Abstract

In a paper on “Beauty and Greatness in Art” discussed at a recent meeting of the Aristotelian Society, Professor Alexander says: “In Art there are two standards; there is the strictly æsthetic standard, Is the work beautiful or not; has it attained beauty? and there is the question, Is it great or small?… This contrast of beauty and greatness is the old contrast of form and subject-matter.” Here is offered a problem of capital importance and of age-long interest, but alongside of it there is a subsidiary and a much slighter question which has been comparatively little noticed and which may yet have bearing on the larger issue. This question is the relation of actual size, of size-in-itself, to the other factors in a work of art, and the reaction, if such there be, of such a size-factor upon the aesthetic whole