No Pictures

I am adjusting a chapter on aesthetics at the moment -- which reminds me of my first visit to the home of my first seminary principal. It struck me that all the walls were bare -- and the rest was quite stripped down. I asked him where the pictures were. He said something like this: art was nonessential, and life was passing. There was no reason to surround oneself with nonessential things. OBSERVATION: Which is a basic distinction one makes of art (whether something has utility ot not), except that he was one step ahead of that, and drawing conclusions.