Faced

with this option, I prefer to take my stand on the category of imitation.

The reason for this choice is that the concept of imitation asserts an
intimate and essential relationship between art and reality: here I am
using the term "reality" in a large, loose, and nonprofessional sense to
include anything whatsoever that we encounter in experience. In brief,
the doctrine of imitation, unlike the doctrines of expression and form,
establishes an immediate and inalienable connection between the work
of art and the work of the world. This in turn enables it to do greater
justice to the felt quality of aesthetic experience, to the concerns and
the behavior of artists as they create, and to the character of works of
art. And certainly if art is to have any moral significance - apart from
that of constituting a distinct and unique region of value of its own -
its meanings must be rooted in the same world where we lead our lives
as moral beings.
Immediately a critical question arises: "What is art an imitation
of?" The classical answer to this question, first stated by Plato in the
Symposium (as one of his several and conflicting theories of art) and
most fully developed by Schopenhauer in Book III of the World as Will
and Idea, was straightforward and unembarrassed: Art imitates and
discloses the world of Forms or Ideas, the realm of being as distinct
from that of becoming. This aesthetic doctrine persists, long after its
metaphysical theory has been rejected, in the familiar notions that art
reveals the essence of things, or the ideal that underlies the actual, or
the region of values rather than facts, or the inner meanings that hide
in the heart of things. But these proposals are empty subterfuges, lacking
the courage of their convictions and trying to hide their intellectual
bankruptcy behind a pretentious verbal faCade. When the modern
temper becomes fully self-conscious, it altogether rejects the classical
dualistic metaphysic of being and becoming, asserting instead that "nature"
is all inclusive, self-sufficient, and self-explanatory (24)

There are two general ways to solve the problem of artistic subject matter.
One is to identify some region or type of reality - some mode
of being or some specific elements - to which art has either an exclusive
or a privileged access. This is the classical solution of Plato and
Schopenhauer, embodied in the theory of Forms; and it is the solution
of those who hold that art discovers and reveals essences, or ideals, or
values, or surface qualities. The other approach is to identify not some
specific subject-matter, but rather a specific and distinctive way of dealing
with any subject-matter whatsoever (25)

What is the distinctive character of the aesthetic way of regarding

things, and what is the unique enlightenment that art brings to experience?
My answer to this question rests upon the thesis that art is one
of three coordinate ways of exploring the world and improving our
acquaintance with it. I have elsewhere argued this position in detail,l
and I must here content myself with stating it quite baldly. The fundamental
point upon which this account rests is the recognition that experience
is always composed of three strands, or moments. To be aware
of anything at all and to hold it in consciousness is, as it were, to see it
simultaneously from three perspectives, and so to regard it as having a
threefold character and as playing a triple role. We experience this
thing, in the first place, as being just the actual concrete thing that it
is, asserting its own unique characteristics and standing quite alone.
We experience it, in the second place, as existing in a world of other
things, related to these in a multitude of ways, and occupying a definite
position within a systematic context. We experience it, in the third
place, as impinging upon ourselves and our lives, as fraught with
various meanings for us, as demanding that we treat it in various ways
to explore its promise and avert its threat

These moments of experience -or dimensions of consciousness -

I shall identify respectively as the aesthetic, the cognitive, and the
affective components of experience. With respect to them, I would at
once insist upon two points. First, these moments are present throughout
consciousness: every experienced occasion has its aesthetic, cognitive,
and affective aspects. Second, these moments are of coordinate
value and significance; no one of them has priority of any sort over
the others. In a very great deal of experience, these elements do not
separate out, and we do not become aware of them as distinct. Rather,
things are given to us in experience as fully three-dimensional and as
a synthesis of these moments. (26)

