Michael; It was Clive Bell who used the term significant form to refer to a particular arrangement or attitude that could be presented in art. He used the term to mean much the same thing as the Beaux-Arts artists did but didn't attach it to the notion of the moral, as the Beaux-Arts artists did. That's why I brought up the term. I think it's curious that modern art theory, such as significant form (now , simply formalism) is never discussed in its historical use which linked it to the moral. Whether formalism is moral or not is separate from being identical with any views of nature as it is or as presented. But since the moral has been cast off from modernist formalism, it can adhere to nature; nature can be said to be moral now. That is the crux of the issue regarding your own definition. Where is the moral, in nature or in art? You say that nature demoralizes art. I suppose that puts it in art. Then you say art moralizes nature. That puts it in nature. The moral is shuttled back and forth. OK. By what means? What agent is tossing the hot potato, the moral, back and forth between nature and art? wc
----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, July 30, 2012 7:25:00 AM Subject: Re: is list dead? William > Your view seems to accept 'nature' as it is. Not "as is," but "as given." Nature, i.e., what I perceive as outside of me, preexists me and presents itself to me unaltered by me. (NOT unaltered by my perception, but the stimuli that arrive at my senses.) > The artists of the so-called Beaux > Arts Style (capital S signifies that Style is a perceptual method) did not > accept Nature as it is but sought to idealize it, to perfect it, according to an > imposed formal harmony. Where that harmony comes from is the issue because it > may be -- for Beaux-Arts artists -- potentially present in Nature, it was not > explicitly present. I came from the mind and it was divinely inspired, in > accordance with God. An effort to make art in accordance with God's will or plan > or grace was moral and it was exemplified by significant form (idealized form). But the ancient Greeks already wrestled with this question. Should the sculptor attempt to find the most perfect single model and emulate it? Should the sculptor find the most perfect discrete forms in several models--a face here, a torso there, legs and arms in others? Or should the sculptor seek to discern the perfection of each part and the entire whole implicit but not present in individuals and then produce the paragon in a single statue (in effect, an expression of Platonic idealism)? The common feature in all of these approaches is not the qualities that may or may not inhere in the natural models but the perception and description of them in the sculptor. The sculptor abstracts or educes the schema of the models and propounds a rule or canon that declares the superiority and moral desirablity of these measurements, proporitons, fitness, etc. > The chief problem with your view "art moralizes nature; nature moralizes art' is > the absence of a definition of nature. Does this nature have a consciousness? Is > it God? Is it reality? And what is art if it can be separate from nature? What is that a problem, if I cannot change the fact or genesis of Nature? What is any human activity and product? Are they not all "separate from nature" because they transform and modify natural objects? BTW, I say, "Nature DEmoralizes art." I mean it as a play on words: Nature removes the morality of art by having no concern with or being constrained by the rules of art; and it demoralizes art, i.e., artists who cannot come close to the splendor of nature, but can only produce different kinds of admirable or dazzling or alluring facsimiles of natural objects. > Let's take the case of Constable. Here was an artist who wanted to paint nature > as it is. But of course he couldn't do that. He had to re-arrange, select, > exaggerate, abstract, invent, and yet in the end he made paintings that are > 'natural, seemingly unidealized presentations of nature. The same could be said > of Courbet. One could argue that both artists followed a 'significant form' > theory and yet their art does not have the graceful artificiality of the > Beaux-Arts Style. That art (Victoriana stuff and our friend Bouguereau) made the > most of linear harmony at the expense of natural complexity and the rough > presence of nature (as in Constable or Courbet). This both the nature of > Constable and Courbet and the Style (as in Bouguereau) seem to satisfy your > synthetic -- tautology? -- definition and the two kinds of art contradict each > other and both leave the notion of 'significant form' begging a stable > definition, too. Why do you mention "significant form," other than just to refute or discard it? That seems like a straw man argument. I did not mention it, not did I mean to imply it. (I infer that you intend to connect it to Fry's argument; otherwise why would you use that very recognizable term?) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
