Introduction to art briefly describes the characteristics of artistic image.

1. Artistic image is the unity of concrete sensibility and transcendence.

Because artistic activities all achieve their goals with the help of concrete and sensible artistic images, the most obvious feature of artistic images is concrete and sensible. Painting, sculpture, calligraphy, photography and other visual technologies depict concrete and visible images, music conveys auditory feelings through the combination of sound changes, and dance, drama and film and television use various means to shape visual, auditory and imaginary images. Even literature created by abstract language strives to create a tangible realm. Du Fu's five-word quatrain: "The mountains and rivers are beautiful in the evening, the flowers and plants are fragrant in the spring breeze, the mud melts into swallows, and the sand warms the mandarin ducks to sleep." This poem is composed of concrete and sensible artistic images, which can be seen, heard and touched by appealing to human senses.

However, Hegel said a long time ago, "In art, these perceptual shapes and sounds are presented not only for themselves or for the appearance and shape that they directly appear in the senses, but to satisfy higher spiritual interests with that appearance." That is to say, the artist does not image for the sake of image, but shapes and depicts "higher spiritual interest" through concrete and perceptual images, which determines the transcendence of artistic image.

2. Art is a free spiritual world created by human beings who are not satisfied with the existence of nature and reality. Artistic image is not a simple imitation of nature and life, but an object created by human mind. People create this kind of thing to satisfy "higher spiritual interests". In Hegel's view, this spiritual interest is "sometimes even the highest and absolute need". Because "art is linked with the universal world outlook and religious purport of the whole era and nation", human beings need to engage in artistic creation "driven by a noble motive", and this spiritual purport is the aesthetic ideal of human beings. Aesthetic ideal is created by human imagination, which transcends the aesthetic concept scale and normative model of real life. On the one hand, it shows the artist's personality characteristics, on the other hand, it embodies the common requirements of human aesthetic taste.