Aesthetic Formalism

Formalism in aesthetics has traditionally been taken to refer to the view in the philosophy
of art that the properties in virtue of which an artwork is an artwork—and in virtue of
which its value is determined—are formal in the sense of being accessible by direct
sensation (typically sight or hearing) alone.
While such Formalist intuitions have a long history, prominent anti-Formalist arguments
towards the end of the twentieth century (for example, from Arthur Danto and Kendall
Walton according to which none of the aesthetic properties of a work of art are purely
formal) have been taken by many to be decisive. Yet in the early twenty-first century there
has been a renewed interest in and defense of Formalism. Contemporary discussion has
revealed both “extreme” and more “moderate” positions, but the most notable departure
from traditional accounts is the move from Artistic to Aesthetic Formalism.

One might more accurately summarize contemporary Formalist thinking by noting the
complaint that prominent anti-Formalist arguments fail to accommodate an important
aspect of our aesthetic lives, namely those judgements and experiences (in relation to art,
but also beyond the art-world) which should legitimately be referred to as “aesthetic” but
which are accessible by direct sensation, and proceed independently of one’s knowledge
or appreciation of a thing’s function, history, or context.

The presentation below is divided into five parts. Part 1 outlines an historical overview. It
considers some prominent antecedents to Formalist thinking in the nineteenth century,
reviews twentieth century reception (including the anti-Formalist arguments that
emerged in the latter part of this period), before closing with a brief outline of the main
components of the twenty-first century Formalist revival. Part 2 returns to the early part
of the twentieth century for a more in-depth exploration of one influential
characterisation and defense of Artistic Formalism developed by art-critic Clive Bell in his
book Art (1913). Critical reception of Bell’s Formalism has been largely unsympathetic,
and some of the more prominent concerns with this view will be discussed here before
turning—in Part 3—to the Moderate Aesthetic Formalism developed in the early part of
the twenty-first century by Nick Zangwill in his The Metaphysics of Beauty (2001). Part
4 considers the application of Formalist thinking beyond the art world by considering
Zangwill’s responses to anti-Formalist arguments regarding the aesthetic appreciation of
nature. The presentation closes with a brief conclusion (Part 5) together with references
and suggested further reading.

Table of Contents
1. A Brief History of Formalism
a. Nineteenth Century Antecedents
b. Twentieth Century Reception
2. Clive Bell’s Artistic Formalism
. Clive Bell and ‘Significant Form’
a. The Pursuit of Lasting Values
b. Aesthetic versus Non-Aesthetic Appreciation
c. Conclusions: From Artistic to (Moderate) Aesthetic Formalism
3. Nick Zangwill’s Moderate Aesthetic Formalism
. Extreme Formalism, Moderate Formalism, Anti-Formalism
a. Responding to Kendall Walton’s Anti-Formalism
b. Kant’s Formalism
4. From Art to the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature
. Anti-Formalism and Nature
a. Formalism and Nature.
5. Conclusions
6. References and Further Reading

1. A Brief History of Formalism

a. Nineteenth Century Antecedents

When A. G. Baumgarten introduced the term “aesthetic” into the philosophy of art it
seemed to be taken up with the aim of recognising, as well as unifying, certain practices,
and perhaps even the concept of beauty itself. It is of note that the phrase l’art pour
l’art seemed to gain significance at roughly the same time that the term aesthetic came
into wider use.

Much has been done in recognition of the emergence and consolidation of the l’art pour
l’art movement which, as well as denoting a self-conscious rebellion against Victorian
moralism, has been variously associated with bohemianism and Romanticism and
characterises a contention that, for some, encapsulates a central position on art for the
main part of the nineteenth century. First appearing in Benjamin Constant’s Journal
intime as early as 1804 under a description of Schiller’s aesthetics, the initial statement:
“L’art pour l’art without purpose, for all purpose perverts art” has been taken not only as
a synonym for the disinterestedness reminiscent of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic but as
a modus operandi in its own right for a particular evaluative framework and
corresponding practice of those wishing to produce and insomuch define the boundaries
of artistic procedure.

These two interpretations are related insofar as it is suggested that the emergence of this
consolidated school of thought takes its initial airings from a superficial misreading of
Kant’s Critique of Judgement (a connection we will return to in Part 3).
Kant’s Critique was not translated into French until 1846, long after a number of allusions
that implicate an understanding and certainly a derivation from Kant’s work. John Wilcox
(1953) describes how early proponents, such as Victor Cousin, spoke and wrote
vicariously of Kant’s work or espoused positions whose Kantian credentials can be—
somewhat undeservedly it turns out—implicated. The result was that anyone interested
in the arts in the early part of the nineteenth century would be exposed to a new aesthetic
doctrine whose currency involved variations on terms including aesthetic, disinterest,
free, beauty, form and sublime.

By the 1830s, a new school of aesthetics thus accessed the diluted Kantian notions of
artistic genius giving form to the formless, presented in Scheller’s aesthetics, via the
notion of beauty as disinterested sensual pleasure, found in Cousin and his followers,
towards an understanding of a disinterested emotion which constitutes the apprehension
of beauty. All or any of which could be referred to by the expression L’art pour l’art; all of
which became increasingly associated with the term aesthetic.

Notable adoption, and thus identification with what may legitimately be referred to as
this “school of thought” included Victor Hugo, whose preface to Cromwell, in 1827, went
on to constitute a manifesto for the French Romantic movement and certainly gave
support to the intuitions at issue. Théophile Gautier, recognising a theme in Hugo,
promoted a pure art-form less constrained by religious, social or political authority. In
the preface to his Premières poesies (1832) he writes: “What [end] does this [book] serve?
– it serves by being beautiful… In general as soon as something becomes useful it ceases
to be beautiful”. This conflict between social usefulness versus pure art also gained, on
the side of the latter, an association with Walter Pater whose influence on the English
Aesthetic movement blossomed during the 1880s where the adoption of sentimental
archaism as the ideal of beauty was carried to extravagant lengths. Here associations were
forged with the likes of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons, further securing (though not
necessarily promoting) a connection with aestheticism in general. Such recognition
would see the influence of l’art pour l’art stretch well beyond the second half of the
nineteenth century.

As should be clear from this brief outline it is not at all easy, nor would it be appropriate,
to suggest the emergence of a strictly unified school of thought. There are at least two
strands that can be separated in what has been stated so far. At one extreme we can
identify claims like the following from the preface of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray:
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly
written.” Here the emphasis is initially on the separation of the value of art from social or
moral aims and values. The sentiment is clearly reminiscent of Gautier’s claim: “Only
those things that are altogether useless can be truly beautiful; anything that is useful is
ugly; for it is the expression of some need…”. Yet for Wilde, and many others, the claim
was taken more specifically to legitimise the production and value of amoral, or at least
morally controversial, works.

In a slightly different direction (although recognisably local to the above), one might cite
James Whistler: Art should be independent of all claptrap—should stand alone […] and
appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely
foreign to it, in devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like.

While the second half of this statement seems merely to echo the sentiments expressed
by Wilde in the same year, there is, in the first half, recognition of the contention Whistler
was later to voice with regard to his painting; one that expressed a focus, foremost, on the
arrangement of line, form and colour in the work. Here we see an element of l’art pour
l’art that anticipated the importance of formal features in the twentieth century, holding
that artworks contain all the requisite value inherently—they do not need to borrow
significance from biographical, historical, psychological or sociological sources. This line
of thought was pursued, and can be identified, in Eduard Hanslick’s The Beautiful in
Music (1891); Clive Bell’s Art (1913); and Roger Fry’s Vision and Design (1920). The
ruminations of which are taken to have given justification to various art movements from
abstract, non-representational art, through Dada, Surrealism, Cubism.

While marked here as two separable strands, a common contention can be seen to run
through the above intuitions; one which embarks from, but preserves, something of the
aesthetic concept of disinterestedness, which Kant expressed as purposiveness without
purpose. L’art pour l’art can be seen to encapsulate a movement that swept through Paris
and England in the form of the new Aesthetic (merging along the way with the Romantic
Movement and bohemianism), but also the central doctrine that formed not only the
movement itself, but a well-established tradition in the history of aesthetics. L’art pour
l’art captures not just a movement but an aesthetic theory; one that was adopted and
defended by both critics and artists as they shaped art history itself.

b. Twentieth Century Reception

Towards the end of the twentieth century Leonard Meyer (in Dutton, 1983) characterised
the intuition that we should judge works of art on the basis of their intrinsic formal
qualities alone as a “common contention” according to which the work of art is said to
have its complete meaning “within itself”. On this view, cultural and stylistic history, and
the genesis of the artwork itself do not enhance true understanding. Meyer even suggests
that the separation of the aesthetic from religion, politics, science and so forth, was
anticipated (although not clearly distinguished) in Greek thought. It has long been
recognised that aesthetic behaviour is different from ordinary behaviour; however, Meyer
goes on to argue that this distinction has been taken too far. Citing the Artistic Formalism
associated with Clive Bell (see Part 2), he concludes that in actual practice we
do not judge works of art in terms of their intrinsic formal qualities alone.

