Modernist Aesthetics

Clive Bell’s questions:

What is art?

What makes art good or not?

Piero della Francesca, Resurrection, (1463/5)

Giotto, Lamentation, (c.1305)

Stained glass window, 

Chartres Cathedral, (1200s)

Turkish plate, (1500s)

Ancient Egyptian
hunting scene (c.1500BC)

Cezanne, Riverbanks 
(1904)

Antony Gormley, The Angel of 
the North, (1998)

Antoni Gaudi,
Sagrada Familia 

Cathedral, 
Barcelona (1892-1906)

Look at the text by Clive Bell:

1.What is ‘aesthetic emotion’ and why 

is it important?

(p.107/l.1-13)

2.What is ‘Significant Form’?

(p.108/l.1-5)

3.What is ’descriptive painting’?

(p.108/l.7-15)

4.Can ‘descriptive painting’ be good art?

(p.108/l.15&16) (p.109/l.4-7)

5.Why is ‘Primitive’ art successful? 

(p.108/l.23-26 & l.33-36)

'For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs…' (p.109/l.7&8)

Clive Bell, (1914)

‘A work of art must carry within itself its complete significance and impose that upon the viewer even before he recognises the subject matter.’

Henri Matisse in ‘Notes of a Painter’ (1908), Art in Theory, p.73/l.32&33)

Derain, The Bridge at Charing Cross, 1906

Braque, Violin 

and Jug, 1910

Dix, The Match Seller, 1921

George Grosz, Grey Day, 1921

Rene Magritte, 

The Human Condition, 1933

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911

Piet Mondrian, Composition, 1921

Reading for 19/11:

Josef Albers, ‘On my Glass Wall Paintings’ (1933) in Albers and

                         Moholy-Nagy exhibition catalogue (London, Tate, 2006)

Umberto Boccioni, extract from ‘Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture’  

                                  (1912) in Umbro Apollonia (ed.), Futurist Manifestos, 

                                   (London, Thames& Hudson, 1973) p64&5