Editor's Note:This essay is an excerpt from the bookArt,originally published in 1914. It is in the public domainandmay be freely reproduced.
The discussion questions, bibliographic references, and hyperlinkshave been added by Julie Van Camp. (Copyright Julie C. Van Camp1997) They too may be freely reproduced, so long as this completecitation is included with any such reproductions.
About the Author:Clive Bell (1881-1964) was an Englishart critic best known for promoting his theory of formalism.
Paragraph numbering below has been added to facilitate class discussion.It was not included in the original text.
#1. It is improbable that more nonsense has been written aboutaesthetics than about anything else: the literature of the subjectis not large enough for that. It is certain, however, that aboutno subject with which I am acquainted has so little been saidthat is at all to the purpose. The explanation is discoverable.He who would elaborate a plausible theory of aesthetics must possesstwo qualities - artistic sensibility and a turn for clear thinking.Without sensibility a man can have no aesthetic experience, and,obviously, theories not based on broad and deep aesthetic experienceare worthless. Only those for whom art is a constant source ofpassionate emotion can possess the data from which profitabletheories may be deduced; but to deduce profitable theories evenfrom accurate data involves a certain amount of brain-work, and,unfortunately, robust intellects and delicate sensibilities arenot inseparable. As often as not, the hardest thinkers have hadno aesthetic experience whatever. I have a friend blessed withan intellect as keen as a drill, who, though he takes an interestin aesthetics, has never during a life of almost forty years beenguilty of an aesthetic emotion. So, having no faculty for distinguishinga work of art from a handsaw, he is apt to rear up a pyramid ofirrefragable argument on the hypothesis that a handsaw is a workof art. This defect robs his perspicuous and subtle reasoningof much of its value; for it has ever been a maxim that faultlesslogic can win but little credit for conclusions that are basedon premises notoriously false. Every cloud, however, has its silverlining, and this insensibility, though unlucky in that it makesmy friend incapable of choosing a sound basis for his argument,mercifully blinds him to the absurdity of his conclusions whileleaving him in full enjoyment of his masterly dialectic. Peoplewho set out from the hypothesis thatSir Edwin Landseerwas the finest painter that ever lived will feel no uneasinessabout an aesthetic which proves thatGiottowas the worst. So, my friend, when he arrives very logically atthe conclusion that a work of art should be small or round orsmooth, or that to appreciate fully a picture you should pacesmartly before it or set it spinning like a top, cannot guesswhy I ask him whether he has lately been to Cambridge, a placehe sometimes visits.
#2. On the other hand, people who respond immediately and surelyto works of art, though, in my judgment, more enviable than menof massive intellect but slight sensibility, are often quite asincapable of talking sense about aesthetics. Their heads are notalways very clear. They possess the data on which any system mustbe based; but, generally, they want the power that draws correctinferences from true data. Having received aesthetic emotionsfrom works of art, they are in a position to seek out the qualitycommon to all that have moved them, but, in fact, they do nothingof the sort. I do not blame them. Why should they bother to examinetheir feelings when for them to feel is enough? Why should theystop to think when they are not very good at thinking? Why shouldthey hunt for a common quality in all objects that move them ina particular way when they can linger over the many deliciousand peculiar charms of each as it comes? So, if they write criticismand call it esthetics, if they imagine that they are talking aboutArt when they are talking about particular works of art or evenabout the technique of painting, if, loving particular works theyfind tedious the consideration of art in general, perhaps theyhave chosen the better part. If they are not curious about thenature of their emotion, nor about the quality common to all objectsthat provoke it, they have my sympathy, and, as what they sayif often charming and suggestive, my admiration too. Only letno one support that what they write and talk is aesthetics; itis criticism, or just "shop."
