Until recently, the received precepts of modern curatorial practice favored the exclusive use of artificial light in all art galleries. It has perhaps been insufficiently recognized how this encapsulation tends to reduce the artwork to a commodity, since such an environment must conspire to render the work placeless. This is because the local light spectrum is never permitted to play across its surface: here, then, we see how the loss of aura, attributed by Walter Benjamin to the processes of mechanical reproduction, also arises from a relatively static application of universal technology.

Frampton, K. (1983) ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.), The anti-aesthetic: essays on postmodern culture, Cambridge (Mass.) and London, 1983, pp. 29–30.

Humanität [humanity]…for Kant…man’s proud and tragic consciousness of self-approved and self-imposed principles, contrasting with his utter subjection to illness, decay and all that is implied in the word ‘mortality.’

Pico said that God placed man in the centre of the universe so that he might be conscious of where he stands, and therefore free to decide ‘where to turn’.

[Humanism] is not so much a movement as an attitude which can be defined as the conviction of the dignity of man, based on both the insistence on human values (rationality and freedom) and the acceptance of human limitations (fallibility and frailty)…

Erasmus of Rotterdam, the humanist par excellence, is a typical case in point. The church suspected and ultimately rejected the writings of his man who had said: ‘Perhaps the spirit of Christ is more largely diffused than we think, and there are many in the community of saints who are not in our calendar.’ The adventurer Ulrich von Hutten despised his ironical skepticism and his unheroic love of tranquility. And Luther, who insisted that ‘no man has power to think anything good or evil, but everything occurs in him by absolute necessity,’ was incensed by a belief which manifested itself in the famous phrase: ‘What is the use of man as a totality [that is, of man endowed with both a body and soul], if God would work in him as a sculptor works in clay, and might just as well work in stone?’

To perceive the relation of signification is to separate the idea of the concept to be expressed from the means of expression. And to perceive the relation of construction is to separate the idea of the function to be fulfilled from the means of fulfilling it.

Erwin Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, 1940

Art critic

In my work as a critic of art I have never been a pure Impressionist, a mere recording instrument of certain sensations. I have always had some kind of aesthetic. A certain scientific curiosity and a desire for comprehension have impelled me at every stage to make generalizations, to attempt some kind of logical co-ordination of my impressions. But, on the other hand, I have never worked out for myself a complete system such as the metaphysicians deduce from a priori principles. I have never believed that I knew what was the ultimate nature of art. My aesthetic has been a purely practical one, a tentative expedient, an attempt to reduce to some kind of order my aesthetic impressions to date. …Moreover, I have always looked on my system with a certain suspicion.

Roger Fry, Vision and Design, 1920

Significant form

I think we are all agreed that we mean by significant form something other than agreeable arrangements of form, harmonious patterns, and the like. We feel that a work which possesses it is the outcome of an endeavour to express an idea rather than to create a pleasing object. Personally, at least, I always feel that it implies the effort on the part of the artist to bend to our emotional understanding by means of his passionate conviction some intractable material which is alien to our spirit.

Roger Fry, Vision and Design, 1920