First, the concept of "beauty lies in form" and its changes.
As an important category, formal beauty has always been a concern in the history of western aesthetics and art philosophy, and it is also a controversial issue with different opinions. The question of what form is has a long history, which can be traced back to the early ancient Greece and can be extended to postmodern thinkers. Although there are similar problem areas, the views in different periods are different and differentiated from each other, which reflects the changes of thought itself.
1. ancient Greece: form is essence
Philosophers and aestheticians in ancient Greece believed that beauty was a form, and tended to regard form as the essence of beauty and art. According to Pythagoras school, art comes from numbers and their harmony, and this harmony is related to the problem of form. Plato distinguishes concrete beautiful things from "beauty itself", so concrete works of art, as beautiful things, can only be endowed and imitated by beauty itself, while art is imitated and separated from truth by three layers. Plato divided form into internal form and external form, in which internal form refers to the form of artistic concept, which stipulates the origin and essence of art; External form refers to imitating the shape of everything in nature, which is the stipulation of the existing artistic state. Aristotle believes that everything contains two factors: form and matter. In his view, form is the first noumenon of things, and matter can become something because of form. In Aristotle's view, imitation is the same attribute of all artistic styles, and it is also a sign to distinguish art from non-art. Of course, different artistic styles have different forms of imitation. In a word, Pythagoras school, Plato and Aristotle all believe that form is the source of all things, and therefore the origin of beauty. In ancient Greece, it was also used to represent the form in materials. In winkelmann's view, formal beauty is the primary purpose of Greek artists. In ancient Greece, behind the concepts of beauty and art, god and theoretical rationality became the stipulation of thought. In ancient Rome, practicality and practicality prevailed. Generally speaking, despite some progress, there is a lack of unique achievements in aesthetic thought.
2. The Middle Ages: The Mystery of Form
The mainstream culture in the Middle Ages was Christian culture. In the Middle Ages, God became the stipulation of beauty and all arts, and practical reason became the stipulation of thought, which was different from the emphasis on real life in ancient Greece. From ancient times to the Middle Ages, western aesthetics and art philosophy entered a new stage. Aesthetics was brought into theology this semester, which reflected the combination of Plato's theory, Plotinus's neo-Platonism and Christian thought. Plotinus emphasized the function of form in the process of beauty. This is just as Croce said in his comments: "Then, the beauty of stone does not exist in stone, but only in the form of processing it;" Therefore, when the form is completely imprinted in the mind, man-made things are more beautiful than anything natural. "[1] Augustine was an important thinker and aesthetician in the Middle Ages, and his aesthetic thought experienced a major change in his life. On the issue of formal beauty, before converting to Christianity, Augustine believed that beauty was unified or harmonious based on Aristotle's integrity and Cicero's definition of beauty, and still adhered to the traditional view that beauty was in form. After converting to Christianity, Augustine looked at beauty from the standpoint of Christian theology. He believes that the root of beauty lies in God, who is the beauty itself, the ultimate beauty, the absolute beauty, the infinite beauty and the source of beauty. He was also influenced by the Pythagorean school, and thought that the beauty of real things is harmony, order and unity, and in the final analysis it is a mathematical relationship. Beauty lies in perfection, which is based on size, form and order and tends to emphasize form. Like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas expounded his aesthetic thoughts from a theological point of view. On the question of what is beauty, he also believes that beauty lies in form first. At the same time, beauty is perceptual, involving only form, no content, no desire and no external practical purpose. Dante inherited Aquinas' theological philosophy and accepted his basic viewpoint of theological aesthetics, believing that beauty lies in the order, harmony and characteristics of each part. In a word, there is a tendency of mystification in this period.
