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Unit VI LESSON 12 Art and Philosophy Formalism
Unit VI LESSON 12 Art and Philosophy Formalism
Unit VI LESSON 12 Art and Philosophy Formalism
Lesson 12
Materials:
Module, Pen, and Paper
Duration: 3 hours
• Formalism is the study of art that focuses mainly on the analysis of its form –
the way it is made and what it looks like. It explains the critical position of
the important aspects in the production and creation of art such as its
elements and compositions rather than describing the narrative content
highlighted in the work or determining its relationship to the world. Like in
painting, a formalistic perspective will focus on the qualities of colors, strokes
of brushworks, the formation of lines and shapes, and composition.
Reference:
Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 3 Figure 4
2. Define Art according to Clive Bell and Paul Cezanne’s perspective? (5 points)
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Figure 5
Figure 6
5. Using Formalistic perspective, how will you describe the painting? (3 points)
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Figure 7
Figure 8 Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
9. What are the three categories of Kandinsky’s Painting? Define each (3 points)
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Figure 12 Figure 13
STYLES OF FORMALISM
ABSTRACTION
Figure 14
FAUVISM
Fauvism in a style of art that concerns with the scientific color theories
developed in the nineteenth century – particularly those relating
to complementary colors. It uses the colors in the complementary color wheel
thus making the artwork tinted with bold and non-naturalistic colors.
Figure 15
André Derain, 1905 by Henri Matisse
MINIMALISM
Figure 16
SURREALISM
Figure 17
FUTURISM
Figure 18
Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space 1913 by Umberto Boccioni
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Figure 19
Love Forever by Novik Tcholokian
21. What is your evaluation of this painting?
(3 points)
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Retrieved from: https://art-sheep.com/abstract-expressionism-by-
novik-tcholokhian/
Figure 21
24. What do you think the style used by
Ang Kiukok? Why?
(3 points)
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Retrieved from:
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KyleNhellMacabocsit/nhel __________________________________
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Figure 22 __________________________________
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25. What do you think the style used by
Ramon Orlina? Why?
(3 points)
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Retrieved from: _
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KyleNhellMacabocsit/nhel __________________________________
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Figure 23 __________________________________
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26. What do you think the style used by
Imelda Cajipe-Endaya? Why?
(3 points)
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Retrieved from: _
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KyleNhellMacabocsit/nhel __________________________________
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WVSU A.A. Module
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328
II. Analysis
1. What is/are the common denominators or the features that all the different
styles of Formalism share? (5 points)
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3. In all the different styles of Formalism, which one fascinated you most? Justify
your choice. (5 points)
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• Abstract art has been existed since the Stone Age with drawings of dots and
symbols that were inscribed in prehistoric caves, but Russian artist named
Wassily Kandinsky had widely popularized Abstraction. This style is described
as when an artist has either removed (abstracted) elements from an object
into a more simplified form or produced something which does not have
relation or extension of the outside reality.
• Fauvism came from the words ‘les fauves’ (means wild beasts) coined by the
critic Louis Vauxcelles when he saw the work of Henri Matisse and André
Derain in an exhibition in Paris in 1905. Fauvism as a style tends to use flat
areas or patches of color in order to create a new pictorial space and its
subjects are simplified making it look quite abstract. It sometimes deemed
as a form of expressionism due to its application of brilliant colors,
spontaneous brushwork, and wild loose dabs of paint.
• Minimalism emerged in the late 1950s when artists such as Frank Stella’s
paintings were dislayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959,
but it were Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin and
Robert Morris who flourished this style in the 1960s and 1970s. This style is
perceived to be an extreme form of abstract art - its simplified artform is
mainly consist of geometric shapes such as squares and rectangles.
Minimalism presents a highly purified form of beauty and can represent
qualities like truth for its evident genuine form and unpretentiousness to be
anything else, order, simplicity, and harmony.
Comply one of the two categories of activities given below. Choose one activity for
Theoretical Analysis and another one for Theoretical Application.
