corresponds to an essential feature of the Taj Mahal? Bell said that we gibber if we cannot adduce a feature common to all artworks.

But we apply many concepts, like the concept of game, in ordinary language without being able to name an essential property that every object that falls under the concept possesses. Many theories abound about how we are able to do this. Thus, we may not have to worry about gibbering if we deny that the concept of art is governed by necessary conditions. Moreover, if one agrees that one of the alternatives that should be added to the common denominator argument is the possibility that art has no necessary conditions, one may resist the conclusion that formalism is the obvious survivor of the sort of process of elimination the common denominator argument invites. Similar problems beset the function argument. It too ignores the possibility that

there may be no primary function (or set of primary functions) unique to art, as well as the possibility that the functions of art may reside somewhere other than in representation, expression or the exhibition of significant form. Thus, the function argument does not compel us to agree that the exhibition of significant form is a sufficient condition for art status. Moreover, both the common denominator argument and the function argument,

along with the general statement of the formalist definition of art, are plagued by a problem that we have so far left unremarked, namely that the concept of significant form that is the central term of the formalist’s arguments and definition is regrettably indeterminate. Without some idea of the nature of significant form or some criteria for recognizing it, we must worry (stealing a line from Bell) that when we employ it, we gibber. What exactly is significant form? The formalist gives us no way to discriminate

between significant form and insignificant form. Formalists may give us examples of each, but no principles. What makes one juxtaposition of shapes significant and another not? We have no way to decide. Nor can it be said, as some say of art, that reliable criteria for applying significant form inhere in ordinary language, since “significant form” is not a term of ordinary usage, but a piece of jargon. Thus, obscurity lies at the heart of formalism; the theory turns out to be useless, because its central term is undefined. The formalist might say that a work has significant form if it is arresting. But that

is not enough, since a work can be arresting for reasons other than formal ones, or even in virtue of formal properties that are not significant in the formalist’s sense: such as its unusual, all-over monotone color. How, without a characterization of significant form, will we know whether a work is arresting because it possesses significant form, rather than for some other reason? Often formalists attempt to repair this shortcoming by saying that significant form

is such that it causes a special mental state in the minds of viewers. But this is not a helpful suggestion unless the formalist can define that state of mind. Otherwise we

are left with one undefined concept posing as a definition of another, which is effectively equivalent to having no definition at all. Nor can the formalist say that significant form is that which causes the peculiar state of mind in percipients that is the apprehension of significant form, since such a definition is circular. We would already have to possess the concept of significant form in order to tell whether the mental state was indeed an apprehension of significant form. It is impossible here to review all the different proposals – in terms of notions like

aesthetic emotion and aesthetic experience – that formalists have attempted to craft in order to characterize the putative mental state that significant form is alleged to afford. To date, none of these has been anything less than controversial. Thus, at this point in time, the burden of proof falls to the formalist, since on the face of it it appears unlikely that there is a distinctive state of mind elicited by all and only artworks. That is, since there are so many different kinds of artwork that require all sorts of mental responses, it is doubtful that there is just one mental state which they all induce. Does a feminist novel really engender the same kind of mental state as a Fabergé egg? Is there really some uniform aesthetic experience elicited by all artworks? Until that question is answered positively, precisely and persuasively, the idea that significant form can be explicated by reference to aesthetic experience remains moot. But without such an answer, the notion of significant form is too vague to be credible. Perhaps the most incendiary corollary of formalism is the idea that representational

properties in artworks, whenever they appear in artworks, are strictly irrelevant to their status as art and to our appreciation of them as artworks. According to formalists, we must appreciate artworks in terms of their purely formal relationships, divorced from the claims and concepts of daily life. But this is a very unlikely doctrine, for the simple reason that what is called significant form frequently supervenes on the representational content of artworks. In order to access the form of a novel – to track its unity and diversity, to

appreciate its intensity or its lack thereof – we must attend to its representations of actions, places and characters. We must generally bring to the novel the kinds of schemas, scripts and folk psychology that cognitive scientists tell us we bring to the affairs of ordinary life. But if in order to admire the structure of oppositional relationships among the characters in a novel we must deploy the categories of ordinary life (such as what are called person schemas) to the states of affairs the novelist represents, then the notion that representation and its connection to ordinary experience is strictly irrelevant is grievously mistaken. Furthermore, it is not difficult to extend observations like this to our apprehension of

form in many historical, mythological, religious and otherwise narrative paintings and sculptures, since there too form often comes to light only in the shadows of representational content. As a heuristic, formalism may be a useful pedagogical standpoint. It reminds us

that it is important not to overlook the formal dimension of artworks. Artists spend an immense amount of energy designing the structures of artworks, and attending to the intelligence disclosed by the form of a work can be a rewarding source of satisfaction for readers, viewers or listeners. However, transforming this near-truism into a philosophy of art, as the formalist does, impoverishes rather than enriches our understanding of art.