We All Agree Now - By 'we'

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.

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.

It Is The Mark Of Great Art That Its Appeal Is Universal And Eternal.............. Great Art Remains Stable And Unobscure Because The Feelings That It Awakens Are Independent Of Time And Place, Because Its Kingdom Is Not Of This World. To Those Who Have And Hold A Sense Of The Significance Of Form What Does It Matter Whether The Forms That Move Them Were Created In Paris The Day Before Yesterday Or In Babylon Fifty Centuries Ago? The Forms Of Art Are Inexhaustible; But All Lead By The Same Road Of Aesthetic Emotion To The Same World Of Aesthetic Ecstasy.

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.

Art And Relligion Are Not Professions: They Are Not Occupations For Which Men Can Be Paid. The Artist And The Saint Do What They Have To Do, Not To Make A Living, But In Obedience To Some Mysterious Necessity. They Do Not Product To Live - They Live To Produce.