Theoretical Analysis
Read one title from the choices below and write a 3-paragraph Expository
Essay of the theory/style mentioned or explained in the article.
Ideas/ Provides a thorough, Provides minimal accurate and Provides deficient and
Contents accurate, and original ideas original ideas as bases for the irrelevant ideas and does not
as bases for the formation of formation of essay with enough meet its justification and
essay and justified the ideas justification of ideas. elaboration.
sufficiently and effectively.
Organization Provides clear and Provides understandable order of The flow of ideas is fragmented
of Ideas understandable order of ideas but ideas are a little and are not properly arranged
ideas in accordance to its disarranged with its significance according to its significance
significance and scope. and scope. and scope.
Presentation Provides a clean, succinct, Provides a not much organized The format is not organized
and organized format of the format of the essay and a bit and lengthy, thus, it is
essay. Quite easy to read and lengthy. Not quite easy to read confusing to read and follow.
follow. and follow.
Writing Consistently grammatically Few errors in spelling and Utilizes poor spelling and
Mechanics correct with rare misspellings grammar are evident and just grammar and few good word
and good choice of words. enough good word choices. choices.
Theoretical Application
• Create any artwork based on Abstraction depicting your emotions during this
COVID-19 pandemic.
• Relive your recent dream and present it through art applying Surrealism.
The application of
Application of The application of The style is The style is
the style is
the style the style is correctly applied wrongly applied
appropriate but
appropriate in the to the large part to the whole of
only in the small
whole composition of the the composition
part of the
composition.
composition
The composition
Following the The composition Some instructions No instructions
instruction does not follow
follows all the are not followed in are followed in
many of the
instructions. the composition the composition.
instructions.
References:
IdeelArt. (March 13, 2015). What is Abstraction in Art - Definition and Examples.
Retrieved on August 21, 2015 at https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/what-is-
abstraction-a-simple-explanation-by-ideelart
Sybaris collection. (n.d.). Art History Briefing: Formalism In Art. Retrieved on October
25, 2017 at https://www.sybariscollection.com/art-history-briefing-formalism-
art/
APPENDIX 9.1
How do we judge the value of the work of art? And, no, we are not
talking about its price on the market. One of the oldest answers to that
question is that we judge it by its form, by those structural elements that are always
discernible to the eye - that which we call formalism in art. This approach to
deciphering artwork gave birth to art science, art criticism, as well as a specific way
of creating art by focusing on its visual, aesthetic quality.
The road to understanding what formalism in art really is about takes us from
philosophical ideas of Plato, Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, through the experiments
of the avant-garde, all the way to contemporary ideal of socially-
engaged and conceptual art.
At the same time, at its heart, formalism holds that one question which stands above
all others - what is art? How can we know when we are standing in the presence of
something truly magnificent? Is there a universal way to determine the quality of any
single work and use it to recreate the sublime?
Many believed that there is. They postulated that artistic excellence can be
found in the structure of its elements, that it can be dissected and measured, like
with all good science, but more importantly, that it unveils the very essence of
human creativity.
So, what are those compositional elements formalism places at the front? Or,
better yet, what is not formalism? Every time you stopped to appreciate the ultimate
irony of Gustav Klimt's Death and Life (1908-16) or profound social commentary of
Banksy's Rage Flower Thrower (2003), according to formalism doctrine you are
missing the point. Everything in the work of art which is related to symbolism,
context of any kind and iconography can only be secondary to what constitutes its
form - line, shape, color, brushwork. Why is this so important? First, these are the
elements that all artwork ultimately share, and so the only elements which can
provide a basis for understanding art in general. And secondly, putting these
elements in focus means that art can become an autonomous sphere of human
creation - L’art pour l’art.
"L’art pour l’art without purpose, for all purpose perverts art. " - Benjamin Constant,
1804
L’art pour l’art is perhaps one of the most famous lines in all of art history
and it is closely related to formalist movement. Meaning art for art's sake, it was an
idea that went perfectly in hand with formalist view of value of art. Art needs no
purpose other than its intrinsic beauty. If value of art can only be found in its
structural elements, then surly nothing outside those elements can present motive
for creating art. These ideas of form at the center of artistic creation had different
manifestations in different art movements. For Romantics, form was where you
search for art's essence; For Symbolists and Impressionists, it was its superior power
to convey artist intention; For Abstract Expressionists, it was the raison d'être - for
meaning in art, one should look no further than the form.