However, Artistic Formalism, or its close relatives, have met with serious (or potentially
disabling) opposition of the kind found in Meyer. Gregory Currie (1989) and David Davies
(2004) both illustrate a similar disparity between our actual critical and appreciative
practices and what is (in the end) suggested to be merely some pre-theoretical intuition.
Making such a point in his An Ontology of Art, Currie draws together a number of
familiar and related aesthetic stances under the term “Aesthetic Empiricism”, according
to which

[T]he boundaries of the aesthetic are set by the boundaries of vision, hearing or verbal
understanding, depending on which art form is in question. (Currie, 1989, p.18)

Currie asserts that empiricism finds its natural expression in aesthetics in the view that a
work—a painting, for instance—is a “sensory surface”. Such a view was, according to
Currie, supposed by David Prall when he said that “Cotton will suffice aesthetically for
snow, provided that at our distance from it it appears snowy”. It is the assumption we
recover from Monroe Beardsley (1958) in the view that the limits of musical appreciation
are the limits of what can be heard in a work. Currie also recognises a comparable
commitment concerning literature in Wimsatt and Beardsley’s The Intentional
Fallacy (1946). We can add to Currie’s list Clive Bell’s claim that

To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its
ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions… we need bring with us nothing but a
sense of form and colour and a knowledge of three-dimensional space.

Alfred Lessing, in his “What is Wrong with Forgery?” (in Dutton, 1983), argues that on
the assumption that an artwork is a “sensory surface” it does seem a natural extension to
claim that what is aesthetically valuable in a painting is a function solely of how it looks.
This “surface” terminology, again, relates back to Prall who characterised the aesthetic in
terms of an exclusive interest in the “surface” of things, or the thing as seen, heard, felt,
immediately experienced. It echoes Fry’s claim that aesthetic interest is constituted only
by an awareness of “order and variety in the sensuous plane”. However, like Kendall
Walton (1970) and Arthur Danto (1981) before him, Currie’s conclusion is that this
common and influential view is nonetheless false.

Walton’s anti-formalism is presented in his essay “Categories of Art” in which he first

argues that the aesthetic properties one perceives an artwork as having will depend on
which category one perceives the work as belonging to (for example, objects protruding
from a canvas seen under the category of “painting”—rather than under the category of
“collage”—may appear contrary to expectation and thus surprising, disturbing, or
incongruous). Secondly, Walton argues that the aesthetic properties an artwork actually
has are those it is perceived as having when seen under the category to which it actually
belongs. Determination of “correct” categories requires appeal to such things as artistic
intentions, and as knowledge concerning these requires more than a sense of form, color,
and knowledge of three-dimensional space, it follows that Artistic Formalism must be
false (see Part 3 for a more in-depth discussion of Walton’s anti-formalist arguments).

Similarly, Danto’s examples—these include artworks such as Marcel Duchamp’s

“Readymades”, Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, and Danto’s hypothetical set of indiscernible
red squares that constitute distinct artworks with distinct aesthetic properties (indeed,
two of which are not artworks at all but “mere things”)—are generally taken to provide
insurmountable difficulties for traditional Artistic Formalism. Danto argues that,
regarding most artworks, it is possible to imagine two objects that are formally or
perceptually indistinguishable but differ in artistic value, or perhaps are not artworks at
all.

Despite the prominence of these anti-formalist arguments, there has been some notable
resistance from the Formalist camp. In 1983 Denis Dutton published a collection of
articles on forgery and the philosophy of art under the title The Forger’s Art. Here, in an
article written for the collection, Jack Meiland argues that the value of originality in art is
not an aesthetic value. In criticism of the (above) position held by Leonard Meyer, who
defends the value of originality in artworks, Meiland asks whether the original Rembrandt
has greater aesthetic value than the copy? He refers to “the appearance theory of aesthetic
value” according to which aesthetic value is independent of the non-visual properties of
the work of art, such as its historical properties. On this view, Meiland argues, the copy,
being visually indistinguishable from the original, is equal in aesthetic value. Indeed, he
points to an arguable equivocation in the sense of the word “original” or “originality”.
The originality of the work will be preserved in the copy—it is rather the level
of creativity that may be surrendered. We might indeed take the latter to devalue the
copied work, but Meiland argues that while originality is a feature of a work, creativity is
a feature applicable to the artist or in this case a feature lacking in the copyist, it therefore
cannot affect the aesthetic quality of the work. Thus we cannot infer from the lack of
creativity on the part of the artist that the work itself lacks originality.

This distinction between “artistic” and “aesthetic” value marks the transition from Artistic
to Aesthetic Formalism. Danto, for example, actually endorsed a version of the latter in
maintaining that (while indistinguishable objects may differ in terms of
their artistic value or art-status) in being perceptually indiscernible, two objects would
be aesthetically indiscernible also. Hence, at its strongest formulation Aesthetic
Formalism distinguishes aesthetic from non-aesthetic value whilst maintaining that the
former is restricted to those values that can be detected merely by attending to what can
be seen, heard, or immediately experienced. Values not discerned in this way may be
important, but should not be thought of as (purely) “aesthetic” values.

Nick Zangwill (2001) has developed a more moderate Aesthetic Formalism, drawing on
the Kantian distinction between free (formal) and dependent (non-formal) beauty. In
relation to the value of art, Zangwill accepts that “extreme formalism” (according to
which all the aesthetic properties of a work of art are formal) is false. But so too are
strongly anti-Formalist positions such as those attributable to Walton, Danto, and Currie
(according to which none of the aesthetic properties of a work of art are purely formal).
Whilst conceding that the restrictions imposed by Formalism on those features of an
artwork available for consideration are insufficient to deliver some aesthetic judgements
that are taken to be central to the discourse, Zangwill maintains that there is nonetheless
an “important truth” in formalism. Many artworks have a mix of formal and non-formal
aesthetic properties, and at least some artworks have only formal aesthetic properties.
Moreover, this insight from the Aesthetic Formalisist is not restricted to the art world.
Many non-art objects also have important formal aesthetic properties. Zangwill even goes
so far as to endorse extreme Aesthetic Formalism about inorganic natural items (such as
rocks and sunsets).

2. Clive Bell’s Artistic Formalism

In Part 1 we noted the translation of the L’art pour l’art stance onto pictorial art with
reference to Whistler’s appeal to “the artistic sense of eye and ear”. Many of the accounts
referred to above focus on pictorial artworks and the specific response that can be elicited
by these. Here in particular it might be thought that Bell’s Artistic Formalism offers a
position that theoretically consolidates the attitudes described.

Formalism of this kind has received largely unsympathetic treatment for its estimation
that perceptual experience of line and colour is uniquely and properly the domain of the
aesthetic. Yet there is some intuitive plausibility to elements of the view Bell describes
which have been preserved in subsequent attempts to re-invigorate an interest in the
application of formalism to aesthetics (see Part 3). In this section we consider Bell’s initial
formulation, identifying (along the way) those themes that re-emerge in contemporary
discussion.

a. Clive Bell and ‘Significant Form’

The claim under consideration is that in pictorial art (if we may narrow the scope for the
purposes of this discussion) a work’s value is a function of its beauty and beauty is to be
found in the formal qualities and arrangement of paint on canvas. Nothing more is
required to judge the value of a work. Here is Bell:

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 colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms,
stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinations of lines and colours, these
aesthetically moving forms, I call “Significant Form”; and “Significant Form” is the one
quality common to all works of visual art. (1913, p.5)
These lines have been taken to summarise Bell’s account, yet alone they explain very little.
One requires a clear articulation of what “aesthetic emotions” are, and what it is to have
them stirred. Also it seems crucial to note that for Bell we have no other means of
recognising a work of art than our feeling for it. The subjectivity of such a claim is, for
Bell, to be maintained in any system of aesthetics. Furthermore it is the exercise of
bringing the viewer to feel the aesthetic emotion (combined with an attempt to account
for the degree of aesthetic emotion experienced) that constitutes the function of criticism.
“…[I]t 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.” Without such an emotional attachment the subject will be in no
position to legitimately attribute to the object the status of artwork.

