So instead of looking at what an artwork represents, or what it expresses, try doing something else, try ignoring the content all together, and ignore the creative process...only look for significant form. Significant form can be described as a combination of lines, shapes, and colors that stimulate the imagination in a particular way. The presence of significant form will vary from piece piece, depending on what kind of art one is looking at. In music, the significant form rests within the combination of rhythm and melody, but it has the same effect on the imagination of the viewer. When defining art, the presence of this concept is the only thing that truly matters. What counts as significant form might seem to be subjective and vague due to the difficulty in giving it a universal definition and the fact that it stretches over all forms of art. However, no matter how one defines or views the concept, it will always evoke something called "Aesthetic Emotion". This type of emotion is not anything like our everyday emotions such as joy, fear, or pity, it is something completely unique only found through a work of art. In order to feel this particular feeling, one must have a certain type of artistic sensibility. Aesthetic emotion is something evoked by an art piece containing significant form that transports the viewer to a world separate from the one containing their immediate human concerns. It is an other-worldy experience, and hard to describe in human terms because it takes you away from those very things. The content of an art piece has nothing to do with it's ability to evoke aesthetic emotion, only the significant form within the artwork can trigger this particular response, and a piece's ability to do so is how one can define it as a work of art. Any great work of art should have the ability to appeal to aesthetic emotion and take the viewer into the world within the artwork, and in turn they will temporarily forget all their immediate concerns. This transportation from these concerns that a work of art with significant form can provide is defining factor as well as the value of art. The creative process and content of the artwork do not play a role in defining what art is, because the content of a art piece is something a viewer will attach to their immediate human concerns. According to Clive Bell, we have no right to pry into the mind of artist and should not concern ourselves with the factors involved in the creative process. It is still okay to enjoy a piece for it's content and to relate it to your own concerns, but without the presence of significant form the aesthetic emotion is not truly felt and the piece should not be considered a true work of art.

There are many advantages in thinking about art this way. Formalism allows for art with no clear content such as an abstract painting to still be recognized and appreciated as a great work of art. It also makes no claims that something without significant form can't be enjoyed with a clear conscience, as long as it isn't considered a great work of art. The idea of significant form explains why someone can enjoy a piece of art even if they do not like the content of it. Formalism also provides an advantage for the artist, and this is because they can be consciously aware of the significant form within the piece they are creating and be more understanding of what might evoke aesthetic emotion in the audience. The idea of aesthetic emotion also provides a reason for why such a broad amount of things can be considered works of art, and it is because they all share in common an ability to evoke this feeling.

However, Morris Weitz takes a different approach at trying to describe artwork. He proposes that art is an open concept, meaning it is one of constant change. There is no single property common to all works of art, only a complex series of overlapping properties and resemblances. His view also claims that theory is never forthcoming in aesthetics as art is always changing. Art practice is the means by which the concept changes as well, and art can't be defined by seeking commonalities, only by noticing family resemblances. Weitz proposes that instead of asking what art is, one should instead ask what sort of concept art is.

This idea of art as an open concept is based off of Wittgenstein's analysis of the concept of games. Wittgenstein proposes that when one tries to define what a game is, they will look for a set of properties common to all games, and this is the wrong approach. Instead of looking for something common to all games, one should seek out a series of similarities and relationships among the things we call games. We will find no sufficient properties common to all games, only a network of overlapping similarities. In this way one could say that games form a family, with family resemblances and no specific common trait. Using this, one can decide which new and imaginary examples of a game will qualify as a game without looking a specific trait, and instead looking for the resemblance of other games within it.

Weitz takes this theory of family resemblance and games as an open concept and applies it directly to art, claiming that the nature of art is like that of the nature of games. One would be unable to find a common property in all forms of artwork, and should instead look for strands of similarities and explain what could be caled art in light of these similarities. This allows for completely new things to be considered works of art. Defining what can be considered art with the requirement of a common property will make art into a closed concept, and not allow for art to grow and change, which inhibits creativity on the part of the artist. Using family resemblance to define art as an open concept will always allow for artists to do something new and groundbreaking in their artworks.

Mandelbaum criticizes the idea of thinking about art in this way. He claims that Weitz is too pessimistic about finding a definition of art through a common property, and that we can detect a property common to all art. However, this property cannot be found through observation of something visable in all artwork, but instead lies within the artwork's function a social practice. This can be seen as a genetic connection of artwork common to them all, and simply using similarities and resemblances is not enough to actually define art. He also criticizes Wittgenstein's idea of recognizing a game through family resemblance, with examples such as fortune-telling and solitare being similar and yet only one is actually a game, and a wrestling match may look similar to an actual fight but they are two completely different things.