#3. The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be thepersonal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provokethis emotion we call works of art. All sensitive people agreethat there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art. I donot mean, of course, that all works provoke the same emotion.On the contrary, every work produces a different emotion. Butall these emotions are recognisably the same in kind; so far,at any rate, the best opinion is on my side. That there is a particularkind of emotion provoked by works of visual art, and that thisemotion is provoked by every kind of visual art, by pictures,sculptures, buildings, pots, carvings, textiles, etc., etc., isnot disputed, I think, by anyone capable of feeling it. This emotionis called the aesthetic emotion; and if we can discover some qualitycommon and peculiar to all the objects that provoke it, we shallhave solved what I take to be the central problem of aesthetics.We shall have discovered the essential quality in a work of art,the quality that distinguishes works of art from all other classesof objects.
#4. For either all works of visual art have some common quality,or when we speak of "works of art" we gibber. Everyonespeaks of "art," making a mental classification by whichhe distinguishes the class "works of art" from all otherclasses. What is the justification of this classification? Whatis the quality common and peculiar to all members of this class?Whatever it be, no doubt it is often found in company with otherqualities; but they are adventitious - it is essential. Theremust be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist;possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless.What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects thatprovoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common toSta. Sophiaand the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, aPersian bowl,Chinese carpets,Giotto'sfrescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces ofPoussin,Piero della Francesca,andCezanne?Only one answer seems possible - significant form. In each, linesand colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relationsof forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinationsof 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.
#5. At this point it may be objected that I am making aestheticsa purely subjective business, since my only data are personalexperiences of a particular emotion. It will be said that theobjects that provoke this emotion vary with each individual, andthat therefore a system of aesthetics can have no objective validity.It must be replied that any system of aesthetics which pretendsto be based on some objective truth is so palpably ridiculousas not to be worth discussing. We have no other means of recognisinga work of art than our feeling for it. The objects that provokeaesthetic emotion vary with each individual. Aesthetic judgmentsare, as the saying goes, matters of taste; and about tastes, aseveryone is proud to admit, there is no disputing. A good criticmay be able to make me see in a picture that had left me coldthings that I had overlooked, till at last, receiving the aestheticemotion, I recognise it as a work of art. To be continually pointingout those parts, the sum, or rather the combination, of whichunite to produce significant form, is the function of criticism.But it is useless for a critic to tell me that something is awork of art; he must make me feel it for myself. This he can doonly by making me see; he must get at my emotions through my eyes.Unless he can make me see something that moves me, he cannot forcemy emotions. I have no right to consider anything a work of artto which I cannot react emotionally; and I have no right to lookfor the essential quality in anything that I have notfeltto be a work of art. The critic can affect my aesthetic theoriesonly by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of aestheticsmust be based on personal experience - that is to say, they mustbe subjective.
#6. Yet, though all aesthetic theories must be based on aestheticjudgments, and ultimately all aesthetic judgments must be mattersof personal taste, it would be rash to assert that no theory ofaesthetics can have general validity. For, though A, B, C, D arethe works that move me, and A, D, E, F the works that move you,it may well be thatx is the only quality believed by eitherof us to be common to all the works in his list. We may all agreeabout aesthetics, and yet differ about particular works of art.We may differ as to the presence or absence of the qualityx.My immediate object will be to show that significant form is theonly quality common and peculiar to all the works of visual artthat move me; and I will ask those whose aesthetic experiencedoes not tally with mine to see whether this quality is not also,in their judgment, common to all works that move them, and whetherthey can discover any other quality of which the same can be said.
#7. Also at this point a query arises, irrelevant indeed, buthardly to be suppressed: "Why are we so profoundly movedby forms related in a particular way?" The question is extremelyinteresting, but irrelevant to aesthetics. In pure aestheticswe have only to consider our emotion and its object: for the purposesof aesthetics we have no right, neither is there any necessity,to pry behind the object into the state of mind of him who madeit. Later, I shall attempt to answer the question; for by so doingI may be able to develop my theory of the relation of art to life.I shall not, however, be under the delusion that I am roundingoff my theory of aesthetics. For a discussion of aesthetics, itneed be agreed only that forms arranged and combined accordingto certain unknown and mysterious laws do move us in a particularway, and that it is the business of an artist so to combine andarrange them that they shall move us. These moving combinationsand arrangements I have called, for the sake of convenience andfor a reason that will appear later, "Significant Form."
