Art cannot be understood without appreciation and appreciation depends upon understanding.

What is appreciation? In the broadest sense, it is the liking of things for themselves. It is having vivid pleasant experience. It is not being practical or analytical. To appreciate an object we must get away from thinking about what uses it can have for us, or what relations can be analyzed out of it. To appreciate it is tyo find delight in it for just the thing it is in our perception.

To some extent, appreciation is within our power to find things beautiful or not at will. If we bring an appreciation attitude to the world about us, we immediately find much to appreciate. The cloud is out there ready to be appreciated by anybody in the appreciative attitude. But if we absorbed in practical matters, it is very difficult for the beauty of the cloud to break through; that is, for the cloud to be perceived as an object of immediate enjoyment.

There are some objects so designed to stimulate the appreciative attitude and to hold it steadily once it is attained. These are works of arts. If we can understand these objects and the ways in which they give us enjoyment and the ways we can get enjoyment out of them, then we shall be able to understand objects of appreciation generally. If we understand the pleasures of works of art, this should help us to understand other pleasures too.

Appreciation of a great work of art is something more than a matter of personal likes or dislikes, something more than its conformity to art styles or social cultures. A great work of art is the potentiality of a vivid and satisfying human experience. The possibility of that experience lies in ourselves.

Anyone with a normal eye who meets the conditions for the appreciation of a great work of art may expect to have the vivid satisfying experience that awaits him there. These conditions of course are much more complicated than just opening one's eyes.

a well organized work of art implies a standard human experience of it, which it would well repay us to learn to understand and appreciate. This human standard is the complete system of relevant perceptions for a work of art.