New York, NY

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

If the goal of art is Beauty and if we assume that the goal is sometimes reached, even if always imperfectly, how do we judge art?  Basically, I think, by whether it reveals to us important Form that we ourselves have experienced but to which we have not paid adequate attention.  Successful art rediscovers Beauty for us.

One standard, then, for the evaluation of art is the degree to which it gives us a fresh intimation of Form.  For a picture to be beautiful it does not have to be shocking, but it must in some significant respect be unlike what has preceded it (this is why an artist cannot afford to be ignorant of the tradition within his medium).  If the dead end of the romantic vision is incoherence, the failure of classicism, which is the outlook I am defending, is the cliché, the ten thousandth camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams.

Robert Adams in Beauty in Photography 

Comments are welcome!