Plato was the first thinker to introduce the concept of form. For him, form
or appearance, was that one element shared by both tangible and abstract
phenomena in the world. His ideas framed how we understand human perception,
why is a portrait or a shadow equally important to us as the real thing. Plato's
theories were the basis for birthing the aesthetic discipline - the study of
beautiful. Aristotle believed that catharsis in art can only be achieved if the work is
dominated by its structure. Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, was more concerned
with universality. His philosophical quests for universal truth lead him to conclude
that only form of an art object can be judged equally by different people, equally
leading to pleasure. For what kind of world it is we live in, if we all see things
differently, if there's no objective knowledge? From Kant we inherited that idea of
form as shape, which will later lead to analysis of what today we call style. It was
through reading of Kant that aesthetics of art, and art criticism with it, was gradually
formulated by Eduard Hanslick (1891), Clive Bell (1913) and Roger Fry (1920).
Formalism was an attempt on philosophical inquiry into the very nature of art,
and as such was one approach among many others, like Voluntarism, Intellectualism
and Naturalism. But, it took all of the arts with a storm. Formalism was particularly
strong in music. It positioned music itself as above history, composers and even text
which is often present in vocal works. It was much easier to celebrate the
abstraction in music than it was with the other arts, but also to diminish the value of
anything outside the work itself. In literature, formalism meant focusing on exploring
the meaning of a literary work only from what we can experience while reading it,
and then only considering those elements inherent in the text - grammar, syntax,
tropes etc...
One of the most important figures in formalism was Bloomsbury writer and
art critic Clive Bell. His 1914 book Art was first attempt to define the form in visual
art which he did through his notion of significant form. Reflecting the L’art pour
l’art ideology, his goal was to give irrefutable proof that art form is different than
what we find in all other objects. Bell believed that emotions we experience when
looking at an artwork are incited by its formal quality and not its subject matter,
sensation he called the aesthetic emotion. Significant form is actually a combination
of formal elements, primarily lines and colors which Clive Bell thought are building
blocks of all visual art.
successful analysis we must ask that most important question - What is the
composition of the painting? It is the collective dance of all of these elements that
constitutes the significant form, that which provides its expressiveness.
The works of art that we could dub as formalist already achieved fame by
other names - modern art, abstract art, the avant-garde, yet they here are presented
in the context of their philosophical origin. After all, Clement Greenberg's famous
essay Modernist Painting (1960) uses works of Jackson Pollock as The example of
formalism. Greenberg saw Pollock's style as maybe the greatest example of that
manipulation of pure form. But perhaps, the best example of formalist art would be
compositions of Piet Mondrian like his Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red (1937-
42). Working with simple geometrical lines and primary colors, his paintings are the
purest manifestation of that which Clive Bell considered significant form. Formalist
approach to music, which produced the concept of absolute art, as unattached to
anything outside itself, was a great inspiration for abstract artists who strived to
achieve this lack of referentiality.
Even though formalism stared in many other arts, it was the painting that
both Bell and Greenberg had in mind while formulating their theories. Great works of
formalist art were produced by Expressionism, Cubism, Geometrical Abstract Art,
Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Informal Art by artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir
Malewitsch, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Jean Dubuffet and many others. But
this purified painterly approach to form also inspired artists in other media and
continues to do so today: Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling and their Abstract films,
Minimalism of Yves Klein and Frank Stella, Vsevolod Yemilyevich Meyerhold's
Formalist theatre, Land art etc.
