Widely different from annual exhibitions, too, are galleries and
museums; for here the proportion of really good things is
immeasurably larger. In the study of masterpieces, it need hardly be
said, the amateur may exercise judgment and moderation. He should
not try to do too much at one time, for he can truly appreciate only
as he enters fully into the spirit of the work and allows it to possess
him. To achieve this sympathy and understanding within the same
hour for more than a very few great works is manifestly impossible.
Such appreciation involves fundamentally a quick sensitiveness to
the appeal and the variously expressive power of color and line and
form. To win from the picture its fullest meaning, the observer may
bring to bear some knowledge of the artist who produced it and of
the age and conditions in which he lived. But in the end he must
surrender himself to the work of art, bringing to it his intellectual
equipment, his store of sensuous and emotional experience, his
entire power of being moved.
For when all is said, there is no single invariable standard by which
to try a work of art: its significance to the appreciator rests upon his
capacity at the moment to receive it. "A jest's prosperity lies in the
ear of him that hears it." The appreciator need simply ask himself,
"What has this work to reveal to me of beauty that I have not
perceived for myself? I shall not look for the pretty and the
agreeable. But what of new significance, energy, life, has this work
to express to me? I will accept no man entirely and unquestioningly,
I will condemn no one unheard. No man has the whole truth; every
man has some measure of the truth, however small. Let it be my task
to find it and to separate it from what is unessential and false. In my
search for what is true, I will conserve my integrity and maintain my
independence. And I shall recognize my own wherever I may find
it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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