Unlike the proponents of the previous century Bell is not so much claiming
an ought (initially) but an is. Significant form must be the measure of artistic value as it
is the only thing that all those works we have valued through the ages have in common.
For Bell we have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it. If a
work is unable to engage our feelings it fails, it is not art. If it engages our feelings, but
feelings that are sociologically contingent (for example, certain moral sensibilities that
might be diminished or lost over time), it is not engaging aesthetic sensibilities and,
inasmuch, is not art. Thus if a work is unable to stir the viewer in this precise and
uncontaminated way (in virtue of its formal qualities alone), it will be impossible to
ascribe to the object the status of artwork.

We are, then, to understand that certain forms—lines, colours, in particular

combinations—are de facto producers of some kind of aesthetic emotion. They are in this
sense “significant” in a manner that other forms are not. Without exciting aesthetic
rapture, although certain forms may interest us; amuse us; capture our attention, the
object under scrutiny will not be a work of art. Bell tells us that art can transport us

[F]rom the world of man’s activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment we are
shut off from human interests; our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted
above the stream of life. The pure mathematician rapt in his studies knows a state of mind
which I take to be similar if not identical.

Thus the significance in question is a significance unrelated to the significance of life. “In
this [the aesthetic] world the emotions of life find no place. It is a world with emotions
of its own.” Bell writes that before feeling an aesthetic emotion one perceives the rightness
and necessity of the combination of form at issue, he even considers whether it is this,
rather than the form itself, that provokes the emotion in question. Bell’s position appears
to echo G. E. Moore’s intuitionism in the sense that one merely contemplates the object
and recognises the significant form that constitutes its goodness.

But the spectator is not required to know anything more than that significant form is
exhibited. Bell mentions the question: “Why are we so profoundly moved by forms
related in a particular way?” yet dismisses the matter as extremely interesting but
irrelevant to aesthetics. Bell’s view is that for “pure aesthetics” we need only consider our
emotion and its object—we do not need to “pry behind the object into the state of mind of
him who made it.” For pure aesthetics, then, it need only be agreed that certain
forms do move us in certain ways, it being the business of an artist to arrange forms such
that they so move us.

b. The Pursuit of Lasting Values

Central to Bell’s account was a contention that the response elicited in the apprehension
of significant form is one incomparable with the emotional responses of the rest of
experience. The world of human interests and emotions do, of course, temper a great deal
of our interactions with valuable objects, these can be enjoyable and beneficial, but
constitute impure appreciation. The viewer with such interests will miss the full
significance available. He or she will not get the best that art can give. Bell is scathing of
the mistaken significance that can be attributed to representational content, this too
signifies impure appreciation. He suggests that those artists “too feeble to create forms
that provoke more than a little aesthetic emotion will try to eke that little out by
suggesting the emotions of life”. Such interests betray a propensity in artists and viewers
to merely bring to art and take away nothing more than the ideas and associations of their
own age or experience. Such prima facie significance is the significance of a defective
sensibility. As it depends only on what one can bring to the object, nothing new is added
to one’s life in its apprehension. For Bell, then, significant form is able to carry the viewer
out of life and into ecstasy. The true artist is capable of feeling such emotion, which can
be expressed only in form; it is this that the subject apprehends in the true artwork.

Much visual art is concerned with the physical world—whatever the emotion the artists
express may be, it seemingly comes through the contemplation of the familiar. Bell is
careful to state, therefore, that this concern for the physical world can be (or should be)
nothing over and above a concern for the means to the inspired emotional state. Any
other concerns, such as practical utility, are to be ignored by art. With this claim Bell
meant to differentiate the use of artworks for documentary, educational, or historical
purposes. Such attentions lead to a loss of the feeling of emotions that allow one to get to
the thing in itself. These are interests that come between things and our emotional
reaction to them. In this area Bell is dismissive of the practice of intellectually carving up
our environment into practically identified individuations. Such a practice is superficial
in requiring our contemplation only to the extent to which an object is to be utilised. It
marks a habit of recognising the label and overlooking the thing, and is indicative of a
visual shallowness that prohibits the majority of us from seeing “emotionally” and from
grasping the significance of form.

Bell holds that the discerning viewer is concerned only with line and colour, their relations
and qualities, the apprehension of which (in significant form) can allow the viewer an
emotion more powerful, profound, and genuinely significant than can be afforded by any
description of facts or ideas. Thus, for Bell:
Great art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that it awakens are
independent of time and place, because its kingdom is not of this world. To those who
have and hold a sense of the significance of form what does it matter whether the forms
that move them were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries
ago. The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion
to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy. (1913, p.16)

What Bell seems to be pushing for is a significance that will not be contingent on
peculiarities of one age or inclination, and it is certainly interesting to see what a pursuit
of this characteristic can yield. However, it is unclear why one may only reach this kind of
significance by looking to emotions that are (in some sense) out of this world. Some have
criticised Bell on his insistence that aesthetic emotion could be a response wholly separate
from the rest of a person’s emotional character. Thomas McLaughlin (1977) claims that
there could not be a pure aesthetic emotion in Bell’s sense, arguing that the aesthetic
responses of a spectator are influenced by her normal emotional patterns. On this view
the spectator’s emotions, including moral reactions, are brought directly into play under
the control of the artist’s technique. It is difficult to deny that the significance,
provocativeness and interest in many works of art do indeed require the spectator to bring
with them their worldly experiences and sensibilities. John Carey (2005) is equally
condemning of Bell’s appeal to the peculiar emotion provided by works of art. He is
particularly critical of Bell’s contention that the same emotion could be transmitted
between discreet historical periods (or between artist and latter-day spectator). On the
one hand, Bell could not possibly know he is experiencing the same emotion as the
Chaldean four thousand years earlier, but more importantly to experience the same
emotion one would have to share the same unconscious, to have undergone the same
education, to have been shaped by the same emotional experiences.

It is important to note that such objections are not entirely decisive. Provocativeness in
general and indeed any interests of this kind are presumably ephemeral qualities of a
work. These are exactly the kinds of transitory evaluations that Bell was keen to sidestep
in characterising true works and the properties of lasting value. The same can be said for
all those qualities that are only found in a work in virtue of the spectator’s peculiar
education and emotional experience. Bell does acknowledge such significances but
doesn’t give to them the importance that he gives to formal significance. It is when we
strip away the interests, educations, and the provocations of a particular age that we get
to those works that exhibit lasting worth. Having said that, there is no discernible
argument in support of the claim that the lasting worth Bell attempts to isolate should be
taken to be more valuable, more (or genuinely) significant than the kinds of ephemeral
values he dismisses. Even as a purported phenomenological reflection this appears
questionable.

In discussion of much of the criticism Bell’s account has received it is important not to
run together two distinct questions. On the one hand there is the question of whether or
not there exists some emotion that is peculiar to the aesthetic; that is “otherworldly” in
the sense that it is not to be confused with those responses that temper the rest of our
lives. The affirmation of this is certainly implicated in Bell’s account and is rightly met
with some consternation. But what is liable to become obscured is that the suggestion of
such an inert aesthetic emotion was part of Bell’s solution to the more interesting
question with which his earlier writing was concerned. This question concerns whether
or not one might isolate a particular reaction to certain (aesthetic) objects that
is sufficiently independent of time, place and enculturation that one might expect it to be
exhibited in subjects irrespective of their historical and social circumstance.

One response to this question is indeed to posit an emotional response that is unlike all
those responses that are taken to be changeable and contingent on time, culture and so
forth. Looking at the changeable interests of the art-world over time, one might well see
that an interest in representation or subject matter betrays the spectator’s allegiance to
“the gross herd” (as Bell puts it) of some era. But it seems this response is unsatisfactory.
As we have seen, McLaughlin and Carey are sceptical of the kind of inert emotion Bell
stipulates. Bell’s response to such criticisms is to claim that those unable to accept the
postulation are simply ignorant of the emotion he describes. While this is philosophically
unsatisfactory the issue is potentially moot. Still, it might be thought that there are other
ways in which one might characterise lasting value such as to capture the kind of quality
Bell pursued whilst dismissing the more ephemeral significances that affect a particular
time.

