Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See also Clive Bell
Arthur Clive Howard Bell, British critic, proposed his aesthetic theory of significant form in Art in 1914.
The group of Bloomsbury associated Arthur Clive Heward Bell, an Englishman. He studied history at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge, which educated him. Bell, one most prominent man, lived. Back at least to Immanuel Kant, peopel can trace the general view that properties of an object make something or define experiences. Bell found nothing else relevant about an object in any way to assess a valuable work. A painting for example represents something completely irrelevant to evaluating it. Consequently, unnecessary knowledge of the historical context or the intention of the painter for the appreciation of visual, he thought. "From life," "we need bring" "nothing," "no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions," ""to appreciate a work," he wrote.
The understanding of the notion differs. For Immanuel Kant, it meant roughly the shape of an object with as not an element. For Bell in contrast, "the" "unreal" "distinction," "you" can "conceive of" "neither" "a colorless space" nor a "relation." Bell famously coined the term to describe the distinctive type of "combination of lines and colors" which makes an object work.
Bell also claimed that the key value lies in ability to produce a distinctive experience in the viewer. Bell called this experience "emotion." It arouses that experience, as he defined it. In response to a work, we perceive an expression and thus experience emotion, he also suggested. The experience in turn sees pure ordinary objects in the world not as a means to something else but as an end, he suggested.
Ultimately, the value lies only in a means to "good states of mind," Bell thought. With "no" "more excellent or more intense" "state of mind" "than" "contemplation," Bell thought of visual works among the most valuable things. George Edward Moore, the philosopher, heavily influenced Bell like many persons in the group of Bloomsbury in his account of value.
Reading this as part of research for a term paper. An interesting read, Bell (one of the original Bloombury's) attempts to tackle the question of what constitutes "civilization". He pinpoints three examples of societies that he considers civilized, and then using those attempts to isolate the characteristics that made it this way. He does that with some success. Unfortunately he then starts postulating how a new civilized society could be created (he did not consider 1920s Britain civilized). At this point he looses me a little (if you read it you'll realize why). As always his writing is entertaining. One for fans of Bloomsbury.