# Quote — John Dewey, Art as Experience

> Even at the outset, the total and massive quality has its uniqueness; even when vague and undefined, it is just that which it is and not anything else. If the perception continues, discrimination inevitably sets in. Attention must move, and as it moves, parts, members, emerge from the background. And if attention moves in a unified direction instead of wandering, it is controlled by the pervading qualitative unity; attention is controlled by it because it operates within it.

- Author: [John Dewey](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey.md)
- Book: [Art as Experience](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience.md)
- Page: 199
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dewey#Art_as_Experience_(1934)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/even-at-the

## More from this book

> Naturalism is a word of many meetings in philosophy as well as in art. like most isms — classicism and romanticism, idealism and realism in art — it’s has become an emotional term, a war cry of partisans.

p. 157 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/naturalism-is-a-word.md)

> The recurrence of relations—not of elements—in different contexts, which constitutes transposition is qualitative and hence directly experienced in perception.

p. 219 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/the-recurrence-of-relations-not.md)

> Even the eye that is artificially trained to see color as color, apart from things that colors qualify, cannot shut out the resonances and transfers of value.

p. 126 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/even-the-eye.md)