people who consider the aim of art to be pleasure cannot realize its true meaning and purpose
People will come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the
aim of that activity is beauty
to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to
consider it as one of the conditions of human life
Speech communicates thought; art must communicate emotion
Art is “based” on infection (so not all infection is art)
Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and
the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications.
The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most various — very strong or very
weak, very important or very insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love for oneʹs own
country, self‐devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers
If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external
signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by
these feelings and also experience them
it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable
for the life and progress toward well‐being of individuals and of humanity.
if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage
still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.
all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from
it and to which we attach special importance.
highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills that mankind will lose far less
by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art.
if not everybody at present makes use of existing art the fault lies not in the art but in the false
organization of society;
it should be accessible to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to all men, then one
of two things: either art is not the vital matter it is represented to be or that art which we call art
is not the real thing
distinguishes a work of art from all other mental activity is just the fact that its language is
understood by all, and that it infects all without distinction
Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.
The business of art lies just in this—to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an
argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.
Infection is accompanied by a second feeling, that of a union that gives us joy when we
experience it.
not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure
of excellence in art
o And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions: 1. On the
greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted; 2. on the greater or lesser
clearness with which the feeling is transmitted; 3. on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on
the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.
sincerity, i.e., that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling
It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such art always acts so
powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent from our upper‐class art, which is
continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity
The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work form the category of art and
relegates it to that of artʹs counterfeits.
module 1:
What is a work of art?
Perceptions on Art
Who gets to decide whether a piece of work is an art? Is it the artist or the critic?
Can an
