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Old Friends: Personal Recollections

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VERY GOOD + SOFT COVER, CLEAN AND TIGHT BOOK . NEAR FINE . SHIPS FROM WA- USPS. EXPEDITED SHIPPING AVAILABLE. Cassell Biographies. 20th century; Art; Arts; European; Great Britain; History; Modern (late 19th Century to 1945); Non-Fiction; Roger Fry

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

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About the author

Clive Bell

40 books22 followers
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.

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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237 reviews17 followers
October 17, 2021
Found this in a secondhand bookshop and obvious had to get it immediately. It’s worth it just for the chapter on Woolf but if you’re not a real Bloomsbury aficionado this might not be very interesting (and even I skimmed most of it).
554 reviews4 followers
February 20, 2021
Obviously written to settle some scores, or to balance history, or to clear his (and others') name.
Yet little venom in here, little articulated resentment -perhaps a reason why the book doesn't always deliver, in a way.
Still: some very nice vignettes of his friends, all of whom we know, none of whom we know.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews