I Basic Philosophy
II Necessary Knowledge
III Productive Living
IV Autobiography
V Beauty
VI Art-Making
Appendix I: Picture Library
from: Kenneth Clark, Landscape Into Art, read March 1994
On the symbolising faculty of the mediaeval mind:
We who are heirs to three centuries of science can hardly realise a state of mind in which all material objects were thought of as symbols of spiritual truths or episodes in sacred history. Yet unless we make this effort of imagination, mediaeval art is largely incomprehensible…
The end of landscape painting?
…how far can an art form retain its vitality when it rests on the passive consent of the mass of informal opinion, but is not supported by the active conviction of an informed minority? The difficulty of this question arises from the fact that never before has there been such a complete divorce between popular and informed taste. And, although in the past popular taste has ultimately always conformed to that of the minority, it may now seem that the extremely esoteric and specialised work which meets with the approval of the few is so lacking in fundamental humanity that it will die of inbreeding. This is a tenable view, but I believe it to be mistaken. Whether or not the more specialised forms of modern art are permanently valid, we can hardly doubt that the living art of a period must reflect the ideas of the more active spirits, and not of the indifferent masses, for whom art is, at best, a mildly satisfying social convention.
Socrates in Plato’s Philebus:
I will try to speak of the beauty of shapes, and I do not mean, as most people would suppose, that shapes of living figures or their imitations in painting, but I mean straight lines and curves and the shapes made from them by the lathe, ruler or square. They are not beautiful for any particular reason or purpose, as other things are, but are eternally, and by their very nature, beautiful, and give a pleasure of their own quite free from the itch of desire; and in this way colours can give a similar pleasure.
Expressionism is the art of the individual and is his protest against the restraints of society…As an old-fashioned individualist I believe that all the science and bureaucracy in the world…will not entirely destroy the human spirit; and the spirit will always succeed in giving itself a visible shape.