3. Modernity: Pure Form and Transcendental Form
The period of modern aesthetics refers to the period from Renaissance to the end of19th century, and the real aesthetics began in modern times. In modern times, "form" became an independent category in aesthetics, and rose to the height of artistic essence consciously and rationally. Since the Renaissance, human nature has been revived and promoted, and rationality has become the stipulation of thought. This rationality is a poetic (creative) rationality, which is different from the theoretical rationality of ancient Greece and the practical rationality of the Middle Ages. As the "father of aesthetics", Baum Tong Jia defined aesthetics as perceptual science, and he also emphasized order, integrity and perfection. Descartes' philosophy laid the foundation of modern thought, and he tried to grasp beauty from the cognitive relationship between subject and object. British empiricism and continental rationalism put forward aesthetic thoughts from their own dimensions. As the founder of German idealistic aesthetics, Kant put forward and expounded his concept of "transcendental form", holding that aesthetics has nothing to do with the existence and matter of objects, and beauty is based on the form of objects. From then on, Kant distinguished beauty from sublime, thinking that it is different from beauty based on form, and sublime is formless because it is chaotic, irregular and disorderly. In Kant's view, there is a clear boundary between truth, goodness and beauty, and art is not equal to truth. Kant laid an important ideological foundation for the development of western formal aesthetics. Hegel believes that beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas, so the perceptual manifestation of ideas as content belongs to form. In Hegel's view, the artistic field of beauty belongs to the absolute spiritual field, and freedom is the highest definition of the soul. He said: "As far as its pure form is concerned, freedom first lies in the fact that the subject is no stranger to what is opposite to himself, and does not feel that he is a kind of boundary and restriction, but finds himself in what is opposite." [2] Hegel tried to find freedom from this opposition. In a word, in modern times, western formal aesthetics has made great progress, especially in the aspect of pure and transcendental form. This influence goes far beyond the thoughts of modern empirical aesthetics about aesthetic experience and aesthetic consciousness.
4. Modernity: Surpassing form and returning to existence.
In modern times, existence is the stipulation of beauty, and aesthetic thought is developed in the dimension and realm of existence. At the same time, western formal aesthetics has made new progress, such as structuralism aesthetics, analytical aesthetics and gestalt psychology aesthetics. Bell believes that all visual arts must have some similarity. Without it, art is not art, and this similarity of art is a "meaningful form" in Bell's view. The real art lies in creating this "meaningful form". This "meaningful form" is different from pure form and the unity of content and form. Arnheim, the representative figure of Gestalt psychology aesthetics, attributed beauty to a "structure of force" in his art and visual perception, and believed that a well-organized visual form can make people feel happy, and the entity of a work of art is its visual expression. The post-impressionist art, represented by Cezanne, not only emphasizes the sense of form, but also values the sense of color. Modern aesthetics tends to regard beauty as a form of emotion, but this view also has its own problems and is bound to be surpassed. There is no doubt that Marx's thought belongs to modernity, and Marx's aesthetic thought is also an important aspect of modern aesthetics, or it has modern significance. "Marx and other modern thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger's rebellion against modern thought is subversive. This is because they not only turn the so-called rational problem into an existential problem, but also give an ontological basis for truth, goodness and beauty, knowing meaning and knowing, so epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, as the main parts of the philosophical system, have lost their fundamental significance. " [3] In this way, some basic questions about beauty and art have stepped out of the traditional restrictions and entered the field of existence.
5. Postmodernism: the deconstruction of form
The transformation from modernity to post-modernism is the result of the development of western thought itself. In this ideological process, the stipulation of thought changed from existence to language. Postmodernism dispels modern aesthetic concepts and artistic ideas, and its fundamental feature is deconstruction, which is characterized by uncertainty, fragmentation, unprincipled and lack of depth. If modern aesthetics still pays attention to the form of the field of existence, then postmodernism insists on a strong anti-form tendency. In Lyotard's view, "post-modernism should be a situation, no longer getting comfort from perfect form, and separating homesickness from taste." [4] Postmodernism is no longer transcendental. It is no longer interested in transcendental values such as spirit, ultimate concern, truth, goodness and beauty, but turns to an open, tentative, discrete and uncertain form. In post-modern thought, the traditional aesthetic standards and purport no longer have unquestionable significance. There is no fundamental distinction between art and non-art, beauty and non-beauty, which leads to a kind of ideological style that runs counter to each other, that is, culture, literature and aesthetics move towards anti-culture, anti-literature and anti-aesthetics, while copying, consumption and lack of depth of plane sense are becoming fashionable. Postmodern art has become an art of behavior and participation, and it seems that aesthetic standards and "artistic rationality" are no longer needed. Postmodernism opposes centralism, dualism and systematization, dispels the basic viewpoints of traditional and modern aesthetic thoughts and artistic theories, and of course tries to deconstruct all formal rules of aesthetics.
Second, the important relationship involved in formal beauty
As can be seen from the above discussion, the issue of formal beauty has always been an important and controversial issue. This problem is related to a series of problems related to form, revealing some important aspects of formal beauty, and combing it will undoubtedly help to deepen the understanding of formal beauty and its correlation.