#8. A third interpretation has to be met. "Are you forgettingabout colour?" someone inquires. Certainly not; my term "significantform" included combinations of lines and of colours. Thedistinction between form and colour is an unreal one; you cannotconceive a colourless line or a colourless space; neither canyou conceive a formless relation of colours. In a black and whitedrawing the spaces are all white and all are bounded by blacklines; in most oil paintings the spaces are multi-coloured andso are the boundaries; you cannot imagine a boundary line withoutany content, or a content without a boundary lines. Therefore,when I speak of significant form, I mean a combination of linesand colours (counting white and black as colours) that moves meaesthetically.
#9. Some people may be surprised at my not having called this"beauty." Of course, to those who define beauty as "combinationsof lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willinglyconceded the right of substituting their word for mine. But mostof us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet"beautiful" to objects that do not provoke that peculiaremotion produced by works of art. Everyone, I suspect, has calleda butterfly or a flower beautiful. Does anyone feel the same kindof emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedralor a picture/ surely, it is not what I call an aesthetic emotionthat most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty. I shall suggest,later, that some people may, occasionally, see in nature whatwe see in art, and feel for her an aesthetic emotion; but I amsatisfied that, as a rule, most people feel a very different kindof emotion for birds and flowers and the wings of butterfliesfrom that which they feel for pictures, pots, temples and statues.Why these beautiful things do not move us as works of art moveus is another, and not an aesthetic, question. For our immediatepurpose we have to discover only what quality is common to objectsthat do move us as works of art. In the last part of this chapter,when I try to answer the question-"Why are we so profoundlymoved by some combinations of lines and colours?" I shallhope to offer an acceptable explanation of why we are less profoundlymoved by others.
#10. Since we call a quality that does not raise the characteristicaesthetic emotion "Beauty," it would be misleading tocall by the same name the quality that does. To make "beauty"the object of the aesthetic emotion, we must give to the wordan over-strict and unfamiliar definition. Everyone sometimes uses"beauty" in an unaesthetic sense; most people habituallydo so. To everyone, except perhaps here and there an occasionalaesthete, the commonest sense of the word is unaesthetic. Of itsgrosser abuse, patent in our chatter about "beautiful huntin'"and "beautiful shootin'," I need not take account; itwould be open to the precious to reply that they never do so abuseit. Besides, here there is no danger of confusion between theaesthetic and the non-aesthetic use; but when we speak of a beautifulwoman there is. When an ordinary man speaks of a beautiful womanhe certainly does not mean only that she moves him aesthetically;but when an artist calls a withered old hag beautiful he may sometimesmean what he means when he calls a battered torso beautiful. Theordinary man, if he be also a man of taste, will call the batteredtorso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag beautifulbecause, in the matter of women, it is not to the aesthetic qualitythat the hag may possess, but to some other quality that he assignsthe epithet. Indeed, most of us never dream of going for aestheticemotions to human beings, from whom we ask something very different.This "something," when we find it in a young woman,we are apt to call 'beauty.' We live in a nice age. With the man-in-the-street'beautiful" is more often than not synonymous with "desirable":the word does not necessarily connote any aesthetic reaction whatever,and I am tempted to believe that in the minds of many the sexualflavour of the word is stronger than the aesthetic. I have noticeda consistency in those to whom the most beautiful thing in theworld is a beautiful woman, and the next most beautiful thinga picture of one. The confusion between aesthetic and sensualbeauty is not in their case so great as might be supposed. Perhapsthere is none; for perhaps they have never had an aesthetic emotionto confuse with their other emotions. The art that they call "beautiful"is generally closely related to the women. A beautiful pictureis a photograph of a pretty girl; beautiful music, the music thatprovokes emotions similar to those provoked by young ladies inmusical farces; and beautiful poetry, the poetry that recallsthe same emotions felt, twenty years earlier, for the rector'sdaughter. Clearly the word 'beauty" is used to connote theobjects of quite distinguishable emotions, and that is a reasonfor not employing a term which would land me inevitably in confusionsand misunderstandings with my readers.
