The Forms Of Art Are Inexhaustible; But

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.

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.

A Rose Is The Visible Result Of An Infinitude Of Complicated Goings On In The Bosom Of The Earth And In The Air Above, And Similarly A Work Of Art Is The Product Of Strange Activities In The Human Mind.

It Would Follow That 'significant Form' Was Form Behind Which We Catch A Sense Of Ultimate Reality.

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.