Read part 1 here.
The first part of this article considered anti-formalist campaigns in the Soviet Union led by Andrei Zhdanov and others, and the origins of such debates in the work of Russian Formalist critics. In a broader sense, “formalist” approaches—those prioritizing form and style over content—were not new. They flourished in the nineteenth century in the work of Eduard Hanslick (music), Heinrich Wölfflin (art), and writers such as Théophile Gautier, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walter Pater, their critical work mirroring wider developments in aesthetics and techniques, including motivic intricacy, retreats from realism and naturalism, and self-conscious stylization.
Early twentieth-century art critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry, despite their focus on form, belong more to this tradition than to the Russian one. Notwithstanding their significant interest in Futurist “sound poetry” (zaum), which rejects logic and meaning, the Russian Formalists did not simply ignore content. Rather, they invoked it to show how art differs from mere mimesis. Whereas Bell, in 1914, declared art independent of history and ethics, Tynianov’s 1920s essays proposed a more nuanced view: literary history develops according to its own logic, yet intersects with broader history.
The Russian Formalists did not simply ignore content; they invoked it to show how art differs from mere mimesis.
Western figures whose work lies closer to the Russians include Rudolf Arnheim, who emphasized the constructed nature of artworks (including film) and the inseparability of form and content, while opposing realism; his psychological focus on perception, however, diverged from Formalist priorities. Erwin Panofsky—foundational for later “visual culture” studies—likewise stressed tangible and culturally shaped forms, but analyzed how perception and meaning are historically constituted, insisting techniques be situated accordingly.
