Summary on the Second Week's Reading " The meaning of Art"

Considering the meaning of art, one might come across a question such as 'What is art associated with?'. In the sense of the primary goal of this study, regardless of what art is commonly associated with, it should by no doubt include all the arts of the Visuals, Literature and Music.  A connection between these three different forms is made by Schopenhauer as he argues that all arts aspire to the condition of music, its freedom of creation making it stay above the others. But nonetheless all Art has a common intention, which is "to please". According to Herbert Read,  Art itself is an attempt to create pleasing forms, and this sense of pleasurable relations between shape, surface and mass is the sense of beauty. He at the same time agrees that beauty is extremely relative.

So how are we to ever decide on what is and what is not art considering that art is not necessarily related to beauty? If we take to consideration Benedetto Croce's theory of aesthetics, Art is perfectly defined when simply defined as intuition. The author goes on to further explain why 'beauty' is a fluid concept with limited historical significance, taking as an example the diverse associations of it with different cultures such as the Greeks, Romans, Byzantine, Primitive and Oriental. 

Moreover Read comes back again at stating that while he believes every work of art to have some principle of form or coherent structure, he would not stress this element in any  obvious sense. That ' there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion' was evident even to a Renaissance moralist. In this sense we can say that art is expression, as Croce believes that expression is the basic creative act in all the arts. Read than takes us back at finding a geometrical explanation to not only Art this time, but beauty as well. He introduces the concept of the Golden Section and the many theories throughout the years calling it the key to the mysteries of Art and nature. 

The argument is taken on another path when the Japanese pot is taken as an example of unsophisticated art which manages to deliver more emotion than a perfectly geometrical Greek one. So, judging from what Read has used as his thesis, perfect geometrical symmetry is not always enough in art. Some kind of distort could further the communication between art and man, making it more expressive. It is thus true to say that we expect originality in art, and yet the oncoming statement also stands true, that art lies not only on symbolism but it needs visual harmony as well in order to evoke an instant emotion. As Spinoza has stated "an emotion ceases to be an emotion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it." Furthermore, if we take a look at the Einfuhlung theory, art is perceived  through 'empathy' and 'sympathy'. It is a liberation of the personality, an emotion cultivating good form. Considering the example made out of Shakespeare's characters, one may conclude that art has to be universal. It has to go beyond specific realism to answer and/or represent prototypes and ever existent problematics of humanity. Art has to be sublime. 

As a conclusion we can say that what makes art, is a balance achieved between the universal implications of the object it represents and the aesthetically portrayed form which leads to an expression of feeling. A great artist sees the one in the many, and the many in the one.