Title: What is this essay about?
Product review: In my opinion this essay has almost no content. The thesis is: if you can define what an art object is then you can define what art is. I don't think this was answered. It seems to me that the arguments are so intellectualized and so abstract that they are far removed from the reality of what we call art. I've read several of the writers he mentions: Gombrich, Wolfflin, Ortega y Gassat, Tolstoy. Overall I think the critiques he offers are superficial, and edited to fit his train of thought. For example on page 102 he mentions Tolstoy's critism of the imitativeness of Wagner's art. I think it would be more correct to say that Tolstoy was mostly criticizing the need of something like a secret decoder ring in order to understand it.
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