Customer Reviews

What Is Art? (Penguin Classics)

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Tolstoy, in his magical, down-to-earth way discusses the wanton waste of money and time on sculptures, paintings, etc. that should never be called "ART." If something is designed purely for erotic satisfaction, it should not be called "ART." Even when a bizarre creation attracts thousands of viewers, the adoring crowds do not validate the creation, but the creator who supports his/her career via their pocketbooks!

Tolstoy's scathing and unapologetic look at 'Art History' can still be argued in our own culture. The times have changed but mankind has not. I would venture to say that Generation X understands very little about true artistic works, we are so bombarded with commercialism and materialism. We are only interested in what gives us erotic and material pleasure. But in the long run, temporal and vainglorious things did not satisfy Tolstoy and his contemporaries, and will not satisfy us either.

Tolstoy unleashes an intellectual argument as only he can as he provides a classical insight into the definition of art. Filled with lashings against Church Christianity and praise for true Chrisitanity, and more lashings against universal art that is unoriginal and full of sexual erotica, Tolstoy argues that true art is reflective of the religious consciousness of the age and is measured by its degree of infectuousness to the consumer. It is valued by having particularity, clarity, and sincerity of feeling from the artist. Keep in mind this was written at the end of his life in the 19th century. Tolstoy also argues that governmental endowments given to art that only satisifes the sensual desires of the upper class is a great abuse of the millions of common people that work hard but will never even see the art, art that was produced at incredible expense using their money. In summary, Tolstoy offers a timeless definition of art.

Do you have thoughts like "well, maybe it's just me... They say Monet is great, but perhaps I just don't understand it..." I say, maybe it's your own gut that tells you what is the true art and what is not!

This work by Tolstoy is a summary of his 15 year spiritual journey and research of art and what it's all about. And who is the author! A genius himself! In this piece he tells us in plain language that the whole art of his century (with a few exceptions) is a product of a rotten class of people, a select few, whose main concerns were far from being common with the feelings of any normal human being. "Art, nowadays, is for pleasure, not for bringing moral values in the form of genuine feelings to a reader". This is basically the general idea of the work. At first, you feel dumbfounded reading this, but after a few pages, his statements start to make sense. Only a true moral feeling expressed in the right form, not necessarily beautiful, but understandible and to the point, is a true piece of art.

Now, let's go back and think for minute: do I really like Sheakspeare or is it the literary criticism the makes me feel that I am not a fully cultured person unless I acknowledge Sheakspeare as the greatest of all, or at least one of the greatest writers (playwrights) ever? Even if I think that he was too verbose and vague to begin with? That sometimes you read him and whole paragraphs go by without you fully understanding what he's talking about? Mind you, he wrote for the theater, which means characters' sentences need to be pretty concise and clear, so that the audience could follow them. Anyway, Tolstoy will help you understand this problem.

His main idea, again, is for art to convey the feelings of fraternity and love to the reader, not sexual desires, fake patriotism, shovinism or those exquisite feelings of the upper class. Art is about compassion, love, oneness of all people and good healthy humor. I totally agree with that.

One more thing: in this work, Tolstoy confronts the idea of goodness with the idea of beauty, saying that for the sake of beauty, the contemporary artists disregard goodness. This a very controversial statement, in my opinion, but there is a point there...

Also recommended: of course, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, Childhood, Boyhood & Youth, as true standards of literature, by which you can judge the works of others. All other fiction by Tolstoy is just as great and easy to read, especially his short stories, such as "Master and Man", "The Forged Coupon", etc. His other less known works that are revolutionary by their essence, are "My Confession", "What is My Belief (Religion)" and especially (really hard to find) "Critique of Dogmatic Theology", where he expounded his views on religion and traditional Church Christianity with all its absurd, useless dogmas, which only divert your attention from what Christ really taught. This is a very controversial work, which was prohibited in Russia of his day, but which is certainly worth reading. By the way, why doesn't Everyman's Library publish it?

then perhaps you ought to read this book by one of the greatest writers ever. Tolstoy was a man of vast knowledge and he displays that here with his meticulous study of beauty and what it means, which leads him to his own definition of Art. Art, he says, is whenever you, the artist, has transmitted his/her feelings to a universal audience. Clearness, simplicity, brevity, and comprehension are qualities of a work of art. Surprisingly, most people disregard this book while at the same time they put all his other books on a higher pedastal than the author himself does by his own definition! You tell me...but I think Tolstoy was on to something...

Tolstoy was a great writer, and his late period of "saintly" simplicity and "solidarity" with the Russian peasants (whom he continued to use on his land) is important to understand as an example of something--I'm not sure what. Maybe as an example of the contradictions of that kind of utopianism (see Isaiah Berlin's great essays on Tolstoy). Also, What is Art?, which dates from this last period, makes some important reminders about the social context of art. BUT ...

It is also the classic example of Philistinism, casually dismissing great works of art because they don't conform to St. Leo's late ideal of simple, straightforward form and content. The previous reviewers make clear the dangers of this kind of attitude--when they don't understand a painting or poem, it couldn't possibly be because there's something lacking in their response. It must be because the work is decadent or wrong. Such an attitude ultimately leads not to the simple purity Tolstoy envisioned, but to the sort of dumbing down we have in American television, cinema, and "beach" novels. "I know what I like" has become the manifesto of boorishness, adding self-righteousness to poor taste.

