What is a work of art?

It is merely a man-made   thing –  a shaped mass of stone or metal,   a building,    or a surface   covered   with paint.     But how different it is from other man-made   things,    from those   necessary but   perishable objects of daily use,   from the tools   of work   and  war,    and   all the rest of the   busywork of mankind!     For   thousands of years,    men have made clothing,   built houses and   constructed machinery.     What has be­come of this  enormous   production?    It has  served   its purpose   and perished.

Consider,    for   example,    the case of Egypt  which existed as a powerful and productive state for Z, 500   years,    far longer than any   of the nations   now   in existence.     Today,   only ruins and   scattered   remnants   of this   great culture remain.     Some   of these are interest­ing   documents   of life in ancient times.     But Egyptian taxation,   sanitation or carpentry are   of deep   interest   only to specialists,   while   the art of Egypt   still has   the power to move and  to instruct us.     There   are,   to be sure,   profound   lessons to be learned from the Egyptian experience   as recorded   in the religious   creeds,   the philosophies,   the laws and   political institutions   of ancient   Egypt.     But nowhere is this experience expressed more vividly,   more   completely and more beautifully than in art.     In its art,   something of Egypt’s   long-dead civilization  has   survived and   still speaks to us.

For art has   a power   which   other works   of man  do not have.     It preserves life,   so to speak,    and transmits vital thoughts and   feelings from one era to the next.     The great  permanence of art is not a matter of physical durability:    many works of art are very fragile indeed.     Its  permanence is,   rather,   the result of care.     Deliberately or instinc­tively,   men have sought to preserve art from destruction,   compelled by their admiration (and sometimes fear) of its powerful life.     An astonishingly large amount of art has  sur­vived the endless wars,   revolutions and migrations of nations which have  swept away nearly all other works of man.     The Greeks respected something in the art of Egypt, though they had little respect for the Egyptians; the Romans admired the art of the Greeks whom they had conquered; the early Christians borrowed much from pagan art,   while they ruthlessly destroyed pagan religion.     Today,   we are linked through art with the cultures of remote periods.     Some of the feelings which inspired the Greek sculptor of 2000 years ago reawaken in us as we look at his work.     Through art we can share the emotions and the wisdom of other times and other cultures.     Art,   in short,   is the most durable and the most profound record of man,   a grand diary in which age after age has summed up its ex­perience of life.