#11. On the other hand, with those who judge it more exact tocall these combinations and arrangements of form that provokeour aesthetic emotions, not "significant form," but"significant relations of form," and then try to makethe best of two worlds, the aesthetic and the metaphysical, bycalling these relations "rhythm," I have no quarrelwhatever. Having made it clear that by "significant form"I mean arrangements and combinations that move us in a particularway, I willingly join hands with those who prefer to give a differentname to the same thing.
#12. The hypothesis that significant form is the essential qualityin a work of art has at least one merit denied to many more famousand more striking - it does help to explain things. We are allfamiliar with pictures that interest us and excite our admiration,but do not move us as works of art. To this class belongs whatI call "Descriptive Painting" that is, painting in whichforms are used not as objects of emotion, but as means of suggestingemotion or conveying information. Portraits of psychological andhistorical value, topographical works, pictures that tell storiesand suggest situations, illustrations of all sorts, belong tothis class. That we all recognise the distinction is clear, forwho has not said that such and such a drawing was excellent asillustration, but as a work of art worthless? Of course many descriptivepictures possess, amongst other qualities, formal significance,and are therefore works of art; but many more do not. They interestus; they may move us too in a hundred different ways, but theydo not move us aesthetically. According to my hypothesis theyare not works of art. They leave untouched our aesthetic emotionsbecause it is not their forms but the ideas or information suggestedor conveyed by their forms that affect us.
#13. Few pictures are better known or liked that Frith's "PaddingtonStation"; certainly I should be the last to grudge it itspopularity. Many a weary forty minutes have I whiled away disentanglingits fascinating incidents and forging for each an imaginary pastand an improbable future. But certain though it is that Frith'smasterpiece, or engravings of it, have provided thousands withhalf-hours of curious and fanciful pleasure, it is not less certainthat no one has experienced before it one half-second of aestheticrapture - and this although the picture contains several prettypassages of colour, and is by no means badly painted. "PaddingtonStation" is not a work of art; it is an interesting and amusingdocument. In it line and colour are used to recount anecdotes,suggest ideas, and indicate the manners and customs of an age;they are not used to provoke aesthetic emotion. Forms and therelations of forms were for Froith not objects of emotion, butmeans of suggesting emotion and conveying ideas.
#14. The ideas and information conveyed by "Paddington Station"are so amusing and so well presented that the picture has considerablevalue and is well, worth preserving. But, with the perfectionof photographic processes and of the cinematograph, pictures ofthis sort are becoming otiose. Who doubts that one of those dailyMirror photographers in collaboration with a Daily mail reportercan tell us far more about "London day by day" thanany royal Academician? For an account of manners and fashionswe shall go, in future, to photographs, supported by a littlebright journalism, rather than to descriptive painting. Had theimperial academicians of Nero, instead of manufacturing incrediblyloathsome imitations of the antique, recorded in fresco and mosaicthe manners and fashions of their day, their stuff, though artisticrubbish, would now be an historical gold-mine. If only they hadbeen Friths instead of being Alma Tademas! But photography hasmade impossible any such transmutation of modern rubbish. Thereforeit must be confessed that pictures in the Frith tradition aregrown superfluous; they merely waste the hours of able men whomight be more profitably employed in works of a wider beneficence.Still, they are not unpleasant, which is more than can be saidfor that kind of descriptive painting of which "The doctor"is the most flagrant example. Of course "The doctor"is not a work of art. In it form is not used as an object of emotion,but as a means of suggesting emotions. This alone suffices tomake it nugatory; it is worse than nugatory because the emotionit suggests is false. What it suggests is not pity and admirationbut a sense of complacency in our own pitifulness and generosity.It is sentimental. Art is above morals, or, rather, all art ismoral because, as I hope to show presently, works of art are immediatemeans to good. Once we have judged a thing a work of art, we havejudged it ethically of the first importance and put it beyondthe reach of the moralist. But descriptive pictures which arenot works of art, and, therefore, are not necessarily means togood states of mind, are proper objects of the ethical philosopher'sattention. Not being a work of art, "The Doctor" hasnone of the immense ethical value possessed by all objects thatprovoke aesthetic ecstasy; and the state of mind to which it isa means, as illustration, appears to me undesirable.
