Abstract

At the time of his death, Richard Wollheim was writing a short book on Formalism and Pictorial Organization. Much of it, but by no means all of it, had been published before (it has come out posthumously in its entirety in late 2025). Here I do two things. First, I have provided a rather detailed exegesis concentrating on the parts of the book of most importance; the subject is relatively obscure in comparison with his well-known views of representation and expression, yet the interest of it grows markedly as one sees the view in greater detail. Second, Wollheim's criticisms of the Formalism of Fry (and implicitly Bell) can seem too severe; I have proposed a means of truce between Formalism and Wollheim's account, namely one that proceeds via another doctrine of Wollheim's, namely his theory of pictorial style.