Visual form of life

Author: Zhang Jian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: Viewing artworks as purely visual forms of creation while discarding any focus on subject matter, plot, or content, this modernist art concept first emerged and developed in the art history and aesthetic theories of German-speaking countries in the mid-to-late 19th century. As an epistemological issue, the form problem pertains to the way of perceiving or viewing the world through art. This book traces the threads of sensationalism and formalism in modern art history, systematically interpreting and organizing the thoughts of key art historians and theorists in these schools, including Konrad Fiedler, Hildebrandt, Riegl, Wolfflin, Worringer, and others. Grounded in Worringer's two works, Abstraction and Empathy and Goethe's Theory of Form, the book evaluates the impact of this modern formal theory on the modernist art movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in terms of its methods, scope, and extent. Additionally, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the relationship between Roger Fry's formalist art criticism and formal theory, as well as the formal and stylistic discrimination concepts of the Italian connoisseur and art historian Giovanni Morelli. The author is a Deputy Director of the Department of Art History and Theory at the China Academy of Art, an Associate Professor, and a Ph.D. holder.