Formalists like Clive Bell and Roger Fry hold that significant form—the relational structure of lines, colors, and volumes—constitutes the sole legitimate object of aesthetic response.

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Clive Bell(as an example of a formalist aesthetician): An early 20th-century British art critic and philosopher who developed the theory that 'significant form' is the most important thing in art.
Formalists(art criticism and aesthetics): Philosophers and critics who believe that the form or structure of something (like how parts are arranged) is the most important thing about it, more important than what it represents or means.
Roger Fry(art history and aesthetics): A British art historian and critic from the early 1900s who, like Bell, believed that the visual arrangement and composition of artworks were what really mattered in appreciating art.
aesthetic response(Lessing's aesthetics, drawing on Mendelssohn's theoretical tools): A response based on the free play of mental powers stimulated by an object, particularly a work of art

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