title: The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)
author: Mark Cheetham
description: "Excellent....Cheetham's study clarifies many of the contradictory aspects of early abstract theory." The Reader's Review
zlib_text: SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
  1
  SEVEN DISCOURSES
  ON ART
  by Sir Joshua Reynolds
  
  SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
  2
  INTRODUCTION
  It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal
  Academy with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir Joshua
  Reynolds, on the opening of the schools, and at the first annual meetings
  for the distribution of its prizes.  They laid down principles of art from
  the point of view of a man of genius who had made his power felt, and
  with the clear good sense which is the foundation of all work that looks
  upward and may hope to live.  The truths here expressed concerning Art
  may, with slight adjustment of the way of thought, be applied to Literature
  or to any exercise of the best powers of mind for shaping the delights that
  raise us to the larger sense of life.  In his separation of the utterance of
  whole truths from insistance upon accidents of detail, Reynolds was right,
  because he guarded the expression of his view with careful definitions of
  its limits.