Tolstoy, Leo - What is Art (Penguin, 1996): Bibliographical notes, A note on the next, What is Art?

by Leo Tolstoy, Hassan Ali (Editor)

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

Published November 20, 2021

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reviews

[Stefanus Galang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished reading a book that intrigues me in a way that makes me want to read it a couple of times until I finally understand what it means by "Art." It's fascinating how Tolstoy can imbue the word "art" with so much meaning. Technically, he is an artist, defined as someone who creates. However, to define something that is the meaning itself proves to be a challenging task. I find it quite astonishing that the meaning of art seems to be hovering around the Milky Way. No one or nothing can truly define art. Many philosophers have attempted to define art in a superfluous way, yet many people are not satisfied with these attempts. Tolstoy himself, in defining art, required the input of numerous scholars and philosophers to eventually arrive at a solution: art is a work that conveys meaning from an artist.

If I have to be brutally honest, disagreement arose within me in the first few pages of reading this book. I couldn't grasp the point where he describes what good and bad art is. All I know—perhaps because I live in the 20th century, giving us a very different point of view—is that all art is good; nothing as "bad" art can truly exist. Only after reaching the conclusion of his work did I finally understand what he meant by good and bad art. It is those that do not align with religious consciousness, those that don't promote humane qualities in human beings, and those created for only a small group of people rather than a universal community.

Tolstoy, in his book, made a prediction about the "future" of art. As an artist myself, primarily focused on portrait drawing, I find it challenging to be on the same page with Tolstoy, especially concerning so-called counterfeit art. For me, it's the process of expression toward the creation of a drawing that matters. However, I finally understood his perspective on future art. This implies that we can't and should not rely solely on past works of art. We create something new, something authentic and ordinary that conveys feelings to others. Technicality and complexity are no longer necessary for us as future artists. We heavily rely on simplicity, beauty, and clarity, learning from life itself. Although art lessons and tutorials are everywhere, true art comes from life—from cooking, baking, greeting each other, experiencing joy, and essentially anything.

I came up with the idea that a work of art, after reading this, is not a mere thing associated with canvas, melody, poetry, or even a tone. Art encompasses many aspects of life. It teaches us to be good, to be united with our brothers, to be beautiful, graceful, and joyful. As Tolstoy says, art should eliminate violence, and only art can achieve that.

[Thomas Gresti · Rating 3 out of 5]

He comes across very stubborn and without much expertise on many different areas of art. Nevertheless what he says may very well be true, at least from the standpoint of the definition he supposes at the beginning of the text. I disagree with aspects of his theology and thus have issue with the skeleton of what comes out of it. Very fun to read.

[Munawar Abbas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Important effort but bogged down by the dogmatic tone.

[Nathan Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

His takedown of much of modern aesthetic theory is marvelous and very funny. But his own positive theory of art & beauty, as well as his hollowed out Christianity, leave much to be desired.