#15. The works of those enterprising young men, the Italian futurists,are notable examples of descriptive painting. Like the Royal Academicians,they use form, not to provoke aesthetic emotions, but to conveyinformation and ideas. Indeed the published theories of the Futuristsprove that their pictures ought to have nothing whatever to dowith art. Their social and political theories are respectable,but I would suggest to young Italian painters that it is possibleto become a Futurist in thought and action and yet remain an artist,if one has the luck to be born one. To associate art with politicsis always a mistake. Futurist pictures are descriptive becausethey aim at presenting in line and colour the chaos of the mindat a particular moment; their forms are not intended to promoteaesthetic emotion but to convey information. These forms, by theway, whatever may be the nature of the ideas they suggest, arethemselves anything but revolutionary. In such futurist picturesas I have seen - perhaps I should except some by Severine - thedrawing, whenever it becomes representative as it frequently does,is found to be in that soft and common convention brought intofashion by Besnard some thirty years ago, and much affected byBeaux-Art students ever since. As works of art, the Futurist picturesare negligible; but they are not to be judged as works of art.A good Futurist picture would succeed as a good piece of psychologysucceeds; it would reveal, through line and colour, the complexitiesof an interesting state of mind. If futurist pictures seem tofail, we must seek an explanation, not in a lack of artistic qualitiesthat they never were intended to possess, but rather in the mindsthe states of which they are intended to reveal.
#16. Most people who care much about art find that of the workthat moves them most the greater part is what scholars call "Primitive."Of course there are bad primitives. For instance, I remember going,full of enthusiasm, to see one of the earliest Romanesque churchesin Poitiers (Notre-Dame-la-Grande),and finding it as ill-proportioned, over-decorated, coarse, fatand heavy as any better class building by one of those highlycivilised architects who flourished a thousand years earlier oreight hundred later. But such exceptions are rare. As a rule primitiveart is good - and here again my hypothesis is helpful - for, asa rule, it is also free from descrip6tive qualities. In primitiveart you will find no accurate representation; you will find onlysignificant form. Yet no other art moves us so profoundly. Whetherwe consider Sumerian sculpture or pre-dynastic Egyptian art, orarchaic Gree, or the Wei and T'ang masterpieces, or those earlyJapanese works of which I had the luck to see a few superb examples(especially two wooden Bodhisattvas) at the Shepherd's bush Exhibitionin 1910, or whether, coming nearer home, we consider the primitiveByzantine art of the sixth century and its primitive developmentsamongst the western barbarians, or, turning far afield, we considerthat mysterious and majestic art that flourished in Central andSouth America before the coming of the white men, in every casewe observe three common characteristics - absence of representation,absence of technical swagger, sublimely impressive form. Nor isit hard to discover the connection between these three. Formalsignificance loses itself in preoccupation with exact representationand ostentatious cunning.
#17. Naturally, it is said that if there is little representationand less saltimbancery in primitive art, that is because the primitiveswere unable to catch a likeness or cut intellectual capers. Thecontention is beside the point. There is truth in it, no doubt,though, were I a critic whose reputation depended on a power ofimpressing the public with a semblance of knowledge, I shouldbe more cautious about urging it than such people generally are.For to support that the Byzantine masters wanted skill, or couldnot have created an illusion had they wished to do so, seems toimply ignorance of the amazingly dexterous realism of the notoriouslybad works of that age. Very often, I fear, the misrepresentationof the primitives must be attributed to what the critics call,"wilful distortion." Be that as it may, the point isthat, either from what of skill or want of will, primitives neithercreate illusions, nor make display of extravagant accomplishment,but concentrate their energies on the one thing needful - thecreation of form. Thus have they created the finest works of artthat we possess.