Like with all good social theories, there is usually more criticism involved,
than the actual content discussing the theory. Anti-formalism opinions appeared
almost instantly after first attempts of canonization. Questions demanding more
detailed description of the form, disputes over the historical function of art and what
constitutes its value continue to inflame art critics and historians. But the biggest
challenge to formalism came with Postmodernism and Conceptual art. Works of
artists like Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol brought the question of concept in play
when nobody could've guessed that it would come to rule contemporary art.
Postmodernism on the other hand introduced that hard critical reflection into the
inner workings of the art world, tearing down all big narratives and search for
universal truth. But in 2017, we live in a truly Post world, where Postmodernism is
also something we had to overcome, leading us to a whole new appreciation of the
form.
References:
APPENDIX 9.2
This makes them both still life. Artists have been making still life is for
thousands of years because they offer an opportunity to reflect on the objects that
surround us in daily life.
Now, let's spend time with each artwork so we can learn more about them.
This is a painting known as "Fruit Piece" made by Jan van Huysum in 1722.
We can see a variety of fruits and flowers arranged together in an outdoor setting.
There are many organic shapes throughout, in the grapes, nectarines, flowers, and
more. What shapes can you identify?
This is a photograph known as "Still Life" made by Man Ray in 1933. The
composition of this artwork indicates to us that it is considered a still life. But there
are no flowers! Instead there are hands, faces, and rounded shapes.
What other objects can you identify?
The colors are eye catching. The primary colors red, blue, and yellow are
featured. Overall, the colors are high in intensity, meaning they are very bright.
There are also many distinct lines and hard edges, as seen in these geometric
shapes.
Now that we have described these artworks, let’s consider what they have in
common. Both use repetition and variety of elements to make the picture seem
active and unified. In what ways are these artworks different from one another?
The shapes in "Fruit Piece" are more organic than the geometric
shapes in "Still Life." The colors are complimentary and low intensity in "Fruit Piece,"
Now, let's share our impressions of the artworks. It's like a test question that
you always get right, because it's about your opinion.
It may help to have some background information on the artists so you can better
reflect on potential meanings of their work.
Jan van Huysum, like others still life painters of his time, painted
arrangements of natural objects in celebration of the beauty and abundance of life.
Van Huysum developed his own special process of building up layers of color in order
to create these realistic looking fruits and flowers.
Man Ray was really interested in making things that were new and different.
This photograph refers to the traditional still life paintings that artists like van
Huysum made.
The different choices in subject matter, like Man Ray including his own sculpture and
photograph, draw attention to the fact that he was having fun with tradition.
So if you were going to make a still life, what would you put in it?
Reference:
Getty Museum. (n.d.) Introducing Formal Analysis: Still Life. Transcript retrieved on
August 21, 2020 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxALpig_Cac
UNIT VI-LESSON 12
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2) Define Art according to Clive Bell and Paul Cezanne’s perspective? (refer to
Figures 3-4) (5 points)
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5) Using Formalistic perspective, how will you describe the painting? (refer to
Figure 6) (3 points)
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10) What are the three categories of Kandinsky’s Painting? Define each. (refer to
Figure 11) (3 points)
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11) How can Formalism relate to Music? (refer to Figures 12-13) (3 points)
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13) What is your evaluation of this painting? (refer to Figure 15) (3 points)
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15) What is your evaluation of this painting? (refer to Figure 16) (3 points)
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17) What is your evaluation of this painting? (refer to Figure 17) (3 points)
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19) What is your evaluation of this painting? (refer to Figure 18) (3 points)
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21) What is your evaluation of this painting? (refer to Figure 19) (3 points)
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23) What do you think is the style used by Hernando Ocampo? Why? (refer to
Figure 20) (3 points)
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24) What do you think is the style used by Ang Kiukok? Why? (refer to Figure 21)
(3 points)
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25) What do you think is the style used by Ramon Orlina? Why? (refer to Figure
22) (3 points)
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26) What do you think is the style used by Imelda Cajipe-Endaya? Why? (refer to
Figure 23) (3 points)
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27) What is the common denominator or the feature that all the different styles
of Formalism share? (5 points)
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29) In all the different styles of Formalism, which one fascinated you? Justify your
choice. (5 points)
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END