Clive Bell

“What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? Only one answer seems possible—significant form.”

“The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant.”

“Significant form is the one quality common to all works of visual art.”

“For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form and colour and a knowledge of three-dimensional space.”

“If a work of art is an expression of emotion, the emotion expressed is an emotion felt for pure form.”

“It is the mark of a good critic to be able to make his own emotions contagious.”

“It is for the artist... to create significant form, and for us to appreciate it.”

“War is a great leveller. But it is not a leveller of classes. It is a leveller of character.”

“Art is a religion. It is not even a sect.”

“I have called this 'the aesthetic emotion'; and, if I am right, this emotion is provoked by every kind of visual art.”

“The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art.”

“Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy.”

“We all know that a patch of blue is nicer than a patch of mud.”

“What is a CIVILISATION? It is a state of society in which the creative impulse is no longer squandered upon the business of keeping alive.”

“To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions.”