#18. Let no one imagine that representation is bad in itself;a realistic form may be as significant, in its place as part ofthe design, as an abstract. But if a representative form has value,it is as form, not as representation. The representative elementin a work of art may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant.For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothingfrom life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiaritywith its emotions. Art transports us from the world of man's activityto a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment we are shut offfrom human interests; our anticipations and memories are arrested;we are lifted above the stream of life. The pure mathematicianrapt in his studies knows a state of mind which I take to be similar,if not identical. He feels an emotion for his speculations whicharises from no perceived relation between them and the lives ofmen, but springs, inhuman or super-human, from the heart of anabstract science. I wonder, sometimes, whether the appreciatorsof art and of mathematical solutions are not even more closelyallied. Before we feel an aesthetic emotion for a combinationof forms, do we not perceive intellectually the rightness andnecessity of the combination? If we do, it would explain the factthat passing rapidly through a room we recognise a picture tobe good, although we cannot say that it has provoked much emotion.We seem to have recognised intellectually the rightness of itsforms without staying to fix our attention, and collect, as itwere, their emotional significance. If this were so, it wouldbe permissible to inquire whether it was the forms themselvesor our perception of their rightness and necessity that causedaesthetic emotion. But I do not think I need linger to discussthe matter here. I have been inquiring why certain combinationsof forms move us; I should not have traveled by other roads hadI enquired, instead, why certain combinations are perceived tobe right and necessary, and why our perception of their rightnessand necessity is moving. What I have to say is this: the raptphilosopher, and he who contemplates a work of art, inhabit aworld with an intense and peculiar significance of its own; thatsignificance is unrelated to the significance of life. In thisworld the emotions of life find no place. It is a world with emotionsof its own.
#19. To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothingbut a sense of form and colour and a knowledge of three-dimensionalspace. That bit of knowledge, I admit, is essential to the appreciationof many great works, since many of the move moving forms evercreated are in three dimensions. To see a cube or rhomboid asa flat pattern is to lower its significance, and a sense of three-dimensionalspace is essential to the full appreciation of most architecturalforms. Pictures which would be insignificant if we saw them asflat patterns are profoundly moving because, in fact, we see themas related planes. If the representation of three-dimensionalspace is to be called "representation," then I agreethat there is one kind of representation which is not irrelevant.Also, I agree that along with our feeling for line and colourwe must bring with us our knowledge of space if we are to makethe most of every kind of form. Nevertheless, there are magnificentdesigns to an appreciation of which this knowledge is not necessary:so, though it is not irrelevant to the appreciation of some worksof art it is not essential to the appreciation of all. What wemust say is that the representation of three-dimensional spaceis neither irrelevant nor essential to all art, and that everyother sort of representation is irrelevant.
