In Response to Jacob's Second Question (Week 5)

Bell’s formalism does seem to suggest that we ought to divorce ourselves from content during appreciation. From Bell’s perspective, the main reason that individuals find an appeal to an art piece is because of its significant form (the placement of lines and colors). Significant form does not relate to the specific content in the artwork, but rather focuses on the parts which make up the whole instead of the whole itself. By divorcing oneself from the content, the viewer may be able to gather a greater insight as to how the work was created by seeing things such as the individual brush strokes created by a painter. It is not possible to completely divorce oneself from all content in an art work. Although one can make a serious effort to disregard the content of the art piece and focus solely on its significant form, after viewing the art piece for the first time the individual is already aware of what the work is intended to be (i.e. a waterfall). Trying to appreciate the work based solely off of its significant form after already knowing what the work is intended to represent would be extremely difficult because it would always be present in the viewer’s mind, even if only on a subconscious level. Formalists are not “correct” to deny content, but their denial of content does not make their theories less valid. Would you consider a person to be already divorced from content if the content of the artwork is unclear (i.e. the image we looked at in class that was simply lines and other unidentified shapes overlapping)?