When a way of doing art, religion, or science is formalistic, people care a lot about the right rules, the right shapes, and the right steps — more than about what the thing is really trying to say. A formalistic painting may follow every “correct” technique and still feel empty. A formalistic religious practice may get every gesture right and miss the feeling. In science and school work, the word is often a quiet criticism: you followed the method on paper, but you did not think about what the method was for. It is a fairly formal, slightly unkind word. People who like rules almost never call themselves formalistic; it is usually someone else pointing at them. Though actually, formal and formalistic are not the same. Formal can just mean polite, official, or dressed-up. Formalistic means stuck on the outer form.