Substance and Form
Consistent with his non-dualistic thinking, Dewey does not draw a sharp distinction between substance and form. He states that “there can be no distinction drawn, save in reflection, between form and substance.” For Dewey, substance is different from subject. One could say that Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale has a nightingale for a subject, but for Dewey the substance of the poem is the poem. Substance represents the culmination of the artist’s creative efforts. Form for Dewey is the quality of having form. Having form allows the substance to be evoked in such a way that “it can enter into the experiences of others and enable them to have more intense and more fully rounded out experiences of their own.” This process exemplifies Dewey’s triadic relationship between artist, art object, and creative viewer.
Read more about this topic: Art As Experience, Chapters
Famous quotes containing the words substance and/or form:
“True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And being angered, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If cooking becomes an art form rather than a means of providing a reasonable diet, then something is clearly wrong.”
—Tom Jaine (b. 1943)