Neo Platonism is distinct from Platonism in its view of art in that it has a higher view of the value of art. Remember, Plato was pretty harsh with regard to the legitimacy of Art but this is not true with Neo Platonism. According to Neo Platonism, art expresses higher truths of beauty and sensuality. It seems that there is an Aristotelian influence evidenced in the conclusions of Neo Platonism regarding the meaning and significance of art.
Classicism or Formalism argues that art and the experience of beauty capture the harmony between the ways in which things in reality are structure and the structure and activities of the mind.
Romanticism argued that through artistic imagination, which is subjective and emotional, we are put in touch with what is eternally real and creative. Classicism's emphasis on order and proportion, like philosophic reason or science in general, provides information merely about the temporal world not reality as it is eternally.
Tolstoy argued that art brings us together as children of God through shared feelings. He contended that great art would be sincere and universal and not affected or accessible only to the cultural elite.