Regarding the second question, it is tempting to see something more worthwhile in Bell’s
enterprise. There is at least some prima facie attraction to Bell’s response, for, assuming
that one is trying to distinguish art from non-art, if one hopes to capture something stable
and unobscure in drawing together all those things taken to be art, one might indeed look
to formal properties of works and one will (presumably) only include those works from
any time that do move us in the relevant respect. What is lacking in Bell’s account is some
defense of the claim, firstly that those things that move Bell are the domain of true value,
and secondly that we should be identifying something stable and unobscure. Why should
we expect to identify objects of antiquity as valuable artworks on the basis of their stirring
our modern dispositions (excepting the claim—Bell’s claim—that such dispositions are
not modern at all but timeless)? Granted, there are some grounds for pursuing the kind
of account Bell offers, particularly if one is interested in capturing those values that stand
the test of time. However, Bell appears to motivate such a pursuit by making a qualitative
claim that such values are in some way more significant, more valuable than those he
rejects. And it is difficult to isolate any argument for such a claim.

c. Aesthetic versus Non-Aesthetic Appreciation

The central line of Bell’s account that appears difficult to accept is that while one might
be able to isolate a specifically perceptual response to artworks, it seems that one could
only equate this response with all that is valuable in art if one were able to qualify the
centrality of this response to the exclusion of others. This presentation will not address
(as some critics do) the question of whether such a purely aesthetic response can be
identified; this must be addressed if anything close to Bell’s account is to be pursued. But
for the time being all one need acknowledge is that the mere existence of this response is
not enough to legitimise the work Bell expected it to do. A further argument is required
to justify a thesis that puts formal features (or our responses to these) at centre stage.

Yet aside from this aim there are some valuable mechanisms at work in Bell’s theory. As
a corollary of his general stance, Bell mentions that to understand art we do not need to
know anything about art-history. It may be that from works of art we can draw inferences
as to the sort of people who made them; but an intimate understanding of an artist will
not tell us whether his pictures are any good. This point again relates to Bell’s contention
that pure aesthetics is concerned only with the question of whether or not objects have a
specific emotional significance to us. Other questions, he believes, are not questions for
aesthetics:

To appreciate a man’s art I need know nothing whatever about the artist; I can say
whether this picture is better than that without the help of history, but if I am trying
to account for the deterioration of his art, I shall be helped by knowing that he has been
seriously ill… To mark the deterioration was to make a pure, aesthetic judgement: to
account for it was to become an historian. (1913, pp.44-5, emphasis added)

The above passage illustrates an element of Bell’s account some subsequent thinkers have
been keen to preserve. Bell holds that attributing value to a work purely on the basis of
the position it holds within an art-historical tradition, (because it is by Picasso, or marks
the advent of cubism) is not a pursuit of aesthetics. Although certain features and
relations may be interesting historically, aesthetically these can be of no consequence.
Indeed valuing an object because it is old, interesting, rare, or precious can over-cloud
one’s aesthetic sensibility and puts one at a disadvantage compared to the viewer who
knows and cares nothing of the object under consideration. Representation is, also,
nothing to do with art’s value according to Bell. Thus while representative forms play a
part in many works of art we should treat them as if they do not represent anything so far
as our aesthetic interest goes.

It is fairly well acknowledged that Bell had a non-philosophical agenda for these kinds of
claims. It is easy to see in Bell a defense of the value of abstract art over other art forms
and this was indeed his intention. The extent to which Renaissance art can be considered
great, for example, has nothing to do with representational accuracy but must be
considered only in light of the formal qualities exhibited. In this manner many of the
values formerly identified in artworks, and indeed movements, would have to be
dismissed as deviations from the sole interest of the aesthetic: the pursuit of significant
form.

There is a sense in which we should not underplay the role of the critic or philosopher
who should be capable of challenging our accepted practices; capable of refining or
cultivating our tastes. To this end Bell’s claims are not out of place. However, while there
is some tendency to reflect upon purely formal qualities of a work of art rather than
artistic technique or various associations; while there is a sense in which many artists
attempt to depict something beyond the evident (utility driven) perceptual shallowness
that can dictate our perceptual dealings, it remains obscure why this should be
our only interest. Unfortunately, the exclusionary nature of Bell’s account seems only to
be concerned with the aesthetic narrowly conceived, excluding any possibility of the
development of, or importance of, other values and interests, both as things stand and in
future artistic development. Given the qualitative claim Bell demands concerning the
superior value of significant form this appears more and more troubling with the
increasing volume of works (and indeed values) that would have to be ignored under Bell’s
formulation.

As a case in point (perhaps a contentious one but there are any number of related
examples), consider Duchamp’s Fountain (1917). In line with much of the criticism
referred to in Part 1, the problem is that because Bell identifies aesthetic value (as he
construes it) with “art-hood” itself, Artistic Formalism has nothing to say about a urinal
that purports to be anti-aesthetic and yet art. Increasingly, artworks are recognised as
such and valued for reasons other than the presence (or precisely because of their lack) of
aesthetic properties, or exhibited beauty. The practice continues, the works are criticised
and valued, and formalists of this kind can do very little but stamp their feet. The death
of Artistic Formalism is apparently heralded by the departure of practice from theory.

d. Conclusions: From Artistic to (Moderate)

Aesthetic Formalism

So what are we to take from Bell’s account? His claims that our interactions with certain
artworks yield an emotion peculiar to the aesthetic, and not experienced in our everyday
emotional lives, is rightly met with consternation. It is unclear why we should recognise
such a reaction to be of a different kind (let alone a more valuable kind) to those
experienced in other contexts such as to discount many of our reactions to ostensible
aesthetic objects as genuine aesthetic responses. Few are prompted by Bell’s account to
accept this determination of the aesthetic nor does it seem to satisfactorily capture all that
we should want to in this area. However, Bell’s aim in producing this theory was
(ostensibly) to capture something common to aesthetic objects. In appealing to a timeless
emotion that will not be subject to the contingencies of any specific era, Bell seemingly
hoped to account for the enduring values of works throughout time. It is easy enough to
recognise this need and the place Bell’s theory is supposed to hold in satisfying what does
appear to be a sensible requirement. It is less clear that this path, if adequately pursued,
should be found to be fruitless.

That we should define the realm of the aesthetic in virtue of those works that stand the
test of time has been intuitive to some; how else are we to draw together all those objects
worthy of theoretical inclusion whilst characterising and discounting failed works,
impostors, and anomalies? Yet there is something disconcerting about this procedure.
That we should ascribe the label “art” or even “aesthetic” to a conjunction of objects that
have, over time, continued to impress on us some valuable property, seems to invite a
potentially worrying commitment to relativity. The preceding discussion has given some
voice to a familiar enough contention that by indexing value to our current sensibility we
stand to dismiss things that might have been legitimately valued in the past. Bell’s
willingness to acknowledge, even rally for, the importance of abstract art leads him to a
theory that identifies the value of works throughout history only on the basis of their
displaying qualities (significant form) that he took to be important. The cost (although for
Bell this is no cost) of such a theory is that things like representational dexterity (a staple
of the Renaissance) must be struck from the list of aesthetically valuable properties, just
as the pursuit of such a quality by artists must be characterised as misguided.

The concern shared by those who criticise Bell seems to stem from an outlook according
to which any proposed theory should be able to capture and accommodate the moving
trends, interests and evaluations that constitute art history and drive the very
development of artistic creation. This is what one expects an art theory to be able to do.
This is where Artistic Formalism fails, as art-practice and art theory diverge. Formalism,
as a theory of art, is ill suited to make ontological distinctions between genuine- and non-
art. A theory whose currency is perceptually available value will be ill-equipped to officiate
over a practice that is governed by, amongst other things, institutional considerations; in
fact a practice that is able to develop precisely by identifying recognised values and then
subverting them. For these reasons it seems obvious that Formalism is not a bad theory
of art but is no theory of art at all.

This understood, one can begin to see those elements of Bell’s Formalism that may be
worth salvaging and those that must be rejected. For instance, Bell ascribes a particular
domain to aesthetic judgements, reactions, and evaluations such as to distinguish a
number of other pronouncements that can also be made in reference to the object in
question (some, perhaps, deserve to be labelled “aesthetic” but some—arguably—do not).
Bell can say of Picasso’s Guernica (1937) that the way it represents and expresses various
things about the Spanish Civil War might well be politically and historically interesting
(and valuable)—and might lead to the ascription of various properties to the work (being
moving, or harsh). Likewise, the fact that it is by Picasso (or is a genuine Picasso rather
than a forgery) will be of interest to some and might also lead to the ascription of certain
properties. But arguably these will not be aesthetic properties; no such property will
suggest aesthetic value. Conversely, the fact that a particular object is a fake is often
thought to devalue the work; for many it may even take away the status of work-hood. But
for Bell if the object were genuinely indistinguishable from the original, then it will be
capable of displaying the same formal relations and will thus exhibit equal aesthetic value.
It is this identification of aesthetic value with formal properties of the work that appears—
for some—to continue to hold some plausibility.