If the aesthetic component dominates,

our attention is centered on the particularity of things; it is their
assertion of their individual existence and character that holds our interest,
so we are led to regard things from their own point of view and
to explore them on their own terms. When the cognitive component
is dominant, our attention centers on the connectedness of things; it is
the similarities and regularities that run among them that hold our interest,
so we are led to regard things as items in an abstract schema and
to explore the patterns of order and connection that bind them together.
When the affective component dominates, our attention centers
on the import of things; it is their immediate impact upon us and their
availability to our uses that fills our concern, so we are led to regard
things from the perspective of our selves and to explore the possibilities
and the threats that they offer us and the ways in which these can be
manipulated so as to serve our own purposes (27)

This apprehension of particularity sometimes occurs suddenly and

spontaneously, without apparent effort on our part or artificial assistance
from others. These are those happy occasions when some feature
of the natural or human world is given to us with a freshness and
clarity it does not ordinarily have, so that we "see" it in a new light and
with enhanced acuteness and intentness. But far more usually, as we
are brought face to face with particularity, we realize that this does not
adequately reveal itself on first acquaintance. It hints at more than
it discloses; it is obscure, ambiguous, and fleeting; we sense meanings
that we cannot fully clarify and retain, so this acquaintance must be
more closely cultivated. But this effort is beyond the ordinary run of
men: most of us have neither the innate capacity nor the acquired
training to bring the particularity of things into a sharp and stable
focus. If particularity is to be made available to us, it must be discerned
by men of a special talent and discipline and then embodied in a form
that brings it within our reach. These men are artists, and their
search and outcome are what we know as art (28) oddupu

If my
argument is sound, art, by defining our sense of the particularity of
actual things and occasions, exercises a crucial influence on the terms
in which we confront the world and order our lives. That is, art plays a
critical role in man's moral education, in the sense in which I have defined
those terms. (34) the artist as a moral agent

In articulating his own unique encounters and experiences

with things, the artist clarifies our own equally unique, but
not so clearly realized, encounters and experiences. We will never sense
or feel, undergo or express, just what the artist did, but what we discover
in his work will be assimilated into the body of our experience,
and so will influence what we experience in the future. Art has a universal
relevance because it enhances the sensitivity that we bring to our
encounters with things and occasions which, though themselves unique,
are similar to those presented to us in works of art (30)

Art (craft) is whatever pretends to present particularity, and is accepted

as doing so. (33)

A work of art
itself, as an artifact, is merely a physical object having certain properties
and characteristics. It is not a value itself-either intrinsic or
extrinsic - but is a vehicle of value. (34) value, since it expresses the expereicne of the artist, and also a
vehicle of market value

This second point brings me to the misunderstanding that I mentioned

at the beginning of this section. Put briefly, this consists in a
widespread tendency to confuse aesthetic education with art appreciation.
We act as though instinctive capacity and spontaneous development
combine to equip men to appreciate even quite sophisticated
works of art if these are introduced with a minimum amount of "interpetation"
and "background material." But there is no sufficient reason
to believe this; and there are very good reasons, both empirical and
theoretical, to believe the contrary.
Good art is not notoriously simple, straightforward, and easily grasped. To the casual eye, its meanings
often appear obscure and ambiguous,
its structure tortured and devious. It is only when we have
made the work of art our own that its lucidity and coherence come to
the fore. This achievement requires patience and discipline. And while
biographical, historical, stylistic, and iconographic initiation are essential
to this aesthetic preparation, it is neither the most important nor,
especially, the most elemental factor. This role belongs rather to the
training and cultivation of our inherent powers of sensation, feeling,
and expression. To really grasp a work of art is primarily to relive it
after the manner of the artist in making it. No work of art can ever be
more than a synopsis and syllabus of the experience it embodies and
serves to evoke. (37-38)

In the last analysis, and in its most fundamental terms, art is performance.
In the aesthetic life, whether as creators or appreciators, we are
above all performing: we are effecting a transformation of experienced
meanings to a higher level of clarity and stability. So our access to art is
measured by our ability as performers - our ability to enter fully, and
not only intellectually, into the artist's undertaking. It is only in this way
that men can be brought to a vivid and rewarding appreciation of good
art. (39)