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A review by ilybinaya
What is Art? by Leo Tolstoy
3.0
in this conservative, traditional, religious, faithful, yet somehow ahead-of-its-time essay, the great russian writer tolstoy tries to tackle the subject of art as to provide his insights on what is art, what is regarded as good art, what the future of art is, and the purpose of it. first he puts all the previous attempts to define art in a part, then he starts to criticise the art of his time, followed by the good art as one that promotes the christian brotherly love which all people will feel the love and become infected by this sort of art; lastly in the conclusion he attempts a critique on science and how it is not helping the society to solve the fundamental problems it faces, but only providing cures that serve as the problems have already taken place; after he discusses the future art with a hopeful tone, that with all the resources available, everyone is able to make art and thus it will serve the greater purpose of uniting humans.
however great as tolstoy is in literature, his art criticism is somehow failing, easily contributed by the fact that the arguments often are followed by a weak link of reasoning, especially the part regarding the religion consciousness, it is the mencius sort of argument that involves loads of metaphors with little elaboration, as if it is easily self-evident. secondly, as he himself writes that his view on this subject would be taken as a paradox, it indeed becomes a paradox with little effort. to say that art criticism is one of the culprit that leads to a sort of bad art being appreciated by the general public is also denying the fact that, art criticism, as a double-edged sword, can be served as a tool to help people realise and understand what art is. the other example of which i am going to refute here would be how he envision the future of art would be under a even broader scope of universalising the privilege of education, especially when he is strongly against the idea of art as a profession, which in today's capitalist world, art becomes a profession, as itself is a commodity too, and his vision of the future art simply expels all of these possibilities that might mingle together, as he only sees what he wishes to see, like everyone else. this simply comes off as to be slightly absurd, as the theory of marx, malthus to him, that his theory on art is equally contradictory, and may be baseless too, in terms of how he totally disregard the form, (even though my art criticism would be using the same leverage) and simply attributes the miseducation of people in art to that of being unable to recognise the good art; and this is conflicting in terms of how he thinks that education would be unnecessary for artistic pursuits, because all these knowledge leads to imitation of the same sort of art with little genuineness.
tolstoy's view on art is very bona fide, in which with all seriousness his extremely sarcastic comments against all those popular artists of that time are such fun to read, and that may serve as the mere amusement it could bring, despite of his very sincerity that hopes for the betterment of the mankind, in regard of their pursuit of christian art, not to mention that his idea of art provoking this universal feeling would somehow be contradictory to christian art, which i'm afraid, not all religions do share the brotherly love which christianity promotes, lest we forget that he did mention the buddhism. the thorough asceticism depicted in his essay would be very helpful to serve as a text evidence to battle against all the vanity on earth, which is still very prominent.
sorry tolstoy, it is hard to be optimistic about the future of art, as for the status quo is already worse that it used to be.
however great as tolstoy is in literature, his art criticism is somehow failing, easily contributed by the fact that the arguments often are followed by a weak link of reasoning, especially the part regarding the religion consciousness, it is the mencius sort of argument that involves loads of metaphors with little elaboration, as if it is easily self-evident. secondly, as he himself writes that his view on this subject would be taken as a paradox, it indeed becomes a paradox with little effort. to say that art criticism is one of the culprit that leads to a sort of bad art being appreciated by the general public is also denying the fact that, art criticism, as a double-edged sword, can be served as a tool to help people realise and understand what art is. the other example of which i am going to refute here would be how he envision the future of art would be under a even broader scope of universalising the privilege of education, especially when he is strongly against the idea of art as a profession, which in today's capitalist world, art becomes a profession, as itself is a commodity too, and his vision of the future art simply expels all of these possibilities that might mingle together, as he only sees what he wishes to see, like everyone else. this simply comes off as to be slightly absurd, as the theory of marx, malthus to him, that his theory on art is equally contradictory, and may be baseless too, in terms of how he totally disregard the form, (even though my art criticism would be using the same leverage) and simply attributes the miseducation of people in art to that of being unable to recognise the good art; and this is conflicting in terms of how he thinks that education would be unnecessary for artistic pursuits, because all these knowledge leads to imitation of the same sort of art with little genuineness.
tolstoy's view on art is very bona fide, in which with all seriousness his extremely sarcastic comments against all those popular artists of that time are such fun to read, and that may serve as the mere amusement it could bring, despite of his very sincerity that hopes for the betterment of the mankind, in regard of their pursuit of christian art, not to mention that his idea of art provoking this universal feeling would somehow be contradictory to christian art, which i'm afraid, not all religions do share the brotherly love which christianity promotes, lest we forget that he did mention the buddhism. the thorough asceticism depicted in his essay would be very helpful to serve as a text evidence to battle against all the vanity on earth, which is still very prominent.
sorry tolstoy, it is hard to be optimistic about the future of art, as for the status quo is already worse that it used to be.