ABSTRACT
The concept of art is an abstracting and thus variable linguistic construction. In the early days of art philosophy, visual art was very much rendered suspect; ostensibly visual art was merely capable of reproducing primal images and thus the assumption was that visual art was some kind of appearance of appearance. Leonardo da Vinci effectively departs from the antique classification of art into mechanic and liberal arts. Modern art historical research criticizes early scholars like Giorgio Vasari and Winckelmann for their unsubstantiated, normative ideology that defines one period as a golden epoch without studying its artworks in detail. The aesthetic judgment pertains to the spiritual reproduction and not to the physical expression of the work of art. Theoaesthetics defended the connecting power of religion that could counteract fragmentation and disintegration. The liberating potential of art is in its lucid representation of the beautiful act and its potentials in the context of human alienation.