#20. That there is an irrelevant representative or descriptiveelement in many great works of art is not in the least surprising.Why it is not surprising I shall try to show elsewhere. Representationis not of necessity baneful, and highly realistic forms may beextremely significant. Very often, however, representation isa sign of weakness in an artist. A painter too feeble to createforms that provoke more than a little aesthetic emotion will tryto eke that little out by suggesting the emotions of life. Toevoke the emotions of life he must use representation. Thus aman will paint an execution, and, fearing to miss with his firstbarrel of significant form, will try to hit with his second byraising an emotion of fear or pity. But if in the artist an inclinationto play upon the emotions of life is often the sign of a flickeringinspiration, in the spectator a tendency to seek, behind form,the emotions of life is a sign of defective sensibility always.It means that his aesthetic emotions are weak or, at any rate,imperfect. Before a work of art people who feel little or no emotionfor pure form find themselves at a loss. They are deaf men ata concert. They know that they are in the presence of somethinggreat, but they lack the power of apprehending it. They know thatthey ought to feel for it a tremendous emotion, but it happensthat the particular kind of emotion it can raise is one that theycan feel hardly or not at all. And so they read into the formsof the work those facts and ideas for which they are capable offeeling emotion, and feel for them the emotions that they canfeel -the ordinary emotions of life. When confronted by a picture,instinctively they refer back its forms to the world from whichthey came. They treat created form as though it were imitatedform, a picture as though it were a photograph. Instead of goingout on the stream of art into a new world of aesthetic experience,they turn a sharp corner and come straight home to the world ofhuman interests. For them the significance of a work of art dependson what they bring to it; no new thing is added to their lives,only the old material is stirred. A good work of visual art carriesa person who is capable of appreciating it out of life into ecstasy:to use art as a means to the emotions of life is to use a telescopeof reading the news. You will notice that people who cannot feelpure aesthetic emotions remember pictures by their subjects; whereaspeople who can, as often as not, have no idea what the subjectof a picture is. They have never noticed the representative element,and so when they discuss pictures they talk about the shapes offorms and the relations and quantities of colours. Often theycan tell by the quality of a single line whether or not a manis a good artist. They are concerned only with lines and colours,their relations and quantities and qualities; but from these theywin an emotion more profound and far more sublime than any thatcan be given by the description of facts and ideas.
#21. This last sentence has a very confident ring - over-confident,some may think. Perhaps I shall be able to justify it, and makemy meaning clearer too, if I give an account of my own feelingsabout music. I am not really musical. I do not understand musicwell. I find musical form exceedingly difficult to apprehend,and I am sure that the profounder subtleties of harmony and rhythmmore often than not escape me. The form of a musical compositionmust be simple indeed if I am to grasp it honestly. My opinionabout music is not worth having. Yet, sometimes, at a concern,though my appreciation of the music is limited and humble, itis pure. Sometimes, though I have poor understanding, I have aclean palate. Consequently, when I am feeling bright and clearand intent, at the beginning of a concert for instance, when somethingthat I can grasp is being played, I get from music that pure aestheticemotion that I get from visual art. It is less intense, and therapture is evanescent; I understand music too ill for music totransport me far into the world of pure aesthetic ecstasy. Butat moments I do appreciate music as pure musical form, as soundscombined acco4ding to the laws of a mysterious necessity, as pureart with a tremendous significance of its own and no relationwhatever to the significance of life; and in those moments I losemyself in that infinitely sublime state of mind to which purevisual form transports me. How inferior is my normal state ofmind at a concern. Tired or perplexed, I let slip my sense ofform, my aesthetic emotion collapses, and I begin weaving intothe harmonies, that I cannot grasp, the ideas of life. Incapableof feeling the austere emotions of art, I begin to read into themusical forms human emotions of terror and mystery, love and hate,and spend the minutes, pleasantly enough, in a world of turbidand inferior feeling. At such times, were the grossest piecesof onomatopoeic representation - the song of a bird, the gallopingof horses, the cries of children, or the laughing of demons -to be introduced into the symphony, I should not be offended.Very likely I should be pleased; they would afford new pointsof departure for new trains of romantic feeling or heroic thought.I know very well what has happened. I have been using art as ameans to the emotions of life and reading into it the ideas oflife. I have been cutting blocks with a razor. I have tumbledfrom the superb peaks of aesthetic exaltation to the snug foothillsof warm humanity. It is a jolly country. No one need to ashamedof enjoying himself there. Only no one who has ever been on theheights can help feeling a little crestfallen in the cosy valleys.And let no one imagine, because the has made merry in the warmtilth and quaint nooks of romance, that he can even guess at theaustere and thrilling raptures of those who have climbed the cold,white peaks of art.
