The History of Form C. In many dictionaries the
explanation of form begins with a third meaning given
here of this term. A Lalande's French dictionary of
philosophy gives as a first definition of form: “a
geometrical figure made up of the contours of objects.”
Similarly, in P. Robert's dictionary of the French lan-
guage, the long list of meanings of the term begins
with the definition: form is a “set of contours of ob-
jects.”
In everyday speech “form” frequently has this
meaning, which seems to be the original and natural
one, compared with which all the others appear meta-
phorical or at least derivative. Thus conceived this
sense of form (form C) is synonymous with contour,
figure, and shape; its meaning is close to that of surface
outline.
Form C is known also outside of everyday speech;
it is used in art, specifically in visual arts where it is
applied to the works of architects, sculptors, painters.
These comprise the artists who attempt to reproduce
or construct forms conceived as contours. If form B
is a natural concept in poetics, form C is the natural
one for the visual arts, which are concerned with
spatial forms.
Form C played an important part in the history of
the theory of art only from the fifteenth to the eight-
eenth century, but it was indeed the basic idea during
that period. It also appeared under the names “figure”
or “drawing” (in Latin texts figura predominated; in
Italian writers disegno was more popular). “Form” was
used in those centuries rather with the different shade
of meaning discussed below as form D (substantial
form). “Drawing” was the natural synonym for form
as contour. G. Vasari in his Lives of the Painters (Vite
..., I, 168) considered drawing as similar to a form
(simile a una forma). Another late Renaissance writer,
F. Zuccaro, defined drawing as a form without bodily
substance.
Form C concerns only drawing, not color, and there
lies the obvious difference between forms C and B.
For sixteenth-century writers contour (form C) and
color represented two opposite extremes in painting.
Paolo Pino wrote about it in 1548 in his Dialogo di
pittura. In the seventeenth century a rivalry ensued
in the visual arts between form and color. Drawing
was considered more important, particularly in aca-
demic circles: “Let the drawing always point the way
and serve as a compass,” Lebrun said; he was the
dictator in art during the reign of Louis XIV (Lebrun,
pp. 36, 38). H. Testelin, the historiographer, declared
to the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture: “A
good and competent draughtsman, even if he is a
mediocre colorist deserves more respect than one who
paints beautiful colors but draws badly” (
Sentiments
..., p. 37).
The supremacy of form as drawing ended at the start
of the eighteenth century, when, with the emergence
of Roger de Piles and the Rubenists, color gained a
position parallel to that of drawing. The rivalry and
arguments died down, and the contrasting of form (C)
with color lost its topical interest.
Comparing the three histories, briefly given above,
we may note that the most long-lived one was that
of form A as arrangement, followed by form B as
appearance, and form C as drawing. In antiquity par-
ticular value was attached to form A, in the Renais-
sance form C was favored, and in the twentieth century
form B was stressed.
When critics at times write that a work “lacks form,”
we may well wonder whether it is possible for a work
of art, or for that matter, for any object to be without
form? The correct answer will be that it depends on
what we understand by “form.” Objects cannot be
without form A because their parts must be arranged
in some way. However, this arrangement may not be
an orderly or harmonious one, and therefore may lack
form in sense A1. So likewise with forms B and C, since
no material object can exist without appearance or
contour. On the other hand, not every object has an
important or, to use Clive Bell's expression, “significant
form.” W. Strzemiński (a Polish painter and theorist)
insisted on the “inequality of 'form',” its “knots,” and
“voids.”
We recall the words of the distinguished philosopher
Ernst Cassirer who declared that to see the forms of
things (rerum videre formas) is a no less important and
indispensable task than to know the causes of things
(rerum cognoscere causas) (Essay on Man, sec. 9).
Though beautiful this formula is not quite precise
because it is unclear which of the three concepts of
form Cassirer means.