1. Relationship between form and material
In Aristotle's view, Plato's rationalism cannot explain the existence of things, because Plato's rationalism is divorced from individual things. Aristotle believes that in order to explain the existence of things, we must look for reasons between real things, which can be attributed to two factors: matter and form. The so-called "material cause" is the "initial matrix" of things, that is, the original material that constitutes everything, that is, the raw materials that form things, such as copper of bronze statues and mud of clay figurines. And "formal reason" refers to the essential provisions of things. In Aristotle's view, matter is potential and form is realistic, and the relationship between them is the relationship between potential and reality. Form, as a proactive cause, provides regulations for materials in the process of formalization, making materials a realistic individual. This material needs setting. In the texture beauty of visual art, form and material are closely combined. The smoothness, roughness and softness of a thing can only be beautiful if it is based on both material and aesthetic formal requirements. Form, as the essence, definition, existence and reality of things, is obviously different from matter as the potential of things, but it is impossible to exist without matter. Then, this relationship is obviously different from the relationship between content and form in the traditional epistemological sense. Mikel Dufrenne explained aesthetic form on the basis of comparing aesthetic form with logical form. He believes that in logic, form is not the form of object, and it is no longer closely related to matter. And an aesthetic form should always give matter a form, which is closely related to the object, but the form itself is not the object. However, the relationship between form and material in the process of beauty generation is still a very difficult problem.
2. The relationship between form and symbol
In artistic creation and aesthetic activities, form and symbol are also closely related. Cassirer's aesthetics of symbolic form concentrated and typified the related thoughts. Cahill believes that the fundamental difference between humans and animals is that animals can only make conditioned responses to signals, and only humans can turn signals into meaningful symbols. In Cahill's view, science, art, language and myth are aspects with different symbol forms in human culture. An important feature of symbols is to get rid of the perceptual world endowed by intuition. Science is based on abstraction relying on rationality, while art pays attention to individuality and concreteness, so artistic symbols should be different from scientific symbols. It tries to avoid conceptualization and logical reasoning, thus leaving an empty framework for imagination and interpretation. Different from the concept simplification and deduction generalization carried out by science, art does not study the essence or reason of things, but lets us see the shape of things intuitively. Cassirer distinguishes artistic symbols as pure forms from other symbol forms. In Susan Langer's view, "artistic symbol is a special symbol, because although it has some functions of symbol, it doesn't have all the functions of symbol, especially it can't replace another thing like a pure symbol, nor can it be related to other things that exist outside itself." [5] The question here is, what is the relationship between artistic symbols and referential symbols? What's the difference? How do artistic symbols embody beauty and artistic forms? These are all questions that need to be answered constantly.
3. The relationship between form and emotion
In Schiller's view, perceptual impulse and formal impulse are inherent human nature. Based on human perceptual nature, perceptual impulse puts people in time, while formal impulse comes from reason. He further believes that only in the third impulse, that is, the game impulse, can people restore their complete humanity. Hegel tried to connect sensibility with the essence of beauty. He said: "The form of perceptual observation is the characteristic of art, because art presents the truth to consciousness in a perceptual and intuitive way. This perceptual intuition has profound significance in its form of expression itself, but it does not go beyond this perceptual embodiment to make the concept itself universally perceptible, because it is the unity of this concept and individual phenomena that is the essence of beauty and creates the essence of beauty through art." [6] However, Hegel still built beauty on the basis of ideas. Since the second half of19th century, great and important changes have taken place in western aesthetic thought. The speculative rationalism advocated by people has been widely questioned, and people's intuition has begun to be valued. In fact, as early as the18th century, German aesthetician Baum Tong Jia noticed the problem of beauty in the perceptual sense when he founded the aesthetics discipline. Since then, the relationship between form and emotion has always been an important issue in aesthetic research. Since Fichte, the "bottom-up" method has been widely used in aesthetics and art research, and aesthetic experience has been paid attention to. Dewey, a pragmatic aesthete and founder of functional psychology school, believes that art is experience, and both beauty and art are regarded as the existence of experience, so is Santayana. The concept of "Gestalt" emphasizes the integrity of this experience. Bell's "meaningful form" is an "aesthetic touching form" [7] Rousseau opposes all classical and neoclassical traditional art theories. He believes: "Art is not a description or reproduction of the experience world, but an overflow of emotions and feelings." [8] He pays more attention to the connection between art and emotion. In the relationship between form and emotion, whether and how to involve emotion is a problem worthy of attention.