The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gate of Appreciation, by Carleton Noyes

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Title: The Gate of Appreciation
Studies in the Relation of Art to Life

Author: Carleton Noyes

Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #27183]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATE OF APPRECIATION ***

Produced by Ruth Hart

[Note: for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to
the beginning of the text. Also I have made one spelling change:
irrevelant circumstance to irrelevant circumstance.]

THE GATE OF APPRECIATION
Studies in the Relation of Art to Life

BY

CARLETON NOYES

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1907

COPYRIGHT 1907 BY CARLETON NOYES
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published April 1907_

TO
MY FATHER
AND THE MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER

"Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls."

CONTENTS

Preface i
I. The Impulse to Expression i
II. The Attitude of Response 23
III. Technique and the Layman 44
IV. The Value of the Medium 87
V. The Background of Art 105
VI. The Service of Criticism 137
VII. Beauty and Common Life 165
VIII. The Arts of Form 201
IX. Representation 221
X. The Personal Estimate 254

PREFACE

IN the daily life of the ordinary man, a life crowded with diverse
interests and increasingly complex demands, some few moments of
a busy week or month or year are accorded to an interest in art.
Whatever may be his vocation, the man feels instinctively that in his
total scheme of life books, pictures, music have somewhere a place.
In his own business or profession he is an expert, a man of special
training; and intelligently he does not aspire to a complete
understanding of a subject which lies beyond his province. In the
same spirit in which he is a master of his own craft, he is content to
leave expert knowledge of art to the expert, to the artist and to the
connoisseur. For his part as a layman he remains fra