ABSTRACT
There does seem to be some connection between art and beauty. The category of things that present a pleasing appearance will include many works of art. One value can be summed up in the term "beautiful"; a work is valuable to the extent that it is beautiful. The obvious place to begin is with the thought that to be beautiful is to exhibit a pleasing appearance. Francis Bacon says that "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion". There are the works of art that are merely pretty; works of art that are beautiful; and works of art that possess aesthetic merit. Sometimes a work's aesthetic merit can lie not in its beauty but in its ugliness. The defence of aesthetic merit of art that is being offered is that we have to admit that theodicy has failed: the world cannot be saved by appearances.
