Only morally superior human beings are capable of creating great art. By developing one central idea in the arts and imaginatively playing with it, we discover manifestations of it in many other areas, and enter into other cultures in new and unexpected ways. We find that different mental and emotional worlds are alive and well. At first the question seems easy. Tasting a work of art must mean to savor it, to play upon its surface with our eyes as if we were touching it and to imaginatively play with the images presented.
Emotions are the substance of art.
In addition, RASA theory distinguishes between our ordinary and our aesthetic emotions. While ordinary emotions agitate and move us, aesthetic emotions or rasas are perceived and tasted. For example, an actor or dancer may present a dominant emotion and support it with subsidiary emotions that flesh out and intensify the dominant emotion. If done effectively, the beholder experiences a symphonic interplay of aesthetic emotions. However, this emotional symphony will not be fully experienced unless a beholder, equal to the work, savors each of the subsidiary emotions in a prolonged, disinterested way, experiencing how each contributes to the dominant emotional quality of the work.