What does "formal" mean to you?

[Tin Can]

This is formal to me. http://www.largeformatphotography.in...=1#post1353542

[Kirk Gittings]

Context is important.. In a Aaron Siskind bio I just read, formal seemed to mean the photo subject was form.

This is how I learned it in critiques at UNM back in the heydays. There were "formal" aspects of an image (composition, framing, printing etc.-how the image looked) and subjective aspects of an image-i.e. what it all meant or suggested.

[Drew Wiley]

Just to confuse things even further, there's "Formalism" as an expression which came to the fore in the 70's, which applied relatively sophisticated or even
ambiguous compositonal strategies borrowed from "modern" painting (over fifty years in advance), but didn't resemble anything that Pictorialists or typical portrait studios had in mind. Ironically, some of these strategies began way back when Degas and Cezanne were inspired by the oddities of what cameras rendered rather than the unaided eye, such as Degas just chopping subjects partially off at the edge of the composition.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Formal = Structured

[Drew Wiley]

Formal = Elegant. Structural just means unfinished, at least in construction, if you happen to be a Constructivist.

[Robert Opheim]

Just to throw in another possible aspect of composition do - the definitions of: "static" versus "dynamic" somewhat relate to "formal" versus "informal"

[Drew Wiley]

All these terms are plastic. A classical statue can be dynamic. The way I figure it, if it deserves museum board mounting and a fine frame or expensive portfolio binding, it's formal. If it doesn't, it's trash. Now that's dynamism - tossing it into the trashcan!

[Alan Gales]

All these terms are plastic. A classical statue can be dynamic. The way I figure it, if it deserves museum board mounting and a fine frame or expensive portfolio binding, it's formal. If it doesn't, it's trash. Now that's dynamism - tossing it into the trashcan!

You could frame Andy Warhol's panties and hang them in a museum but I don't think anyone would consider them formal.

http://pagesix.com/2016/09/25/andy-w...h-six-figures/

[Drew Wiley]

That's what I'm afraid of, Alan! I'm downright sick of anything Warhol, and frankly wish "Modern Art" venues would simply move on past these utterly predicatable commodities. That whole Pop Art era itself became a Byzantine regime some time back. Did you see the recent prank where someone simply laid a pair of reading
glasses on the floor in a museum and then sat back watching people making "art-speak" about it, like an actual installation, and taking pictures and cell phone videos one after another?

[Tin Can]

But urinal art is so useful, especially to this old man. I could use it often!

Look where the first urinal is, SF!

Formal Art is it...

https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.291