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 [...]
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.
It is very difficult to stake out clearly the boundaries which separate art from non-art. As suggested above, this requires a judgment of value, i. e. the separation of the good from the ordinary, average, or bad. We shall try to come to grips with this problem in a later lesson. In addition to the problem of quality, there is that of the objectives, the aims of art. These have often been formulated, usually without any very conclusive results.
