ans. To cry "Art for Art's sake!"
is to converse with the echo. Such a definition but moves in a circle,
and doubles upon itself. No; art is for the artist's sake. The artist is
the agent or human instrument whereby the supreme harmony,
which is beauty, is manifested to men. Art is the medium by which
the artist communicates himself to his fellows; and the individual
work is the expression of what the artist felt or thought, as at the
moment some new aspect of the universal harmony was revealed to
his apprehension. Art is emotion objectified, but the object is
subordinated to the emotion as means is to an end. The material
result is not the final significance, but what of spiritual meaning or
beauty the artist desired to convey. Not what is painted, as the
layman thinks, not how it is painted, as the technician considers, but
why did the artist paint it, is the question which sums up the truth
about art. The appreciator need simply ask, What is the beauty, what
the idea, which the artist is striving to reveal by these symbols of
color and form? He understands that the import of the work is the
_idea,_ and that the work itself is beautiful because it symbolizes a
beautiful idea; its significance is spiritual. The function of art, then,
is through the medium of concrete, material symbols to reveal to
men whatever of beauty has been disclosed to the artist's more
penetrating vision.

In order to seize the real meaning of art it is necessary to strip the
word beauty of all the wrappings of customary associations and the
accretions of tradition and habit. As the word is current in ordinary
parlance, the attribute of beauty is ascribed to that which is pleasing,
pretty, graceful, comely; in fine, to that which is purely agreeable.
But surely such is not the beauty which Rembrandt saw in the filthy,
loathsome beggar. To Rembrandt the beggar was expressive of some
force or manifestation of the supreme universal life, wherein all
things work together to a perfect harmony. Beauty is the essential
quality belonging to energy, character, significance. A merely
agreeable object is not beautiful unless it is expressive of a meaning;
whatever, on the other hand, is expressive of a meaning, however
shocking it may be in itself, however much it may fail to conform to
conventional standards, is beautiful. Beauty does not reside in the
object. No; it is the artist's sense of the great meaning of things; and
in proportion as he finds tha