Have you ever tried to explain an abstract concept, such as justice to a small child. It's no easy feat. One cannot describe it by color, sound, texture, scent, or any other sensory clues by which humans gather information. The concept has to be intuitively felt. In my experience, I've found that, rather than give a child a definition, most people would give a child one or more examples of the concept in action. Thus, a child can only know what justice is after he or she has seen justice. I believe this theory applies to art as well. It seems to me that, if a person had never experienced art before, he or she would not understand an explanation of art until they were shown an example, no matter how eloquent the teacher.
If art is an abstract concept, how can we describe it without examples and anecdotes?
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