Popular art depicts the world, not as it is, nor even as it might be, but as we would have it. In that world we are neither strangers nor afraid, for it is of our own making. Everything in it is selected and placed for our interest. It is a world exhausted in a single perspective—our own—and it is peopled by cardboard figures that disappear when viewed edgewise. Art open to us a landscape over which we may roam freely, unfolds events that can be seen through the eyes of even the least of their participants.

Good art, on the other hand, takes us to a world we wouldn’t have imagined ourselves. It does not leave us where it found us. “In a fully aesthetic experience, feeling is deepened, given new content and meaning. Till then, we did not know what it was we felt; one could say that the feeling was not truly ours.” Great music, literature, painting, or architecture imprints itself in our lives and becomes a reference point for our most subtle and profound experiences.

Filed under: Design