Formalism

1. Adherence to forms or structures of thought, techniques, conduct, organization, etc., as a preeminent element in methodology, activity or creative work. Such forms have set relationships between their parts, including temporal ones such as order of succession, spatial ones such as relative magnitudes and distances, and values, such as more or less expensive, useful, well-recognized, etc.

2. The exercise of an art which subordinates social content, identified, by Soviet critics, with cosmopolitanism.