The American Scholar, No. 41, 1971-2. All children draw. It is artistic behavior. The constructing of form in response to sensation serves to stabilize experience and permits us to reflect upon that experience. Art is best understood as an innate behavior whereby form is given to experience for purposes of reflection and communication.
Art is a purposive behavior.
Not until he sets it outside himself or contemplates it, in his aesthetic status, does his personality become distinct from it, and a world appears to him because he has ceased to identify himself with it. Jesus, the Word, becomes flesh in order to bring salvation to man. There is a parallel between art and incarnation. The human tendency to objectify, while God-given, is, like other human behaviors, subject to sinful abuses. All distinction of things is lost, and it is merely appearance that determines their worth.