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Significant form is a once fashionable term coined by the English art critic Clive Bell (1881–1964) to characterise the properties that distinguish a work of art from all other classes of object.[1]
Bell’s hypothesis is based on the existence of “… a particular kind of emotion provoked by works of visual art … the aesthetic emotion”.[2] He explained his idea of significant form in his book Art (1914), in which he poses the question “What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions?” His answer is significant form, which he describes as “lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, [that] stir our aesthetic emotions”.[3]
Bell’s idea has been criticised as being circular, inconsistent and contradictory, relying as it does on an invented emotion.[4] His belief in some quality “common and peculiar to all objects” is also in contrast to his belief in an aesthetic emotion.[2] But Bell’s ideas did nevertheless advance the idea that works of art should be assessed on their formal qualities as well as their content, as seen reflected in the works of the Bloomsbury Group in London, of which he was a member.[3]