of the surrounding world?

Wherever we examine without prejudice the mental effects of true works
of art in literature or music, in painting or sculpture, in decorative
arts or architecture, we find that the central esthetic value is
directly opposed to the spirit of imitation. A work of art may and must
start from something which awakens in us the interests of reality and
which contains traits of reality, and to that extent it cannot avoid
some imitation. But _it becomes art just in so far as it overcomes
reality, stops imitating and leaves the imitated reality behind it_. It
is artistic just in so far as it does not imitate reality but changes
the world, selects from it special features for new purposes, remodels
the world and is through this truly creative. To imitate the world is a
mechanical process; to transform the world so that it becomes a thing of
beauty is the purpose of art. The highest art may be furthest removed
from reality.

We have not even the right to say that this process of selection from
reality means that we keep the beautiful elements of it and simply omit
and eliminate the ugly ones. This again is not in the least
characteristic of art, however often the popular mind may couple this
superficial idea with that other one, that art consists of imitation. It
is not true that the esthetic value depends upon the beauty of the
selected material. The men and women whom Rembrandt painted were not
beautiful persons. The ugliest woman may be the subject of a most
beautiful painting. The so-called beautiful landscape may, of course, be
material for a beautiful landscape painting, but the chances are great
that such a pretty vista will attract the dilettante and not the real
artist who knows that the true value of his painting is independent of
the prettiness of the model. He knows that a muddy country road or a
dirty city street or a trivial little pond may be the material for
immortal pictures. He who writes literature does not select scenes of
life which are beautiful in themselves, scenes which we would have liked
to live through, full of radiant happiness and joy; he does not
eliminate from his picture of life that which is disturbing to the peace
of the soul, repellant and ugly and immoral. On the contrary, all the
great works of literature have shown us dark shades of life beside the
light ones. They have spoken of unhappiness and pain as often as of joy.
We have suffered with our poets, and in so fa