Reflections on Art

Summary

Reflections

There is a similarity between judging works of art and reading books: you believe that you are understanding what you read, but when you have to explain it, you do not understand it. It is one thing to read Homer, but it is quite different to translate him while you are reading. Looking at art with good taste and looking at it with understanding are two different things, and from one generally valid thought you cannot conclude that someone has knowledge of it. Just as it does not follow that Cicero had thoroughly understood what he had written when he says that Canachus and Calamis had more hardness than Polycletus.

It is difficult to write with brevity, and not every work lends itself to it. For in writing about something more fully, you cannot so easily be taken at your word. But our times require brevity especially because of the large number of writings available. The man who wrote to someone saying “I did not have time to make this letter shorter” recognized what you needed to do to write with brevity.

Plato never speaks of himself in his writings.

In my attempt at writing a History of Art my intention was to proceed more like Herodotus than like Thucydides: the former starts from the times when the Greeks began to become great and stops with the humiliation of their enemies; the latter starts with the times when the Greeks began to feel unhappy.