The document discusses the concept of "significant form" in works of visual art. It states that there is an aesthetic emotion provoked by all forms of visual art, including paintings, sculptures, buildings, and other objects. The central problem of aesthetics is to discover the quality common to all objects that provoke this emotion. The document explores significant form as the only quality common to all works of visual art that move the viewer emotionally. It aims to show that significant form is what defines a work as a piece of visual art.

1. The Hagia SophiaThe Hagia Sophia
Bell on Significant Form

2. Art is significant form causedArt is significant form caused
by the Aesthetic emotionby the Aesthetic emotion
Bell, Art

3. That there is a particular kind of emotion provoked by works of visual art,
and that this emotion is provoked by every kind of visual art, by pictures,
sculptures, buildings, pots, carvings, textiles, &c., &c., is not disputed, I think,
by anyone capable of feeling it. This emotion is called the aesthetic emotion;
and if we can discover some quality common and peculiar to all the objects
that provoke it, we shall have solved what I take to be the central problem of
aesthetics.
Bell, Art

4. ...it is useless for a critic to tell me that something is a work
of art; he must make me feel it for myself. This he can do
only 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 force my emotions.
Bell, Art

5. Hagia Sophia

6. Hagia Sophia

7. Hagia Sophia

8. Hagia Sophia

9. Hagia Sophia

10. Hagia Sophia

11. Windows at Chartes

16. Mexican Sculpture

17. Mexican Sculpture
José Luis Cuevas, La Giganta

18. José Luis Cuevas,
La Giganta

19. Mayan Sculpture,
King Pakal

20. Serpent Sculpture,
Aztec

21. Persian Bowls

25. Scrovegni Chapel

26. In every istoria variety is always pleasant. A painting in which there are
bodies in many dissimilar poses is always especially pleasing. There some
stand erect, planted on one foot, and show all the face with the hand high and
the fingers joyous. In others the face is turned, the arms folded and the feet
joined. And thus to each one is given his own action and flection of members;
some are seated, others on one knee, others lying. If it is allowed here, there
ought to be some nude and others part nude and part clothed in the painting;
but always make use of shame and modesty.
Alberti, De Pictura

28. Giotto’s Lamentation

29. Thus I desire, as I have said, that modesty and truth should be used in every
istoria . For this reason be careful not to repeat the same gesture or pose. The
istoria will move the soul of the beholder when each man painted there clearly
shows the movement of his own soul. It happens in nature that nothing more
than herself is found capable of things like herself; [Cicero, De amicitia, xiv,
50] we weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing, and grieve with the
grieving.
Alberti, De Pictura

30. Giotto’s Betrayal

31. These movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body. Care and
thought weigh so heavily that a sad person stands with his forces and feelings as if
dulled, holding himself feebly and tiredly on his pallid and poorly sustained
members. In the melancholy the forehead is wrinkled, the head drooping, all
members fall as if tired and neglected. In the angry, because anger incites the soul,
the eyes are swollen with ire and the face and all the members are burned with
colour, fury adds so much boldness there. In gay and happy men the movements
are free and with certain pleasing inflections.
Alberti, De Pictura

32. Nicolas Poussin

33. Rape of the Sabine Women

34. Venus and Mars

36. Piero della Francesca

37. Baptism of
Christ

38. Resurrection

39. Flagellation of Christ

40. Cezanne

41. The Bathers

42. Skulls

43. Mont Saint-
Victoire

44. Still Life

45. My immediate object will be to show that significant form is the
only quality common and peculiar to all the works of visual art that
move me; and I will ask those whose aesthetic experience does not
tally with mine to see whether this quality is not also, in their
judgment, common to all works that move them, and whether they
can discover any other quality of which the same can be said.
Bell, Art