Tolstoy's What is Art? is worth reading, but keep in mind that his descriptions of music by Wagner or Beethoven, various novels, etc., are ridiculous caricatures that have little to do with the real thing. Furthermore, it's difficult not to see "St. Leo" as incredibly hypocritical, staying in all summer reading the latest novels while his peasants work in his fields, and then criticising the novels because they're remote from the common life of the peasants.

If...you've ever been baffled by a Monet exhibit or a Beethoven sonata, it doesn't mean that these are no good and you may as well go back to your sitcoms and soaps. It means you need to look and listen again, and maybe think a bit. The rewards are there if you're willing to get off your intellectual butt.

I'm surprised that nobody (so far) has commented on the physical aspects of this book, Because the original is so old - written in 1899 after sixteen years of thought-it is now a rare book This then, is printed using a patented Print on Demand technology. It is printed using a robot that turns and photographs each page. Since the book has been re-typeset, page numbers change and there is no index or table of contents. Also, there are a number of typos. However, none of this really matters as far as the actual content of the thought is concerned and the typos are not too distracting.
"What Is Art"is an interesting read with many aspects applicable to today. For example, in discussing the definition of "beauty", Tolstoy observes, "As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception conveyed by a word, with the more aplomb and self-assurance do people use that word, pretending what is understood by it is so simple and clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it actually means." Along with gems of insights, Tolstoy betrays his own prejudices as he is against nudity ("female nakedness"), even referring to a ballet as a "lewd performance". He dislikes Wagner, all of Beethoven's later works and the whole Impressionist movement - which, of course, was new back then. However, he is also against realism, "When we appraise a work according to its realism, we only show that we are talking, not of a work of art, but of its counterfeit". He also dislikes art schools- but not art education in public schools-, critics, art about art, and the idea of grants to artists. He believed that artists should earn their living in the real world, so as not to lose a connection to regular life. For this, he conveniently overlooks the fact that his inheritance of vast tracts of land worked by peasants enabled him to pursue his own career. He has great hopes for the role of art creating brotherhood among man. "Art should cause violence to be set aside".Tolstoy's main point is that art is real art if the artist was sincere in his feelings about the subject and that viewers were then "infected" with the feeling. "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 some one elses- as if what it expresses were just what he had been longing to express". This brings us to deeper thinking about just what it is that we are trying to convey in works of art. For any artist who likes to think about conveying feeling, I would also recommend a more modern outlook on this subject- Creative Authenticity by Ian Roberts- 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen your Artistic Vision

Well written book. Very logical. Art seperate from aesthetics is an interesting concept. This book is a good conversation starter, and does a good job of getting the gears turning. A pretty good read for anyone interested in thinking about art, especially its implications on culture.

It's important not to get sidetracked by Tolstoy's particular opinions on the various works of art he discusses, but instead to focus on the methods he uses to decide if a so-called work of art is worthwhile or not. Otherwise, you will get nothing from this besides an opportunity to compare your own particular taste to that of Tolstoy's. The most important thing I took away from this book was the desire to revisit my own favorite works and ask whether they were authentic or counterfeit. Whether Tolstoy and I came to the same conclusions regarding a particular work is irrelevant.

That being said, Tolstoy betrays his own ignorance in certain areas. He dismisses the late Beethoven because, as the composer could not hear his own works, they must therefore be incoherent and unlistenable. However, since Beethoven had perfect pitch, as do many composers and performers, it was not necessary for him to be able to listen to his compositions. In fact, many composers of the day typically wrote without instruments in front of them, and considered it the mark of an amateur to compose "at the piano." The works of Beethoven's late period were at least 75 years ahead of their time; as Beethoven himself remarked, they were written for future generations anyway.

Tolstoy's synopsis of the Ring of the Nibelungs, and his description of a performance, may be some of his most humorous writing (perhaps intentionally so), and if the reader peruses only one section of this book, this should be the one. Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight; Wagner was not funny at the time, but a hundred years later, Wagnerian opera is a staple of low comedy. Tolstoy is to be commended for recognizing this at a time when Wagner's work was considered the highest art imaginable.

At the essay's conclusion, Tolstoy for some reason briefly applies his standard of value to science - research that leads to knowledge of how men should treat each other is good, but pure research for its own sake, or to satisfy one's curiosity, is not. So sociology and psychology are useful, but astronomy and paleontology are not. Whether or not I have correctly interpreted Tolstoy's position is not important. This section is too brief to do the argument justice, and should have either been expanded or left out. Science and art are two entirely separate realms, and positing one as a subset of the other requires at the very least a lengthy essay of its own.

Tolstoy's observation that great art reflects the dominant religious ideal of its time is unarguable. He observes that the religious ideal of his own time was the "brotherhood of man," and a little thought will reveal that this is the ideal of our own time as well, common to all modern religions and independent of creed or doctrine.

This is a classic, a gem, a beautiful statement of the nature of art. Tolstoy was a giant.

If you have any real interest in art you must own this book. In the first few pages it changed the way I think about art. Tolstoy had an entirely different way of thinking and you should know about it.
I can't recommend this strongly enough
M.