Significant form
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible - significant form. In each, lines and colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions."--Art (1914) by Clive Bell |
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Significant form refers to an aesthetic theory developed by English art critic Clive Bell which specified a set of criteria for what qualified as a work of art. In his 1914 Book Art, Bell postulated that for an object to be deemed a work of art it required potential to provoke aesthetic emotion in its viewer, a quality he termed "significant form." Bell's definition explicitly separated significant form from beauty; in order to possess significant form, an object need not be attractive as long as it elicits an emotional response.
