Form Is Sometimes Considered A Mere Spice

Rather Than Be Asked To Abandon One's Own Heritage And To Adapt To The Mores Of The New Country, One Was Expected To Possess A Treasure Of Foreign Skills And Customs That Would Enrich The Resources Of American Living.

No Longer Can We Consider What The Artist Does To Be A Self-contained Activity, Mysteriously Inspired From Above, Unrelated And Unrelatable To Other Human Activities. Instead, We Recognize The Exalted Kind Of Seeing That Leads To The Creation Of Great Art As An Outgrowth Of The Humbler And More Common Activity Of The Eyes In Everyday Life. Just As The Prosaic Search For Information Is "artistic" Because It Involves Giving And Finding Shape And Meaning, So The Artist's Conceiving Is An Instrument Of Life, A Refined Way Of Understanding Who And Where We Are.

Nothing Is More Humbling Than To Look With A Strong Magnifying Glass At An Insect So Tiny That The Naked Eye Sees Only The Barest Speck And To Discover That Nevertheless It Is Sculpted And Articulated And Striped With The Same Care And Imagination.

Order Is A Prerequisite Of Survival; Therefore The Impulse To Produce Orderly Arrangements Is Inbred By Evolution.

But Art Not Only Exploits The Variety Of Appearances, It Also Affirms The Validity Of Individual Outlook And Thereby Admits A Further Dimension Of Variety. Since The Shapes Of Art Do Not Primarily Bear Witness To The Objective Nature Of The Things For Which They Stand, They Can Reflect Individual Interpretation And Invention.