Genius Worship Is The Inevitable Sign Of

The Representative Element In A Work Of Art May Or May Not Be Harmful, But It Is Always Irrelevant. For To Appreciate A Work Of Art, We Must Bring With Us Nothing From Life, No Knowledge Of Its Affairs And Ideas, No Familiarity With Its Emotions.

Only Reason Can Convince Us Of Those Three Fundamental Truths Without A Recognition Of Which There Can Be No Effective Liberty: That What We Believe Is Not Necessarily True; That What We Like Is Not Necessarily Good; And That All Questions Are Open.

The Forms Of Art Are Inexhaustible; But All Lead By The Same Road Of Aesthetic Emotion To The Same World Of Aesthetic Ecstasy.

There Must Be Some One Quality Without Which A Work Of Art Cannot Exist; Possessing Which, In The Least Degree, No Work Is Altogether Worthless.

What Quality Is Shared By All Objects That Provoke Our Aesthetic Emotions? Only One Answer Seems Possible— Significant Form. In Each, Lines And Colors Combined In A Particular Way; Certain Forms And Relations Of Forms, Stir Our Aesthetic Emotions. These Relations And Combinations Of Lines And Colors, These Aesthetically Moving Forms, I Call ‘significant Form’; And ‘significant Form’ Is The One Quality Common To All Works Of Visual Art.