However, there have been few (if any) sympathisers towards Bell’s insistence that only if
something displayed value in virtue of its formal features would it count as art, or as
valuable in an aesthetic. A more moderate position would be to ascribe a particular
domain to formal aesthetic judgements, reactions and evaluations, while distinguishing
these from both non-formal aesthetic judgements, and non-aesthetic (for example,
artistic, political, historical) judgements. On this kind of approach, Bell’s mistake was
two-fold: Bell ran into difficulties when he (1) attempted to tie Formalism to the nature of
art itself, and (2) restricted the aesthetic exclusively to a formal conception of beauty.
By construing formalism as an aesthetic theory (as an account of what
constitutes aesthetic value) or as part of an aesthetic theory (as an account of one kind
of aesthetic value), whilst at the same time admitting that there are other values to be had
(both aesthetic and non-aesthetic), the Formalist needn’t go so far as to ordain the priority
or importance of this specific value in the various practices in which it features. In this
way, one can anticipate the stance of the Moderate Formalist who asserts (in terms
reminiscent of Kant’s account) there to be two kinds of beauty: formal beauty, and non-
formal beauty. Formal beauty is an aesthetic property that is entirely determined by
“narrow” non-aesthetic properties (these include sensory and non-relational physical
properties such as the lines and colours on the surface of a painting). Non-formal beauty
is determined by “broad” non-aesthetic properties (which covers anything else, including
appeals to the content-related aspects that would be required to ascertain the aptness or
suitability of certain features for the intended end of the painting, or the accuracy of a
representational portrait, or the category to which an artwork belongs).

While these notions require much clarification (see Part 3), a useful way to express the
aspirations of this account would be to note that the Moderate Formalist claims that their
metaphysical stance generates the only theory capable of accommodating the aesthetic
properties of all works of art. Unlike Bell’s “extreme Formalism”, maintaining all
aesthetic properties to be narrowly determined by sensory and intrinsic physical
properties; and unlike “anti-Formalism”, according to which all aesthetic properties are
at least partly determined by broad non-aesthetic properties such as the artist’s
intentions, or the artwork’s history of production; the Moderate Formalist insists that, in
the context of the philosophy of art, many artworks have a mix of formal and non-formal
aesthetic properties; that others have only non-formal aesthetic properties; and that at
least some artworks have only formal aesthetic properties.

3. Nick Zangwill’s Moderate Aesthetic Formalism

The issue of formalism is introduced on the assumption that aesthetic properties
are determined by certain non-aesthetic properties; versions of formalism differ
primarily in their answers to the question of which non-aesthetic properties are of
interest. This part of the presentation briefly outlines the central characterisations of
“form” (and their differences) that will be pertinent to an understanding of twenty-first
century discussions of Formalism. For present purposes, and in light of the previous
discussion, it will be satisfactory to focus on formal characterisations of artworks and,
more specifically visual art.

a. Extreme Formalism, Moderate Formalism, Anti-

Formalism

Nick Zangwill recognises that arrangements of lines, shapes, and colours (he includes
“shininess” and “glossiness” as colour properties) are typically taken as formal properties,
contrasting these with non-formal properties which are determined, in part, by the
history of production or context of creation for the artwork. In capturing this divide, he
writes:

The most straightforward account would be to say that formal properties are those
aesthetic properties that are determined solely by sensory or physical properties—so long
as the physical properties in question are not relations to other things or other times. This
would capture the intuitive idea that formal properties are those aesthetic properties that
are directly perceivable or that are determined by properties that are directly perceivable.
(2001, p.56)

Noting that this will not accommodate the claims of some philosophers that aesthetic
properties are “dispositions to provoke responses in human beings”, Zangwill stipulates
the word “narrow” to include sensory properties, non-relational physical properties,
and dispositions to provoke responses that might be thought part-constitutive of
aesthetic properties; the word “broad” covers anything else (such as the extrinsic property
of the history of production of a work). We can then appeal to a basic distinction: “Formal
properties are entirely determined by narrow nonaesthetic properties, whereas
nonformal aesthetic properties are partly determined by broad nonaesthetic properties.”
(2001, p.56)

On this basis, Zangwill identifies Extreme Formalism as the view that all aesthetic
properties of an artwork are formal (and narrowly determined), and Anti-Formalism as
the view that no aesthetic properties of an artwork are formal (all are broadly determined
by history of production as well as narrow non-aesthetic properties). His own view is
a Moderate Formalism, holding that some aesthetic properties of an artwork are formal,
others are not. He motivates this view via a number of strategies but in light of earlier
parts of this discussion it will be appropriate to focus on Zangwill’s responses to those
arguments put forward by the anti-formalist.

b. Responding to Kendall Walton’s Anti-Formalism

Part 1 briefly considersed Kendall Walton’s influential position according to which in

order to make any aesthetic judgement regarding a work of art one must see it under an
art-historical category. This claim was made in response to various attempts to “purge
from criticism of works of art supposedly extraneous excursions into matters not (or not
“directly”) available to inspection of the works, and to focus attention on the works
themselves” (See, for example, the discussion of Clive Bell in Part 2). In motivating this
view Walton offers what he supposes to be various “intuition pumps” that should lead to
the acceptance of his proposal.

In defense of a moderate formalist view Nick Zangwill has asserted that Walton’s thesis
is at best only partly accurate. For Zangwill, there is a large and significant class of works
of art and aesthetic properties of works of art that are purely formal; in Walton’s terms
the aesthetic properties of these objects emerge from the “configuration of colours and
shapes on a painting” alone. This would suggest a narrower determination of those
features of a work “available to inspection” than Walton defends in his claim that the
history of production (a non-formal feature) of a work partly determines its aesthetic
properties by determining the category to which the work belongs and must be perceived.
Zangwill wants to resist Walton’s claim that all or most works and values are category-
dependent; aiming to vindicate the disputed negative thesis that “the application of
aesthetic concepts to a work of art can leave out of consideration facts about its
origin”. Zangwill is keen to point out that a number of the intuition pumps Walton utilises
are less decisive than has commonly been accepted.

Regarding representational properties, for example, Walton asks us to consider a marble

bust of a Roman emperor which seems to us to resemble a man with, say, an aquiline
nose, a wrinkled brow, and an expression of grim determination, and about which we take
to represent a man with, or as having, those characteristics. The question is why don’t we
say that it resembles or represents a motionless man, of uniform (marble) colour, who is
severed at the chest? We are interested in representation and it seems the object is
in more respects similar to the latter description than the former. Walton is able to
account for the fact that we are not struck by the similarity in the latter sense as we are by
the former by appeal to his distinction between standard, contra-
standard and variable properties:

The bust’s uniform color, motionlessness, and abrupt ending at the chest are standard
properties relative to the category of busts, and since we see it as a bust they are standard
for us. […] A cubist work might look like a person with a cubical head to someone not
familiar with the cubist style. But the standardness of such cubical shapes for people who
see it as a cubist work prevents them from making that comparison. (1970, p.345)

His central claim is that what we take a work to represent (or even resemble) depends
only on the variable properties, and not those that are standard, for the category under
which we perceive it. It seems fairly obvious that this account must be right. Zangwill
agrees and is hence led to accept that in the case of representational qualities there is
nothing in the objects themselves that could tell the viewer which of the opposing
descriptions is appropriate. For this, one must look elsewhere to such things as the history
of production or the conventionally accepted practices according to which the object’s
intentional content may be derived.

Zangwill argues that while representational properties might not be aesthetic properties
(indeed they are possessed by ostensibly non-aesthetic, non-art items such as maps,
blueprints, and road signs) they do appear to be among the base (non-aesthetic)
properties that determine aesthetic properties. Given that representational properties of
a work are, in part, determined by the history of production, and assuming that some
aesthetic properties of representational works are partly determined by what they
represent, Zangwill concludes some aesthetic properties to be non-formal. This is no
problem for the Moderate Formalist of course; Walton’s intuition pump does not lead to
an anti-formalist argument for it seems equally clear that only a subclass of artworks are
representational works. Many works have no representational properties at all and are
thus unaffected by the insistence that representational properties can only be successfully
identified via the presence of art-historical or categorical information. Given that Zangwill
accepts Walton’s claim in respect only to a subclass of aesthetic objects, Moderate
Formalism remains undisturbed.

