Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A number of principles delineating the study of visual art cluster together under the rubric Formalism. These precepts focus on such immediately accessible aspects of objects and images as material, color, line, and shape, elements that construct appearance and function as expressive agents. They are the features that set works regarded as art apart from other forms of creativity and, for Formalists, are the critical determinants of any work's significance. As the key components of the process called formal analysis, these aspects of a work figure in the initial stages of art historical study; they are not commensurable however with the more extensive agenda of inquiry that is encompassed by the term Formalism. The question of workmanship – the distinct manner in which an object's maker handles materials and configures pattern – constitutes Formalism's central concern. Single-minded pursuit of this issue comprises a sub-set of Formalist practice familiarly termed Connoisseurship. What is at stake in this work is characterization of an artist's manner of representation along with an assertion of its independence from cultural influences. Formalists consider the social, political, and religious circumstances in which art is produced to lie outside of the object and reject empiricist inquiries into such issues as being extrinsic to it. Instead, Formalists subscribe to the notion ... log in or subscribe to read full text