Question 2

Could we conclude that art has some degree of universal appeal in an innate or cross culturally significant way?

Bell posits in the last paragraph that "Great art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that it awakens are independent of time and place..."

I feel that with regard to Bells exacting criteria for determining works to be art that he is making a theory based on a limited number of works of art. I do feel that there is critical reasoning behind his assertion however. His discussion of primitive features and there importance in achieving aesthetic experience from suggests that the primal forms of are relatively cross cultural at least in the sense that they can have appeal or evoke aesthetic experience to the majority of humans. After learning that his favorite art piece was the small humanoid statue I was more apt to consider Bell's argument for primacy.

I feel there are certainly universal aspects of artwork that are cross culturally significant, as Dewey argued for, it seems that such universal aspects are ingrained in our social and our physiological biology as a mechanism for survival. In short, examples like the universality of the dragon ( the combination of the serpent, birds of prey, and carnivorous mammal) and the appeal to shininess as a quality of water, or of cave paintings definitions relationships which support survival, they all prove that there does exist some sort of innate quality to aesthetic appeal.

I call into question westernized pieces that require more inculcation of the social scene to evoke as powerful an experience as a dragon would cross culturally, but I do think with some generous understanding that Bell's assertion does have truth value, although perhaps in a different context.