The Path Toward Beauty

There is a path toward beauty, just as there is a path toward that which transcends human beings, and there can be no beauty outside that path. In The Path Toward Beauty, Prof. Francesca Weinmann takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the relationship between art and beauty, while astutely displacing our commonly held ideas about genius, originality, and imagination-and above all the concept of beauty as it relates to taste. This journey is truly universal since it includes art objects from pre-history to the present day, and is accompanied by a thoughtful study of significant Eastern and Western philosophical texts. Artists rarely produce works of art for the sake of beauty alone. Yet, there are works of art from every period and every civilization that are undeniably beautiful. Prof. Weinmann passionately argues that the invisible beauty, which underlies the visible form of the art object, reflects the aspiration of the true artist who always tries to capture a bit of the tra