Notes on Tolstoy, What is Art? Chapter 11

(Originally Written March 2, 2008 in the Journal).

What is Art?
Leo Tolstoy

Chapter 11

Universal art only arises when some man, having experienced a strong emotion feels the necessity to transmit it to others. The art-on-demand world of the upper classes has stretched even bad artists because even bad art demands spontaneity. Therefore, to meet demands they have taken up the task of producing imitations of art. They have developed four methods of counterfeits:

1. Borrowing
2. Imitation
3. Striking
4. Interesting

By borrowing, counterfeiters take recognized poetic elements and incorporate them in a piece, giving people an impression of art. This is counterfeit because the producer is not transmitting any feelings of their own, but regurgitating another's feelings. Imitation is a method that they use to transmit feeling by imitating real life. They describe it so technically we feel it to be real. The method of striking involves bringing tother two contrasts for dramatic effect. The fourth method is interesting. The producer introduces an interesting element to the audience and the audience mistakes artistic impression for interest. Often a work is called a good piece of art if it is either poetic, or realistic or striking or interesting. But, these things have nothing to do with art at all.

Poetic means borrowed. To say a thing is good art because it is poetic is akin to saying a coin is good because it resembles money.

To judge a piece of art's goodness based on its realness is akin to judging the nutritive value by its external appearance.

In using imitation there is no transmission of feelings, only an action on the nerves.

If work is interesting then we either receive new information or that the work is not fully intelligible and we must work to understand it. Interestingness of pieces not only has nothing to do with artistry, but actually hinders artistic production.

While any piece of art may be a combination of petic, realistic, striking and interesting, these things do not replace the essence of art - feeling experienced by the artist.

In order to produce a real work of art a man must:
1. Stand at the highest level of conception of life at the time
2. Experience feeling
3. Have the desire and capacity to transmit feeling
4. Have a talent in a form of art (talent is ability)

Counterfeit productions of art are made from recipes. Art, true art, has no recipe or formula.