To profit from this record would be reason enough for the study of art.     But there are still other reasons.     The most important period of history for us is the one in which we live,   the present; it is also the most difficult to know.      Superficially we know it well through our daily work,   our conversations,   our moving about and looking around.     But we can know only a very small part of the life of our time through personal experience.     Our individual horizons are limited.     There is much in our lives that is  repetitious,   shallow, quickly forgotten.     We are too close to the small detail of everyday,   and too busy with particular problems,   to gain a general view of our time.     If we wish to see the period in which we live,   if we wish to measure the disconnected scraps and patches of our own ex­perience against a larger,   more complete and at the same time more selective view,   we must go to art for it – -  and “art” in its widest sense includes theater,   the novel,   poetry, music,   as well as the visual arts of painting,   sculpture and architecture.     The artists of the present are busy drawing the portrait of our time through which our descendants will know us.     This portrait may impress us as exaggerated and distorted in spots,   strange and repulsive,   contradictory and sometimes untrue;  but if we study it with an open mind, we shall find in it much of our own experience,   our own thoughts and feelings,   made more distinct,   striking deeper,   and related to a wider experience of life than is given to any one human being.     Art,   then,   is a kind of looking-glass in which we may find ourselves.

Nothing has been said yet about the pleasure of art.     To many,   art is an ornament of life -– the picture that “brightens” the living room,   the bric-a-brac on the mantle,   the decorative front of a (possibly ugly) building,   the curtain of loveliness drawn over the dreariness  of ordinary things.     Art has,   in fact,   served as an embellishment of life in many periods,   though this has usually not been its most important function;  more gener­ally (as you will discover in this course) it has  served some more urgent and practical purpose.     But,   while not always the end of art,   pleasure has always been its by-product.

Not everybody is equipped to enjoy art.     Just as there are some who have no taste for food,   no ear for music or who take no delight in dancing,   there are many who are “blind” to art.     Enjoyment cannot be taught or acquired through effort,   unless there is  some native pre-disposition to it:    the enjoyment of art requires a kind of talent.     Fortunately, many people possess this talent and through it gain entrance to a world of intense pleas­ure.     So deep,   so lastingly rewarding are the pleasures that art gives,   that the search for them can become something of an obsession.     Art can become a narcotic  (a harmless one, fortunately),   a source of such happiness that life without it is felt to be unbearable.

But the pleasure which art gives is never automatic; its enjoyment can never be a mere “drinking in” or gourmandizing of beauty:    it comes only as the reward of effort,   and the keener the effort,   the greater the pleasure.     Mere exposure to a work of art is not enough. The work must be understood,   both by the mind and by the senses.     And while the basic “talent” necessary for the enjoyment of art cannot be learned,   the understanding of art, the unriddling of its forms and meanings can be acquired.     For it is founded on the know­ledge of facts,   and on ideas that can be grasped by the mind.     It is not a mystery.     There is  a parallel between language and art -–  both can be understood only through knowledge