Discussing The Rejuvenation Of Painting With Clive Bell And Focusing On "Significance"

The British formalistic esthetician, Clive Bell's article, "art as significant form " has caught the field of aesthetics'attention since its introduction in 1913. Bell propose that in any kind of art work, it is some forms or the relationship between forms which come from the lines, the colours, and so on being organised in a special way, that arouse our aesthetic feelings. These relationship and combination of lines and colours, these aesthetic and affecting forms, are" significant forms ". "Significant form" is the common essence to all visual art as the foundation of its interpretation and the rejection of other elements'effect such as: life experience, daily emotion and civilization heritage. As above, Clive Bell's aesthetic point of view receives many people's support and directly affects the development of visual arts after modernism. However, as a consequence, it also causes the visual arts ,which just gone though modernism and post-modernism, getting into hot water——the current academic's difficult position , for example: the loss of the publicity and visual arts became synonymous with the things of superficial connotation. The author considers Clive Bell's point about "significance" and " form" as a proposition with originality, but the error is that his logic and causality of " significance " and "form" put the cart before the horse. In fact , it not a "significant form", but "the form takes on significance". The former regards the innovation of form as the ultimate goal, which makes significance its vassal; the latter stresses that the form's innovation is carrier, means, and the significance's taking on is the essence of art. They appears to be similar , but exports two distinct development road for visual arts. The former lets it step into the academic difficulty. However, the latter will carry on the burden of the visual arts'revival.This article taking the form of discussing with Clive Bell aims to expound the author's viewpoint—"the ultimate concern of painting lays in'significance'". I think, the creation of visual arts not only have a close relation to human survival experience, emotions, ethics, and sedimentary civilization, but also ask for painters'individual culture and spirituality. It is the significance based on them that decides whether the art work contains existing value.