An Essay in Aesthetics

'The art of painting', says that eminent authority, 'is the art of imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments.' It will be surprising that they have any recognizable affinity with other arts in which the imitation of actual objects is a negligible quantity. That the graphic arts are the expression of the imaginative life rather than a copy of actual life might be guessed from observing children. In art we have no such moral responsibility - it presents a life freed from the binding necessities of our actual existence. Monet is an artist whose chief claim to recognition lies in the fact of his astonishing power of faithfully reproducing certain aspects of nature. It may be objected that many things in nature possess some qualities of order and variety in a high degree, and these objects do undoubtedly stimulate and satisfy that clear disinterested contemplation which is characteristic of the aesthetic attitude.