human
Alas! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in common with such practices. She is a goddess of dainty thought--reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others.
gpt
She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and at all times as did her priest Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks.
human
Humanity takes the place of art, and God's creations are excused by their usefulness. Beauty is confounded with virtue and, before a work of art, it is asked: 'What good shall it do?'
gpt
Hence it is that nobility of action in his life is hopelessly linked with the merit of the work that portrays it; and thus the people have acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not _at_ a picture, but _through_ it, at some human fact, that shall, not from a social point of view, better their mental or moral state. So we have come to hear of the painting that elevates, and the duty of the painter--of the picture that is full of thought and of the panel that merely decorates.
human
That the main object of painting was to express the beauty of the technical medium unalloyed by any exterior motive, independent of time and place.
gpt
That art was not restricted to any special locality, but universal, cosmopolitan.
human
That art could be understood only by the artist and that all criticism consequently was futile occupation.