Bolzano on Art

In his little-known essay published posthumously in 1849, Uber die Eintheilung der schonen Kunste (On the Classification of the Beautiful Arts), Bernard Bolzano proposes an explication of the concept of beautiful art as well as a classification of these arts. Bolzano's divisions allowed him not only to provide a principled and comprehensive classification of actual, well-established arts, but also to anticipate kinds of beautiful art that would not exist or be widely recognized until decades after his death, such as moving pictures, abstract paintings, and what he called 'the arts of pure thought'.