Significant form

'Significant form' is a concept introduced by the English critic and art theorist Clive Bell in his book Art (1914). Bell argued that the common and defining quality of all works of visual art is a particular arrangement of lines, colours, planes and volumes that provokes in the viewer a special 'aesthetic emotion'. It is this arrangement, rather than subject matter, narrative or the recognizability of what is depicted, that makes an object a work of art. Form can be expressive even when it is largely or wholly divorced from the appearance of real things. Bell's theory rested on a formalist approach closely allied to the ideas of his colleague Roger Fry, and it served as an intellectual justification for Post-Impressionism and early abstraction, especially the work of Paul Cezanne, whom Bell regarded as exemplary. The concept helped explain why a viewer might be deeply moved by a work lacking any obvious 'content'. Critics, however, charged the theory with circularity and subjectivity, since 'aesthetic emotion' was defined by 'significant form' and 'significant form' by its power to provoke that emotion. Nonetheless the idea remained a cornerstone of twentieth-century formalist aesthetics.