I came across this qoute in an article by Roger Kimball also who wrote The Rape of the Masters: How Political Corectness Sabotages Art:

"This much I think, is clear: Without an allegiance to beauty, art degenerates into a caracature of itself; it is beauty that animates the aesthetic experience, making it so seductive, but aesthetic experience itself degenerates into a kind of fetish or idol if it is held up as an end in itself, untested by the rest of life."

I am trying to understand how that fits in with my own attempts at landscape photography. It seems like it should but I cannot find the correct words to define how the landscape photograph does this.

Any thoughts, suggestions or ideas?