Date of Award
1977
Document Type
Senior Scholars Paper (Colby Access Only)
Department
Colby College. Art Dept.
Advisor(s)
John Carpenter
Second Advisor
George Maier
Abstract
The main purpose of my paper was to organise the frequently very confused area of contemporary American art and aesthetics. In order to have an over-all notion of how to do this, I turned to modern philosophy. There are certain historical and conceptual parallels between what in philosophy was called atomism or positivism and what in art is called formalism. Contemporary philosophy's criticisms of atomism and positivism, in terms of logic and also of scientific observation, would also seem to apply, a fortiori, to aesthetics, given the latter's lack of logical rigor and "objective" observation. From this it was concluded that a pragmatic attitude towards art was the most appropriate, as it would be rather presumptuous for aesthetics to claim to be more complete and exhaustive than formal logic.
Keywords
formalism, post-formalism, American art
Recommended Citation
Sawyer, John E., "Formalism and Post-Formalism in American Art Since 1960" (1977). Senior Scholar Papers. Paper 497.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/seniorscholars/497
Copyright
Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author.
Comments
Full-text download restricted to Colby College campus only.