distinctions, but
rather to restore art to its rightful place in the life of man.

In the big sense, then, art is bounded only by life itself. It is not a
cult; it is not an activity practiced by the few and a mystery to be
understood only by those who are initiated into its secrets. One
difficulty in the way of the popular understanding of art is due to the
fact that the term art is currently limited to its highest manifestations;
we withhold the title of artist from a good carpenter or
cabinet-maker who takes a pride in his work and expresses his creative
desire by shaping his work to his own idea, and we bestow the name
upon any juggler in paint: with the result that many people who are
not painters or musicians feel themselves on that account excluded
from all appreciation. If we go behind the various manifestations of
art to discover just what art is in itself and to determine wherein it is
able to link itself with common experience, we find that art is the
response to a need. And that need may waken in any man. Every
man may be an artist in his degree; and every man in his degree can
appreciate art. A work of art is the expression of its maker's
experience, the expression in such terms that the experience can be
communicated to another. The processes of execution involved in
fashioning a work, its technique, may be as incomprehensible and
perplexed and difficult as its executants choose to make them.
Technique is not the same as art. The only mystery of art is the
mystery of all life itself. Accept life with its fundamental mysteries,
with its wonders and glories, and we have the clue to art. But we
miss the central fact of the whole matter if we do not perceive that
art is only a means. It is by expression that we grow and so fulfill
ourselves. The work itself which art calls into being is not the end. It
fails of its purpose, remaining void and vain, if it does not perform
its function. The hut which does not furnish shelter is labor lost. The
significance of the painter's effort does not stop with the canvas and
pigment which he manipulates into form and meaning. The artist
sees beyond the actual material thing which he is fashioning; his
purpose in creation is expression. By means of his picture he
expresses himself and so finds the satisfaction of his deepest need.
The beginning and the end of art is life.

But the artist's work of expression is not ultimately complete until
the message is received, and exp