#22. About music most people are as willing to be humble as Iam. If they cannot grasp musical form and win from it a pure aestheticemotion, they confess that they understand music imperfectly ornot at all. They recognize quite clearly that there is a differencebetween the feeling of the musician for pure music and that ofthe cheerful concert-goer for what music suggests. The latterenjoys his own emotions, as he has every right to do, and recognisestheir inferiority. Unfortunately, people are apt to be less modestabout their powers of appreciating visual art. Everyone is inclinedto believe that out of pictures, at any rate, he can get all thatthere is to be got; everyone is ready to cry "humbug"and "imposter" at those who say that more can be had.The good faith of people who feel pure aesthetic emotions is calledin question by those who have never felt anything of the sort.It is the prevalence of the representative element, I support.That makes the man in the street so sure that he knows a goodpicture when he sees one. For I have noticed that in matters ofarchitecture, pottery, textiles, etc., ignorance and ineptitudeare more willing to defer to the opinions of those who have beenblest with peculiar sensibility. It is a pity that cultivatedand intelligent men and women cannot be induced to believe thata great gift of aesthetic appreciation is at least as rare invisual as in musical art. A comparison of my own experience inboth has enabled me to discriminate very clearly between pureand impure appreciation. Is it too much to ask that others shouldbe as honest about their feelings for pictures as I have beenabout mine for music? For I am certain that most of those whovisit galleries do feel very much what I feel at concerts. Theyhave their moments of pure ecstasy; but the moments are shortand unsure. Soon they fall back into the world of human interestsand feel emotions, good no doubt, but inferior. I do not dreamof saying that what they get from art is bad or nugatory; I saythat they do not get the best that art can give. I do not saythat they cannot understand art; rather I say that they cannotunderstand the state of mind of those who understand it best.I do not say that art means nothing or little to them; I say theymiss its full significance. I do not suggest for one moment thattheir appreciation of art is a thing to be ashamed of; the majorityof the charming and intelligent people with whom I am acquaintedappreciate visual art impurely; and, by the way, the appreciationof almost all great writers has been impure. But provided thatthere be some fraction of pure aesthetic emotion, even a mixedand minor appreciation of art is, I am sure, one of the most valuablethings in the world - so valuable, indeed, that in my giddiermoments I have been tempted to believe that art might prove theworld's salvation.
#23. Yet, though the echoes and shadows of art enrich the lifeof the plains, her spirit dwells on the mountains. To him whowoos, but woos impurely, she returns enriched what is brought.Like the sun, she warms the good seed in good soil and causesit to bring forth good fruit. But only to the perfect lover doesshe give a new strange gift - a gift beyond all price. Imperfectlovers bring to art and take away the ideas and emotions of theirown age and civilisation. In twelfth-century Europe a man mighthave been greatly moved by a Romanesque church and found nothingin a T'ang picture. To a man of a later age, Greek sculpture meantmuch and Mexican nothing, for only to the former could he bringa crowd of associated ideas to be the objects of familiar emotions.But the perfect lover, he who can feel the profound significanceof form, is raised above the accidents of time and place. To himthe problems of archaeology, history, and hagiography are impertinent.If the forms of a work are significant its provenance is irrelevant.Before the grandeur of those Sumerian figures in the Louvre heis carried on the same flood of emotion to the same aestheticecstasy as, more than four thousand years ago, the Chaldean loverwas carried. It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universaland eternal. Significant form stands charged with the power toprovoke aesthetic emotion in anyone capable of feeling it. Theideas of men go buzz and die like gnats; men change their institutionsand their customs as they change their coats; the intellectualtriumphs of one age are the follies of another; only great artremains stable and unobscure. Great art remains stable and unobscurebecause the feelings that it awakens are independent of time andplace, because its kingdom is not of this world. To those whohave and hold a sense of the significance of form what does itmatter whether the forms that move them were created in Paristhe day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries ago? Theforms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same roadof aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy.
Art.London, 1914.
Enjoying Pictures. London, 1934.
Since Cezanne. London, 1922.
Bywater, W.J., Jr.Clive Bell's Eye. Detroit, 1975.
McLaughlin, T.M. "Clive Bell's Aesthetic: Tradition and Significantform."Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35(1977).
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