Visual Arts · Art Theory & Visual Culture
A topic within Art Theory & Visual Culture, itself one of 10 topics in that field and part of Visual Arts.
2 works
Walter Pater
Argues that criticism begins not with a rule of beauty but with the precise, subjective impression a work produces in the viewer -- 'to know one's own impression as it really is' -- founding the idea that how a work is seen is inseparable from who is doing the seeing.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Wilhelm Worringer
Argues that stylised, non-naturalistic art is not a failure to achieve realism but expresses a distinct psychological urge to abstract from a world the artist finds unsettling, standing on equal footing with the empathetic naturalism of classical art.
link checked 17 Sept 2026