Question

For the formalist theory of art, what makes something a work of art? What is one issue with the theory? What is something that the theory would deem to not be art that seems like it should be considered art?

Answer 1

• Formalism is the study of art based solely on an analysis of its form – the way it is made and what it looks like.
  The Formalist theory focuses upon the form or structure of art objects, such that art objects are those objects which posses the appropriate type of formal or structural features.Art work is designed primarily in order to possess and to exhibit significant form (where "significant form" can be conceived as the complex structure or arrangement of the parts of the object: for e.g., in the case of sculpture, significant form is the arrangement and interrelationship of lines, shapes, contours, three-dimensionality, etc., to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts).
• Formalism has the advantage of accounting for modern abstract art. To count as an art work, the object only needs to have a significant structure and arrangement of its parts—thus, Duchamp's "Fountain" qualifies as an artwork, since it is clearly the case that even a urinal has a complex arrangement of lines, curves, shapes, etc.
• Formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form – the way it is made and its purely visual aspects – rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world. In painting therefore, a formalist critic would focus exclusively on the qualities of colour, brushwork, form, line and composition.
• According to formalist theory,a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colours arranged in a certain order.
• In the Formalist theory, the content of the artwork has no role. That is, what the artwork, and the parts that comprise that object, represents or signifies is irrelevant to significant form (since significant form is only concerned with the structural complexity of the work). For example, the Formalists believe that the content of a painting (what it represents or "stands for") is not important in analyzing and qualifying artworks,this is one of the reasons why the Formalists can allow modern abstract art to qualify as art, since the parts of these works (like the colors in a painting) really do not represent anything.
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