What Is Art According To Leo Tolstoy Essay Samples

According to Tolstoy, art should create a certain emotional connection between artist and audience that "infects" the viewer. Thus, the real art requires the ability to bring people together through communication “channel”, hence the importance of clarity and sincerity. Tolstoy`s aesthetic concept led to the expansion of the criteria of a work of art. He believes that the concept of art encompasses any human activity. Tolstoy offers the following example. The boy who was afraid when he saw the wolf, later, recounts his experience and infects the audience, making them feel as if they were in danger themselves. And this is a perfect example of a work of art. Tolstoy sees the main activity of art in the emotional communication between the artist and the spectator. The main goal of the artist is to evoke the feelings he experiences in the audience. The goal is achieved through different means of expression like words, movements, sounds, colors, forms or lines. Thus, Tolstoy determines the chief criterion of art as the ability to “infect” the viewer with the emotions that underlie the work of art.
At the same time, Tolstoy tries to answer the question why do some works of art tend to evoke completely different emotions and feelings in different people. To illustrate this problem, Tolstoy turns to the problem of elitism of modern art, its orientation exclusively on the “upper class”. He argues that the enjoyment that the rich man receives from a particular work of art is completely incomprehensible for the working man. This work of art either evokes no emotions at all or evokes contempt or even disgust. Tolstoy concludes that the art of the upper classes never can be the art of the whole people. At the same time, art is a “spiritual blessing” that is inherent to all people regardless of their social status or level of income. Thus, the logical assumption is either the art is not as important and vital to a human being as we thought it is, or the art of the upper classes is not a real art.
It seems to me that neither of these assumptions is correct. Without a doubt, art is inherent to human beings. In one form or another, it existed from the very beginning of human civilization. The urge to create lies at the foundation of our nature. As Tolstoy noted himself, God expects from human a creative act as a response to the creative act of God.
The assumption that the art popular among the upper class is not a true art is false. This art is true at least because it achieves its previously mentioned purpose – to evoke certain emotions and feeling of beauty. The people of the upper class receive a genuine pleasure when they listen to one of the Beethoven`s sonnets or contemplate a Da Vinci`s painting.
In my opinion, the main reason why different people, the working men and the upper class in this case, perceive differently the same works of art is because beauty is not a universal or objective category; there is not even an objective definition of beauty. In fact, beauty is a matter of personal taste of each individual and it depends on the variety of factors. The working men in this example surely receive their aesthetic pleasure from other expressions of human creativity whether it is a folk song or dance, or some other form of art popular among the common folk.
That is why the art must be, for a lack of a better word, flexible and somewhat changeable. The artists should not create the pieces that are comprehensible only to a small portion of educated people.
There possibly cannot be an objective definition of what is good art or what is bad art. The work of art is already good when it evokes positive emotions and the feeling of beauty in at least one person. It means that it has found its audience and that the piece of art was not created in vain.