Bell and Art

                Clive Bell argues that art produces an aesthetic emotion that is separate from nature. He cannot describe this emotion or how it is different. He simply says that you know it when you feel it and if you do not then there is something lacking in you. This places the reader at an unfair disadvantage because they cannot disprove him without saying that they do not feel this emotion and that makes them insensitive. We used the example of the butterfly and cathedral in class and said that if you do not feel different emotions for each then you lack this sensitivity. This example is probably not the best one available because even people who lacked this supposed sensitivity would feel differently when looking at a butterfly and cathedral. A butterfly is delicate and simple in its beauty and a cathedral is imposing and intricately detailed. If one is to simply look at a piece of art and a part of nature and see if their emotions are different in order to evaluate Bell’s idea then the other variables need to be limited. Emotions are complicated so it would be impossible to limit all the outside variables but if we compared something like a cathedral and a mountain the ordinary emotions might be closer. Then feeling something separate for the art piece might mean more. Even this does not really work because people might feel differently for anything manmade verse nature. There might be some ingrained pride for something created by the human species rather than the more random beauty of nature. Then the separation in emotional impact would not be contained to art. Also, if you feel a special emotion for something made by people does that make it art? Say there is something about my bookcase that makes me feel the same way that I might about art. Is my bookcase then art? I suppose that it must have significant form for me to feel that way. Then we recognize art through this emotion and therefore this art has significant form. If that is true couldn’t they be correlated rather than cause each other. What if, for example, Freud was correct and we like art because we are able to express and feel our repressed desires? Then art still has lines, colors and shape but the quality that provokes this emotion is different. Bell said that significant form is the only quality that all art shares, but that could just mean he did not see the other quality or qualities that do exist in all art.

                Could aesthetic emotion exist without significant form?