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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