This is one of the, if not the, best essay on art I’ve ever read. It has broadened and deepened my understanding and appreciation of art. I especially enjoyed the summary of various aesthetic theories and definitions of beauty by philosophers and aestheticians. For Tolstoy, their definitions of beauty are too obtuse or confusing to be applicable in art, so his own definition of art is based not on beauty but on feeling.
What is Beauty
According to Kant, man has a knowledge of nature outside him and of himself in nature. In nature, outside himself, he seeks for truth ; in himself he seeks for goodness. The first is an affair of pure reason, the other of practical reason (free-will). Besides these two means of perception, there is judging capacity, which forms judgments without reasonings and produces pleasure without desire. This capacity is the basis of aesthetic feeling. Beauty in its subjective meaning is that which, in general and necessarily, without reasonings and without practical advantage, pleases. In its objective meaning it is the form of a suitable object perceived without any conception of its utility.
According to Hegel, God manifests himself in nature and in art in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in two ways: in the object and in the subject, in nature and in spirit. Beauty is the shining of the Idea through matter. Only the soul, and what pertains to it, is truly beautiful. Therefore the beauty of nature is only the reflection of the natural beauty of the spirit. The beautiful has only a spiritual content, but the spiritual must appear in sensuous form. The sensuous manifestation of spirit is only appearance (schein), and this appearance is the only reality of the beautiful. Art is a means, together with religion and philosophy, of expressing the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the spirit. Truth and beauty are one and the same thing.
According to Schopenhauer, Will objectivizes itself in the world on various planes. The higher the plane on which it is objectivized the more beautiful it is. Yet each plane has its own beauty. Renunciation of one’s individuality and contemplation of one of these planes of manifestation of Will gives us a perception of beauty. All men possess the capacity to objectivize the Idea on different planes. The genius of the artist has this capacity in a higher degree, and therefore makes a higher beauty manifest.
In summary, beauty consists in utility, adjustment to a purpose, symmetry, order, proportion, smoothness, harmony of the parts, unity amid variety, or combinations of these. All the aesthetic definitions of beauty lead to two fundamental conceptions. First, beauty has an independent existence, being a manifestation of the absolutely Perfect, the Idea, the Spirit, Will, or God. Second, beauty is a kind of pleasure we receive, without personal advantage for its object.
What is Good Art
“Art is an activity by means of which one man having experienced a feeling intentionally transmits it to others.”
Infection is a sure sign of art. The degree of infectiousness is the sole measure of excellence in art, apart from its subject matter. It depends on three conditions, namely, individuality, clearness and sincerity,
According to Tolstoy, art should be universal, and unite all men. Only two kinds of feeling do unite all men. First, feelings flowing from the perception of our sonship to God and of the brotherhood of man; Second, the simple feelings of common life, accessible to everyone, such as the feeling of merriment, pity, cheerfulness or tranquility.
“Sometimes people who are together are, if not hostile to one another, at least estranged in mood and feeling. Till perchance a story, a performance, a picture, or even a building, but oftenest of all music, unites them all as by an electric flash. In place of their former isolation or even enmity, they are all conscious of union and mutual love. Each is glad that another feels what he feels; glad of the communion established, not only between him and all present, but also with all now living who will yet share the same impression; and more than that, he feels the mysterious gladness of a communion which, reaching beyond the grave, unites us with all men of the past who have been moved by the same feelings, and with all men of the future who will yet be touched by them.”
A real work of art can only arise in the soul of an artist occasionally, as the fruit of the life he has lived, just as a child is conceived by its mother.
The Organic Nature of Art
A chief characteristic of every true work of art is such entirety and completeness that the smallest alteration in its form would disturb the meaning of the whole work. In a poem, drama, picture, or symphony, it is impossible to extract one line, one scene, one figure, or one bar from its place and put it in another, without infringing the significance of the whole work; just as it is impossible, without infringing the life of an organic being, to extract an organ from one place and insert it in another.”
The feeling of infection by the art of music, which seems so simple and so easily obtained, is a thing we receive only when the performer finds those infinitely minute degrees which are necessary to perfection in music. It is the same in all arts: a wee bit lighter, a wee bit darker, a wee bit higher, lower, to the right or the left in painting; a wee bit weaker or stronger in intonation, or a wee bit sooner or later in dramatic art ; a wee bit omitted, over-emphasised, or exaggerated in poetry, and there is no contagion.
Infection is only obtained when an artist finds those infinitely minute degrees of which a work of art consists, and only to the extent to which he finds them. It is quite impossible to teach people by external means to find these minute degrees. For they can only be found when a man yields to his feeling.
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References:
- Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art?. Trans. Aylmer Maude. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1904. Internet Archive. January 01, 1970. Accessed December 13, 2020. http://www.archive.org/details/whatisart00tolsuoft