However, Walton offers other arguments that might be thought to have a more general
application and thus forestall this method of “tactical retreat” on the part of the would-be
Moderate Formalist. The claim that Walton seems to hold for all artworks (rather than
just a subclass) is that the art-historical category into which an artwork falls is
aesthetically relevant because one’s belief that a work falls under a particular category
affects one’s perception of it—one experiences the work differently when one experiences
it under a category. Crucially, understanding a work’s category is a matter of
understanding the degrees to which its features are standard, contra-standard and
variable with respect to that category. Here is Walton’s most well-known example:

Imagine a society which does not have an established medium of painting, but does
produce a kind of work called guernicas. Guernicas are like versions of Picasso’s
“Guernica” done in various bas-relief dimensions. All of them are surfaces with the
colours and shapes of Picasso’s “Guernica,” but the surfaces are moulded to protrude
from the wall like relief maps of different kinds of terrain. […] Picasso’s “Guernica” would
be counted as a guernica in this society – a perfectly flat one – rather than as a painting.
Its flatness is variable and the figures on its surface are standard relative to the category
of guernicas. […] This would make for a profound difference between our reaction to
“Guernica” and theirs. (1970, p.347)

When we consider (as a slight amendment to Walton’s example) a guernica in this society
that is physically indistinguishable from Picasso’s painting, we should become aware of
the different aesthetic responses experienced by members of their society compared to
ours. Walton notes that it seems violent, dynamic, vital, disturbing to us, but imagines it
would strike them as cold, stark, lifeless, restful, or perhaps bland, dull, boring—but in
any case not violent, dynamic, and vital. His point is that the object is only violent and
disturbing as a painting, but dull, stark, and so forth as a guernica, hence the thought
experiment is supposed to prompt us to agree that aesthetic properties are dependent on
(or relative to) the art-historical categories under which the observer subsumes the object
in question. Through this example Walton argues that we do not simply judge that an
artwork is dynamic and a painting. The only sense in which it is appropriate to claim
that Guernica is dynamic is in claiming that it is dynamic as a painting, or for people who
see it as a painting.

This analysis has been variously accepted in the literature; it is particularly interesting,
therefore, to recognise Zangwill’s initial suspicion of Walton’s account. He notes that a
plausible block to this intuition comes in the observation that it becomes very difficult to
make aesthetic judgements about whole categories or comparisons of items across
categories. Zangwill stipulates that Walton might respond with the claim that we simply
widen the categories utilised in our judgements. For example, when we say that Minoan
art is (in general) more dynamic than Mycenean art, what we are saying is that this is how
it is when we consider both sorts of works as belonging to the class of “prehistoric Greek
art”. He continues:

But why should we believe this story? It does not describe a psychological process that we
are aware of when we make cross-category judgements. The insistence that we are
subconsciously operating with some more embracing category, even though we are not
aware of it, seems to be an artefact of the anti-formalist theory that there is no
independent reason to believe. If aesthetic judgements are category-dependent, we would
expect speakers and thinkers to be aware of it. But phenomenological reflection does not
support the category-dependent view. (2001, pp. 92-3)

In these cases, according to Zangwill, support does not appear to be sourced either from
phenomenology or from our inferential behaviour. Instead he argues that we can offer an
alternative account of what is going on when we say something is “elegant for a C” or “an
elegant C”. This involves the claim that questions of goodness and elegance are matters
of degree. We often make ascriptions that refer to a comparison class because this is a
quicker and easier way of communicating questions of degree. But the formalist will say
that the precise degree of some C-thing’s elegance does not involve the elegance of other
existing C-things. And being a matter of degree is quite different from being category-
dependent. So Zangwill’s claim is that it is pragmatically convenient, but far from
essential, that one make reference to a category-class in offering an aesthetic judgement.
We are able to make category-neutral aesthetic judgements, and crucially for Zangwill,
such judgements are fundamental: category-dependent judgements are only possible
because of category-neutral ones. The formalist will hold that without the ability to make
category-neutral judgements we would have no basis for comparisons; Walton has not
shown that this is not the case.

In this way Zangwill asserts that we can understand that it is appropriate to say that the
flat guernica is “lifeless” because it is less lively than most guernicas— but this selection
of objects is a particularly lively one. Picasso’s Guernica is appropriately thought of as
“vital” because it is more so than most paintings; considered as a class these are not
particularly lively. But in fact the painting and the guernica might be equally lively,
indeed equivalent in respect of their other aesthetic properties—they only appear to differ
in respect of the comparative judgements in which they have been embedded. It is for
this reason that Zangwill concludes that we can refuse to have our intuitions “pumped” in
the direction Walton intends. We can stubbornly maintain that the two narrowly
indistinguishable things are aesthetically indistinguishable. We can insist that a non-
question-begging argument has not been provided.

On this view, one can allow that reference to art-historical categories is a convenient way
of classifying art, artists, and art movements, but the fact that this convenience has been
widely utilised need not be telling against alternative accounts of aesthetic value.

c. Kant’s Formalism
Zangwill’s own distinction between formal and non-formal properties is derived (broadly)
from Immanuel Kant’s distinction between free and dependent beauty. Indeed, Zangwill
has asserted that “Kant was also a moderate formalist, who opposed extreme formalism
when he distinguished free and dependent beauty in §16 of the Critique of Judgement”
(2005, p.186). In the section in question Kant writes:

There are two kinds of beauty; free beauty (pulchritudo vaga), or beauty which is merely
dependent (pulchritudo adhaerens). The first presupposes no concept of what the object
should be; the second does presuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering
perfection of the object.

On the side of free beauty Kant lists primarily natural objects such as flowers, some birds,
and crustacea, but adds wallpaper patterns and musical fantasias; examples of dependent
beauties include the beauty of a building such as a church, palace, or summer-house.
Zangwill maintains that dependent beauty holds the key to understanding the non-formal
aesthetic properties of art—without this notion it will be impossible to understand the
aesthetic importance of pictorial representation, or indeed any of the art-forms he
analyses. A work that is intended to be a representation of a certain sort—if that intention
is successfully realised—will fulfil the representational function the artist intended, and
may (it is claimed) do so beautifully. In other words, some works have non-formal
aesthetic properties because of (or in virtue of) the way they embody some historically
given non-aesthetic function.

By contrast, Kant’s account of free beauty has been interpreted in line

with formal aesthetic value. At §16 and §17, Kant appears to place constraints on the kinds
of objects that can exemplify pure (that is, formal) beauty, suggesting that nature, rather
than art, provides the proper objects of (pure) aesthetic judgement and that to the extent
that artworks can be (pure) objects of tastes they must be abstract, non-representational,
works. If this is a consequence of Kant’s account, the strong Formalist position derived
from judgements of pure beauty would presumably have to be restricted in application to
judgements of abstract art and, perhaps in quotidian cases, the objects of nature.
However, several commentators (for example, Crawford (1974) and Guyer (1997)) have
maintained that Kant’s distinction between free and dependent beauty does not entail the
classification of art (even representational art) as merely dependently beautiful.
Crawford, for example, takes the distinction between free and dependent beauty to turn
on the power of the judger to abstract towards a disinterested position; this is because he
takes Kant’s distinction to be between kinds of judgement and not between kinds of
object.

This is not the place for a detailed exegesis of Kant’s aesthetics, but it is pertinent to at
least note the suggestion that it is nature (rather than art) that provides the paradigm
objects of formal aesthetic judgement. In the next part of this presentation we will explore
this possibility, further considering Zangwill’s moderate, and more extreme Formalist
conclusions in the domain of nature appreciation.
4. From Art to the Aesthetic Appreciation of
Nature
Allen Carlson is well known for his contribution to the area broadly known as
“environmental aesthetics”, perhaps most notably for his discussion of the aesthetic
appreciation of nature (2000). Where discussing the value of art Carlson seems to adopt
a recognisably moderate formalist position, acknowledging both that where formalists
like Bell went wrong was in presupposing formalism to be the only valid way to appreciate
visual artworks (pace Part 2), but also suggesting that a “proper perspective” on the
application of formalism should have revealed it to be one among many “orientations”
deserving recognition in art appreciation (pace Part 3). However, when turning to the
appreciation of the natural environment Carlson adopts and defends a strongly anti-
formalist position, occupying a stance that has been referred to as “cognitive naturalism”.
This part of the presentation briefly discusses Carlson’s rejection of formalism before
presenting some moderate, and stronger formalist replies in this domain.

a. Anti-Formalism and Nature

Carlson has characterised contemporary debates in the aesthetics of nature as attempting

to distance nature appreciation from theories of the appreciation of art. Contemporary
discussion introduces different models for the appreciation of nature in place of the
inadequate attempts to apply artistic norms to an environmental domain. For example,
in his influential “Appreciation and the Natural Environment” (1979) he had disputed
both “object” and “landscape” models of nature appreciation (which might be thought
attractive to the Moderate Formalist), favouring the “natural environmental” model
(which stands in opposition to the other two). Carlson acknowledged that the “object”
model has some utility in the art-world regarding the appreciation of non-
representational sculpture (he takes Brancusi’s Bird in Space (1919) as an example). Such
sculpture can have significant (formal) aesthetic properties yet no representational
connections to the rest of reality or relational connections with its immediate
surroundings. Indeed, he acknowledges that the formalist intuitions discussed earlier
have remained prevalent in the domain of nature appreciation, meeting significant and
sustained opposition only in the domain of art criticism.

