Formodernism

As someone who has spent a small amount of effort avoiding art classes, I was a little dejected when the first few weeks of class effectively turned out to be an art class. I’ve tended to feel very private about my own art, and I tend to keep my nose out of other people’s art. If it’s on display somewhere that’s fine, I enjoy looking at beautiful things. But I certainly don’t want to spend hours in front of a single strip of blank canvas contemplating all of the artist’s inner-most feelings, his or her mood when not painting, and/or what sort of political statement he or she was trying to make. That’s just not my thing. That said, now that I’ve been coerced into learning about the various styles of art I care least about, I can at least tell what box a piece of “art” falls into upon first glance. So now I can pass by a piece and say, “Oh, that’s formalism,” instead of, “Oh, that was big waste of seconds.” Of course, in my mind, the two are synonymous. But out loud, it sounds more cultured to say the former.

So I drew out a sort of graph while I was reading to help me understand the relationship between these four styles of art. The y-axis indicated the importance of form, the x-axis indicated the importance of meaning. “Bad art” was represented at (0,0), having no form and no meaning. Since this chart was just for my own benefit, I’m not really interested on anyone else’s theories on where “Bad art” should be placed on the graph. Anyway, formalism was placed high on the y-axis and low on the x-axis (1,10); Expressionism was sort of medium on the y-axis and high on the x-axis (10,5); Realism was low on the y-axis and high on the x-axis (10,1); and Post-Modernism existed somewhere on the z-axis. I’m not going to pretend I understand what’s going on with that genre. Something about purposiveness without purpose, blah blah blah, lack of clarity, blah blah blah, sublime.

On a completely unrelated note, as I was reading through the formalist section of the book, I thought it was interesting to note how the European way of art is to embrace the newest, craziest trend while believing the previous trend they embraced is completely inferior, in the most arrogant, pompous way possible. All while denying the official “label” of the style they have embraced. I’m like, dude, you can deny it all you want, but you’re a formalist.