Week 2 Reading, The meaning of art

The meaning of art

There are certain characteristics common to all arts.It was Schopenhauer who first said that all arts aspire to the condition of music.Art is often related to beauty.There are at least a dozen current definitions of beauty, but the merely physical one already given (beauty is a unity of formal relations among our sense-perceptions) is the only essential one.Art has no necessary connection with beauty.

Art is elusive,difficult to find and explain.It is because art has always been considered as a metaphysical phenomenon,related to feelings.Its highly abstract, or relating to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses.

According to Read, art is a measurable phenomenon.It has rythmic elements(like breathing) and also expressive elements(like speech).Art is deeply involved in the process of perception and though.

Common to all works of art is something we call form (taking shape).Shapes give us the meaning of forms.

Finally,art is an attempt to create pleasing forms.