beauty is not a material object, but a subjective appearance, like the sweetness of sugar

 Von Hartmann (1888, vol. 2, 11) rejects what he called “naïve realistic” assumptions about the objects of aesthetic or artistic judgements. Arguing for a “transcendental realism,” he contends that beauty is not a material object, but a subjective appearance, like the sweetness of sugar. ie a subjective idealism

Hartmann’s central thesis on the ontology of art is that works are fictions that depend upon the perceptual and imaginative activities of artists and their audiences..Hartmann maintains that as a result of its dependence upon the imagination, the work of art lacks independent or autonomous being