PLASTIC CONSTRUCTION
Automatic expression often leaves traces in the outer world.—Such effects fruitful.—Magic authority of man’s first creations.—Art brings relief from idolatry.—Inertia in technique.—Inertia in appreciation.—Adventitious effects appreciated first.—Approach to beauty through useful structure.—Failure of adapted styles.—Not all structure beautiful, nor all beauty structural.—Structures designed for display.—Appeal made by decoration.—Its natural rights.—Its alliance with structure in Greek architecture.—Relations of the two in Gothic art.—The result here romantic.—The mediæval artist.—Representation introduced.—Transition to illustration. Pages [116]-[143]
PLASTIC REPRESENTATION
Psychology of imitation.—Sustained sensation involves reproduction.—Imitative art repeats with intent to repeat, and in a new material.—Imitation leads to adaptation and to knowledge.—How the artist is inspired and irresponsible.—Need of knowing and loving the subject rendered.—Public interests determine the subject of art, and the subject the medium.—Reproduction by acting ephemeral.—demands of sculpture.—It is essentially obsolete.—When men see groups and backgrounds they are natural painters.—Evolution of painting.—Sensuous and dramatic adequacy approached.—Essence of landscape-painting.—Its threatened dissolution.—Reversion to pure decorative design.—Sensuous values are primordial and so indispensable Pages [144]-[165]
JUSTIFICATION OF ART
Art is subject to moral censorship.—Its initial or specific excellence is not enough.—All satisfactions, however hurtful, have an initial worth.—But, on the whole, artistic activity is innocent.—It is liberal, and typical of perfect activity.—The ideal, when incarnate, becomes subject to civil society.—Plato’s strictures: he exaggerates the effect of myths.—His deeper moral objections.—Their lightness.—Importance of æsthetic alternatives.—The importance of æsthetic goods varies with temperaments.—The æsthetic temperament requires tutelage.—Aesthetic values everywhere interfused.—They are primordial.—To superpose them adventitiously is to destroy them.—They flow naturally from perfect function.—Even inhibited functions, when they fall into a new rhythm, yield new beauties.—He who loves beauty must chasten it Pages [166]-[190]
THE CRITERION OF TASTE