Formalist a ready-made sculpture or even a public
monument cannot be art, but a Moderate Formal-
ist can still accept these items as art, conditionally.
The condition allows that even though one may
require considerable knowledge of history or of
the formal properties of previous works to properly
judge the aesthetic merits of a particular piece, it
stipulates that the judgment or emotion provoked
once arrived upon, given previous experience, is
itself independent of that history or those previous
works. The artist’s intention in creating the work is
not relevant to its value, neither are issues of ori-
ginality. DuChamp’sFountain(1917) may bebest
understood in the context of its history and intent,
but it does not necessarily follow that it canonlybe
so understood. It can be formalistically appreciated
outside of context, on its own merits.
Formalism as an aesthetic concept in photogra-
phy has been linked to and at times confused with
the medium’s inherent strengths as a medium of
document. Photography’s immediate referent to
reality and—representationalism has made it diffi-
cult for some artists and critics to define photo-
graphic images in purely aesthetic, Formalist
terms. However, from the very beginning of the
twentieth century, photographers have fought
against the notion of narrative in their works and
have pushed for an interpretation of Formal or
straight photography.
One of the most powerful recent voices in Form-
alist photographic criticism was John Szarkowski
who served as Director of the Department of
Photography at the Museum of Modern Art from
1962 to 1991. Szarkowski championed straight pho-
tography and agreed in large part with the judg-
ments of Clement Greenberg. He promoted that
the meaning of a photo lies in the medium itself,
that is: form follows function. In the 1960s, exhibi-
tions at the Museum of Modern Art under Szar-
kowski promoted highly formalistic readings of
artists such as Stieglitz. Szarkowski sought to
remove any metaphoric interpretations from con-
temporary photography. He identified five formal
properties of photography: the thing itself, the
detail, the frame, the time, and the vantage point.
Postmodern theory stands in opposition to mod-
ern Formalist arguments. The postmodern stance
often holds that photography has no inherent con-
text and therefore no inherent historic unity. A
photographic image, for these critics, has no mean-
ing unto itself as an aesthetic object. A photo is
inseparably tied to its use or function as an object
in a context outside of itself.
From a radical and new way of appreciating and
evaluating what art should be, to an interesting but
not as widely believed tenet of historical aesthetics,
Formalism has developed throughout the twentieth
century, and in its course has had a profound effect
on all arts, particularly the visual and musical.
Bell’s Formalism contained a Romantic ideal of
the artist-savior, who could move an individual to
catharsis by the use of significant form in painting.
Roger Fry was more pragmatic than Bell and pre-
ferred that form be an indication of aesthetic beauty
and not necessarily moral obligation. In the latter
part of the century theorists like Greenberg strove
to remove subjectivism from the visual arts. His
calling for a purely abstract and flat art that con-
tained referents only to itself was an extension of
Fry’s theory with a markedly political bent. John
Szarkowski, during his years at the Museum of
Modern Art shaped the way contemporary photo-
graphy was evaluated and interpreted showing that
despite the obvious connection photography had to
the real world, it too could be a Formalist medium.
At the heart of any of these writers’ works is the
notion that a work of art need not be evaluated
against the subjective, social-political structure in
which it was created. For the Formalist, an artwork
is the fullest expression of the characteristics of its
medium so produced to create an aesthetic response
that is unique to that one work and utterly devoid of
meaning in a real world sense.
ERINSCHWARTZ
Seealso: Cunningham, Imogen; Image Theory:
Ideology; Stieglitz, Alfred; Strand, Paul; Weston,
Edward; Witkiewicz, Stanislaw IgnacyFurther Reading
Batchen, Geoffry.Burning with Desire: The Conception of
Photography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
Bell, Clive.Art. London: Chanto and Windus, 1914.
Curtin, Deane W. ‘‘Varieties of Aesthetic Formalism.’’
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 40 (1982).
Daval, Jean-Luc.Photography: History of an Art. New
York: Rizzoli, 1982.
Dziemidok, Bohdan. ‘‘Artistic Formalism: Its Achieve-
ments and Weaknesses.’’Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 51, no. 2 (1993).
Eisinger, Joel.Trace and Transformation: American Criti-
cism of Photography in the Modernist Period. Albuquer-
que, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Friday, Jonathan.Aesthetics and Photography.Burling-
ton, VT: Ashgate, 2002.
Fry, Roger.Vision and Design. New York: Meridian, 1956.
Gaut, Berys and Dominic McIver Lopes, eds.The Routle-
dge Companion to Aesthetics. London and New York:
Routledge, 2001.
Greenberg, Clement. ‘‘Toward a Newer Laocoo ̈n.’’Partisan
Review, VII, no. 4 (1940).
Greenberg, Clement.Art and Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1961.FORMALISM