What Is Art?

What is art? (Russian: Что такое искусство? Chto takoye iskusstvo?) is a book by Leo Tolstoy. It was completed in Russian in 1897 but first published in English due to difficulties with the Russian censors.

Tolstoy cites the time, effort, public funds, and public respect spent on art and artists as well as the imprecision of general opinions on art as reason for writing the book. In his words, "it is difficult to say what is meant by art, and especially what is good, useful art, art for the sake of which we might condone such sacrifices as are being offered at its shrine".

Throughout the book Tolstoy demonstrates an "unremitting moralism", evaluating artworks in light of his radical Christian ethics, and displaying a willingness to dismiss accepted masters, including Wagner,Shakespeare, and Dante, as well as the bulk of his own writings.

Having rejected the use of beauty in definitions of art (see aesthetic theory), Tolstoy conceptualises art as anything that communicates emotion: "Art begins when a man, with the purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs".

This view of art is inclusive: "jokes", "home decoration", and "church services" may all be considered art as long as they convey feeling. It is also amoral: "[f]eelings … very bad and very good, if only they infect the reader … constitute the subject of art".

Tolstoy also notes that the "sincerity" of the artist—that is, the extent to which the artist "experiences the feeling he conveys"—influences the infection.

While Tolstoy's basic conception of art is broad and amoral, his idea of "good" art is strict and moralistic, based on what he sees as the function of art in the development of humanity:

just as in the evolution of knowledge - that is, the forcing out and supplanting of mistaken and unnecessary knowledge by truer and more necessary knowledge - so the evolution of feelings takes place by means of art, replacing lower feelings, less kind and less needed for the good of humanity, by kinder feelings, more needed for that good. This is the purpose of art.

Tolstoy's analysis is influenced by his radical Christian views (see The Kingdom of God is Within You), views which led him to be excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. He states that Christian art, rooted in "the consciousness of sonship to God and the brotherhood of men":

...
Wikipedia