A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c7.39

c7.39

I do not profess to understand the ‘higher aestheticism’, and am thoroughly convinced that sculpture and painting which sacrifice aesthetic essentials to symbolism in so far abandon their claims to be regarded as works of art. A composition including misshapen, monstrous, unbalanced forms may still in virtue of its quality as a whole compel the admission of its right to a place, even to a high place, in the kingdom of art, but if it succeeds in doing so, the success is won in despite not in virtue of the inartistic conceptions which deface it.