When it comes to nature-appreciation, formalism has remained relatively uncontested

and popular, emerging as an assumption in many theoretical discussions. However,
Carlson’s conclusion on the “object” and “landscape” models is that the former rips
natural objects from their larger environments while the latter frames and flattens them
into scenery. In focussing mainly on formal properties, both models neglect much of our
normal experience and understanding of nature. The “object” model is inappropriate as
it cannot recognise the organic unity between natural objects and their environment of
creation or display, such environments are—Carlson believes—aesthetically relevant. This
model thus imposes limitations on our appreciation of natural objects as a result of the
removal of the object from its surroundings (which this model requires in order to
address the questions of what and how to appreciate). For Carlson, the natural
environment cannot be broken down into discrete parts, divorced from their former
environmental relations any more than it can be reduced to a static, two-dimensional
scene (as in the “landscape” model). Instead he holds that the natural environment must
be appreciated for what it is, both nature and an environment. On this view natural
objects possess an organic unity with their environment of creation: they are a part of and
have developed out of the elements of their environments by means of the forces at work
within those environments. Thus some understanding of the environments of creation is
relevant to the aesthetic appreciation of natural objects.

The assumption implicit in the above rejection of Formalism is familiar from the
objections (specifically regarding Walton) from Part 3. It is the suggestion that
the appropriate way to appreciate some target object is via recourse to the kind of thing
it is; taking the target for something it is not does not constitute appropriate aesthetic
appreciation of that thing. Nature is natural so cannot be treated as “readymade” art.
Carlson holds that the target for the appreciation of nature is also
an environment, entailing that the appropriate mode of appreciation is active, involved
appreciation. It is the appreciation of a judge who is in the environment, being part of and
reacting to it, rather than merely being an external onlooker upon a two-dimensional
scene. It is this view that leads to his strong anti-formalist suggestion that the natural
environment as such does not possess formal qualities. For example, responding to the
“landscape” model Carlson suggests that the natural environment itself only appears to
have formal qualities when a person somehow imposes a frame upon it and thus formally
composes the resultant view. In such a case it is the framed view that has the qualities,
but these will vary depending upon the frame and the viewer’s position. As a consequence
Carlson takes the formal features of nature, such as they are, to be (nearly) infinitely
realisable; insofar as the natural environment has formal qualities, they have an
indeterminateness, making them both difficult to appreciate, and of little significance in
the appreciation of nature.

Put simply, the natural environment is not an object, nor is it a static two-dimensional
“picture”, thus it cannot be appreciated in ways satisfactory for objects or pictures;
furthermore, the rival models discussed do not reveal significant or sufficiently
determinate appreciative features. In rejecting these views Carlson has been concerned
with the questions of what and how we should appreciate; his answer involves the
necessary acknowledgement that we are appreciating x qua x, where some further
conditions will be specifiable in relation to the nature of the x in question. It is in relation
to this point that Carlson’s anti-formalist “cognitive naturalism” presents itself.

In this respect his stance on nature appreciation differs from Walton’s, who did not extend
his philosophical claims to aesthetic judgements about nature (Walton lists clouds,
mountains, sunsets), believing that these judgements, unlike judgements of art, are best
understood in terms of a category-relative interpretation. By contrast, Carlson can be
understood as attempting to extend Walton’s category dependent account of art-
appreciation to the appreciation of nature. On this view we do not need to treat nature as
we treat those artworks about whose origins we know nothing because it is not the case
that we know nothing of nature:

In general we do not produce, but rather discover, natural objects and aspects of nature.
Why should we therefore not discover the correct categories for their perception? We
discover whales and later discover that, in spite of somewhat misleading perceptual
properties, they are in fact mammals and not fish. (Carlson, 2000, p.64)

By discovering the correct categories to which objects or environments belong, we can

know which is the correct judgement to make (the whale is not a lumbering and inelegant
fish). It is in virtue of this that Carlson claims our judgements of the aesthetic appreciation
of nature sustain responsible criticism in the way Walton characterises the appreciation
of art. It is for this reason that Carlson concludes that for the aesthetic appreciation of
nature, something like the knowledge and experience of the naturalist or ecologist is
essential. This knowledge gives us the appropriate foci of aesthetic significance and the
appropriate boundaries of the setting so that our experience becomes one of aesthetic
appreciation. He concludes that the absence of such knowledge, or any failure to perceive
nature under the correct categories, leads to aesthetic omission and, indeed, deception.

b. Formalism and Nature.

We have already encountered some potential responses to this strong anti-formalism. The
moderate formalist may attempt to deploy a version of the aesthetic/non-aesthetic
distinction such as to deny that the naturalist and ecologist are any better equipped than
the rest of us to aesthetically appreciate nature. They are, of course, better equipped
to understand nature, and to evaluate (in what we might call a “non-aesthetic” sense) the
objects and environments therein. This type of response claims that the ecologist can
judge (say) the perfectly self-contained and undisturbed ecosystem, can indeed respond
favourably to her knowledge of the rarity of such a find. Such things are valuable in that
they are of natural-historical interest. Such things are of interest and
significance to natural-historians, no doubt. The naturalist will know that the whale is not
“lumbering” compared to most fish (and will not draw this comparison), and will see it as
“whale-like”, “graceful”, perhaps particularly “sprightly” compared to most whales. One
need not deny that such comparative, cognitive judgements can feel a particular way, or
that such judgements are a significant part of the appreciation of nature; but it may be
possible to deny that these (or only these) judgements deserve to be called aesthetic.

However, Carlson’s objection is not to the existence of formal value, but to

the appropriateness of consideration of such value. Our knowledge of an environment is
supposed to allow us to select certain foci of aesthetic significance and abstract from, or
exclude, others such as to characterise different kinds of appropriate experience:

…we must survey a prairie environment, looking at the subtle contours of the land, feeling
the wind blowing across the open space, and smelling the mix of prairie grasses and
flowers. But such an act of aspection has little place in a dense forest environment. Here
we must examine and scrutinise, inspecting the detail of the forest floor, listening
carefully for the sounds of birds and smelling carefully for the scent of spruce and pine.
(Carlson, 2000, p.64)

Clearly knowledge of the terrain and environment that is targeted in each of these cases
might lead the subject to be particularly attentive to signs of certain expected elements;
however, there are two concerns that are worth highlighting in closing.

Firstly, it is unclear why one should, for all one’s knowledge of the expected richness or
desolation of some particular landscape, be in a position to assume of (say) the prairie
environment that no detailed local scrutiny should yield the kind of interest or
appreciation (both formal and non-formal) that might be found in other environments. It
is unclear whether Carlson could allow that such acts might yield appreciation but must
maintain that they would not yield instances of aesthetic appreciation of that
environment, or whether he is denying the availability of such unpredicted values—in
either case the point seems questionable. Perhaps the suspicion is one that comes from
proportioning one’s expectation to one’s analysis of the proposed target. The first concern
is thus that knowledge (even accurate knowledge) can be as potentially blinding as it is
potentially enlightening.

