ABSTRACT
Each age, each art-movement, each philosophy of art, tries over and over again to establish the stated ideal only to be succeeded by a new or revised theory, rooted, at least in part, in the repudiation of preceding ones. Even today, almost everyone interested in aesthetic matters is still deeply wedded to the hope that the correct theory of art is forthcoming. This chapter shows that the inadequacies of the theories are not primarily occasioned by any legitimate difficulty such as the vast complexity of art, which might be corrected by further probing and research. Painting is definable as plastic organization. The nature of art, what it really is, so their theory goes, is a unique combination of certain elements in their relations. Anything which is art is an instance of significant form; and anything which is not art has no such form.
