Form,culture And Rational Aesthetic

When we analyze a fine art, two key words equally often appear in the discussion——"form" and "shape", Arnheim discussed the two terms in his book, and pointed out that "a distinction between these two words is very valuable." Of course, here we focus on not only the difference between the two terms, but more upper "point to" problems.A statement of Arnheim is very precious, "there is no visual style exists for its own, and it always reproduces something beyond the existence of its own. That is to say, all the shape should be the form of content. " He has laid a good foundation of understanding " shape "and" form " (which is limited to the visual arts). Form serves as a means for expressing shape ,it should express the shape or object completely by explicit way (the object can be objective, objectively social relations, or the connotation of mental, such as sadness, grief, anger , compassion, joy, etc.) Then, the shape is already determined by the facts, not only in its "image features", but also in its state or the link (state, including: have occurred, is occurring, will occur; link should be in a certain state between things , which can be intimate and cold).However the concept of form is relatively complex. First of all, form is not only the logical extension of the shape, but also reflects various patterns of the shape. For example, the state of the shape, the abstract concept of the shape, the cultural connotations of shape and so on. Therefore, we can draw such a conclusion, many different art forms constitute the art world, artistic expression is composed by many different shapes and variety styles of shape. Here, we could apply to Mr. Wittgenstein's statement "... ..., if a thing can appear in a state of affairs, then the possibility of the situation must have been pre-included in the things being ... ...." In the art world, the situation is also true. Shape contained within form is a condition of shape present in the form. Of course, this model also makes shape and form occur necessary link, while the characteristic of form must be the most significant aspect of expressing shape, but the form of expression can be hidden inside the form deeply, or exposed to the shape nakednessly.Whether a work of art itself or the object be expressed, of which the most important thing is——"form". At this point, it is necessary to clarify a question that the importance of form can not be absolutization . Although we can not determine the Clive ? Bell, Hogarth and other masters of formalism which elaborated model and research method are arbitrary, but the results of their research can be described as "incomplete" and "not adequate conclusions." To a certain extent, they isolated the form, they put a simple meaningless line as "beautiful" and described a single shape as "harmony." (These simple shapes are not meaningless, but build a relationship between it and the viewer, which is related to the Gestalt psychology, it will be involved in the second part of the article). We can generally believe that the pure form is both salient feature and shortage of the masters of formalism. In our context, form not simply exists in the work of art, but a medium, as long as works of art exist, the form will exist, it is born in the link between artist and objective, it is generated in the process of the artist's performance, while it will reach maturity between art and audience. In the mature stage, the form is no longer just a medium, not just plays a link role, the form itself has become a part of the work of art, thus, form derive from the style.