The second concern is related to the first, but poses more of a direct problem for Carlson.
His objection to the “object” and “landscape” models regards their propensity to limit the
potentiality for aesthetic judgement by taking the target to be something other than it
truly is. Part of the problem described above relates to worries regarding the reduction of
environments to general categories like prairie landscape, dense forest, pastoral
environment such that one enlists expectations of those attentions that will and will not
be rewarded, and limits one’s interaction accordingly. While it might be true that some
understanding of the kind of environment we are approaching will suggest certain values
to expect as well as indicating the act of aspection appropriate for delivering just these,
the worry is that this account may be unduly limiting because levels of appreciation are
unlikely to exceed the estimations of the theory and the acts of engagement and
interaction these provoke. In nature more than anywhere else this seems to fail to do
justice to those intuitions that the target really is (amongst other things) a rich,
unconstrained sensory manifold. To briefly illustrate the point with a final example,
Zangwill (2001, pp.116-8) considers such cases (which he doesn’t think Carlson can
account for) as the unexpected or incongruous beauty of the polar bear swimming
underwater. Not only is this “the last thing we expected”, but our surprise shows that

…it is not a beauty that we took to be dependent in some way upon our grasp of its polar-
bearness. We didn’t find it elegant as a polar bear. It is a category-free beauty. The
underwater polar bear is a beautiful thing in beautiful motion…

The suggestion here is that to “do justice to” and thus fully appreciate the target one must
be receptive not simply to the fact that it is nature, or that it is an environment, but that
it is, first and foremost, the individual environment that it (and not our understanding of
it) reveals itself to be. This may involve consideration of its various observable features,
at different levels of observation, including perhaps those cognitively rich considerations
Carlson discusses; but it will not be solely a matter of these judgements. According to the
(Moderate) Formalist, the “true reality” of things is more than Carlson’s account seems
capable of capturing, for while a natural environment is not in fact a static two-
dimensional scene, it may well in fact possess (amongst other things) a particular
appearance for us, and that appearance may be aesthetically valuable. The Moderate
Formalist can accommodate that value without thereby omitting acknowledgement of
other kinds of values, including those Carlson defends.

Finally, it should be noted that when it comes to inorganic nature, Zangwill has argued
for a stronger formalist position (much closer to Bell’s view about visual art). The basic
argument for this conclusion is that even if a case can be made for claiming that much
of organic nature should be understood and appreciated via reference to some kind of
“history of production” (typically in terms of biological functions, usually thought to
depend on evolutionary history), inorganic or non-biological nature (rivers, rocks,
sunsets, the rings of Saturn) does not have functions and therefore cannot have aesthetic
properties that depend on functions. Nor should we aesthetically appreciate inorganic
things in the light of functions they do not have.

5. Conclusions
In relation to both art and nature we have seen that anti-formalists argue that aesthetic
appreciation involves a kind of connoisseurship rather than a kind of childlike wonder.
Bell’s extreme (artistic) formalism appeared to recommend a rather restricted conception
of the art-connoisseur. Walton’s and Carlson’s anti-formalism (in relation to art and
nature respectively) both called for the expertise and knowledge base required to identify
and apply the “correct” category under which an item of appreciation must be subsumed.
Yet the plausibility of challenges to these stances (both the strong formalism of Bell and
the strong anti-formalism of Walton and Carlson) appears to be grounded in
more moderate, tolerant proposals. Zangwill, for example, defends his moderate
formalism as “a plea for open-mindedness” under the auspices of attempts to recover
some of our aesthetic innocence.

This presentation began with an historical overview intended to help situate (though not
necessarily motivate or defend) the intuition that there is some important sense in which
aesthetic qualities pertain to the appearance of things. Anti-formalists point out that
beauty, ugliness, and other aesthetic qualities often (or always) pertain to appearances as
informed by our beliefs and understanding about the reality of things. Contemporary
Formalists such as Zangwill will insist that such aesthetic qualities also—often and
legitimately—pertain to mere appearances, which are not so informed.

On this more moderate approach, the aesthetic responses of the connoisseur, the art-
historian, the ecologist can be acknowledged while nonetheless insisting that the
sophisticated aesthetic sensibility has humble roots and we should not forget them.
 Formal aesthetic appreciation may be more “raw, naïve, and uncultivated” (Zangwill,
2005, p.186), but arguably it has its place.

7. References and Further Reading

• Bell, Clive (1913) Art Boston, Massachusetts.
• An important presentation and defense of Artistic Formalism in the Philosophy of Art.
• Budd, Malcolm (1996) ‘The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature’ British Journal of Aesthetics 36, pp.207-
222
• For some important challenges to the anti-formalist views put forward by Carlson (2000); in
particular, Budd supports the intuition that part of the value of nature relates to its boundless,
unconstrained, and variable potential for appreciation.
• Carey, John (2005) What Good are the Arts? London: Faber and Faber
• While pertinent, Carey’s discussion should be treated with some caution as, unlike
McLaughlin (1977), he writes with a tone that seeks to trivialise Bell’s position and, at times, apparently
misses the acuity with which Bell presented his formulation.
• Carlson, Allen, (1979) ‘Appreciation and the Natural Environment’ The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 37, pp. 267-275
• An early indication and defense of Carlson’s “Natural environmental” model of appreciation
(compare Carlson (2000)).
• Carlson, Allen (2000) Aesthetics and the Environment, Art and Architecture London and New York:
Routledge
• An influential book in which Carlson draws together much of his work over the previous two
decades.
• Crawford, Donald (1974) Kant’s Aesthetic Theory Madison: Wisconsin University Press
• A scholarly and influential engagement with Kant’s Critique of Judgement (see also Guyer
(1997)).
• Currie, Gregory (1989) An Ontology of Art Basingstoke: Macmillan
• See Chapter 3 especially for a discussion of “Aesthetic Empiricism” in connection with the
anti-formalist arguments discussed in Part 1.
• Danto, Arthur (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University
Press
• For Danto, Warhol’s Brillo Box exhibition (1964) marked a watershed in the history of
aesthetics, rendering almost worthless everything written by philosophers on art. Warhol’s sculptures were
indistinguishable from ordinary Brillo boxes, putatively showing that an artwork needn’t posses some
special perceptually discernible quality in order to afford art-status.
• Davies, David (2004) Art as Performance Oxford: Blackwell
• For a discussion of “Aesthetic Empiricism” and some development/departure from Currie’s
ontology of art (1989).
• Dowling, Christopher (2010) ‘Zangwill, Moderate Formalism, and another look at Kant’s
Aesthetic’, Kantian Review 15, pp.90-117
• Explores the formalist interpretation of Kant’s aesthetics in connection with Zangwill’s
moderate formalism.
• Dutton, Dennis (1983) [ed.] The Forger’s Art Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA.: University of California
Press
• An important collection of articles, including Leonard Meyer’s ‘Forgery and The
Anthropology of Art’ (discussed in Part 1); See also, articles in this collection by Alfred Lessing and Jack
Meiland.
• Fry, Roger ([1920] 1956) Vision and Design Cleveland and New York: World Publishing
• Fry’s collection of essays gives some insight into the changing ideas on European Post
Impressionism around the turn of the century. The development of Fry’s aesthetic theory (in relation to
significant form) is also discussed by Bell (1913).
• Guyer, Paul (1997) Kant and the Claims of Taste [2nd Edition] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
 • A clear and comprehensive critical exploration of Kant’s Critique of Judgement.
• Hanslick, Eduard (1957) The Beautiful in Music [trans. Gustav Cohen] Indianapolis and New York:
Bobbs-Merrill Co
• In this influential text by “the father of modern musical criticism”, Hanslick arguably lays
out much of the groundwork for musical formalism.
• Kant, Immanuel (1952) Critique of Judgement, [trans. Meredith] Oxford: Clarendon Press
• McLaughlin, Thomas (1977) ‘Clive Bell’s Aesthetic: Tradition and Significant Form’, Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35, pp435-7
• A critical discussion of Bell’s Formalism.
• Parsons, Glenn (2004) ‘Natural Functions and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Inorganic Nature’, British
Journal of Aesthetics 44, pp.44-56
• Parsons presents some challenges to Zangwill’s extreme formalism about inorganic nature
(for a reply to Parsons see Zangwill, 2005).
• Walton, Kendall (1970) ‘Categories of Art’, The Philosophical Review 79, pp.334-367
• A very influential contribution to analytic aesthetics in support of the anti-formalist stance
regarding the appreciation of an artwork’s aesthetic properties.
• Wilcox, John (1953) ‘The Beginnings of L’art pour L’art’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11,
pp.360-377
• An instructive article that has informed much of Part 1 of this presentation, and in which
you will find references to many of the nineteenth century texts cited here.
• Wimsatt, W. and Beardsley, M. (1946) ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, Sewanee Review 54, pp.468-88
• The authors argue against the view that an artwork’s meaning is determined by reference
to the artist’s intentions.
• Zangwill, Nick (2001) The Metaphysics of Beauty, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press
• A thorough exploration and defense of formalist intuitions; the book includes re-printed
versions of many of Zangwill’s important contributions (for example, his ‘Feasible Aesthetic
Formalism’, Noús 33 (1999)) from earlier years.
• Zangwill, Nick (2005) ‘In Defence of Extreme Formalism about Inorganic Nature: Reply to
Parsons’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 45, pp.185-191

Author Information
Christopher Dowling
Email: c.dowling@open.ac.uk
The Open University
United Kingdom

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