Leo Tolstoy. What is Art?. #1. In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life . If you cease to consider art as a means to pleasure, what are the implications?.
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#1. In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life.
If you cease to consider art as a means to pleasure, what are the implications?
Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.
#2. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.Tolstoy’s Requirement
#3. Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner.
However instead of just thoughts art transmits feelings.
#4. The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed itTolstoy’s requirement
#7. Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling externallyTolstoy’s requirement
To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements, etc.
All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art.
If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art.
-It is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them.
-And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight,despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer.
#8. The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most various - very strong or very weak, very important or very insignificant, very bad or very good
#9. If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.
#12. Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy;
it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.
What are the implications of this statement?
#13. thanks to man's capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by others is accessible to him
So arethe feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others.Art As a record & Art as Time Travel
#14. If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts
#15. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.
#16. And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself.
#17.We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . .
But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life.
All human life is filled with works of art of every kind - from cradlesong, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions.
It is all artistic activity.
So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance.
#18. This special importance has always been given by all men to that part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their religious perception
this small part of art they have specifically called art, attaching to it the full meaning of the word.
#24. Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost.
In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.
#25. There is one indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art.
If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint on reading, hearing, or seeing another man's work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art.
And however poetic, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it).
#26. It is true that this indication is an internal one, and that there are people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect something else form art (in our society the great majority are in this state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this aesthetic feeling the feeling of diversion and a certain excitement which they receive from counterfeits of art.
#27. The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else's - as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express.
A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist - not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art.
In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.
#29. The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from its subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feelings it transmits.
on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted;
on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.#30. And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:
#31. The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he is transferred, the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it.
#32. The clearness of expression assists infection because the receiver, who mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the more clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he has long known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression.
#33. But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by the degree of sincerity in the artist.
As soon as the spectator, hearer, or reader feels that the artist is infected by his own production, and writes, sings, or plays for himself, and not merely to act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the receiver; and contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for his own satisfaction - does not himself feel what he wishes to express - but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any infection but actually repel.
#34. I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may be all summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e., that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling.
That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced it.
And as each man is different from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else; and the more individual it is - the more the artist has drawn it from the depths of his nature - the more sympathetic and sincere will it be.
And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit.
#35. Therefore this third condition - sincerity - is the most important of the three.
It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.
#36. Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits, and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its subject matter.
#37. The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work form the category of art and relegates it to that of art's counterfeits.
If the work does not transmit the artist's peculiarity of feeling and is therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it has not proceeded from the author's inner need for expression - it is not a work of art.
If all these conditions are present, even in the smallest degree, then the work, even if a weak one, is yet a work of art.
#38. The presence in various degrees of these three conditions - individuality, clearness, and sincerity - decides the merit of a work of art as art, apart from subject matter.
All works of art take rank of merit according to the degree in which they fulfill the first, the second, and the third of these conditions.
In one the individuality of the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and clearness but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and combinations.
#39. Thus is art divided from that which is not art, and thus is the quality of art as art decided, independently of its subject matter, i.e., apart from whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad.
#40. But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its subject matter?