Tolstoy on Art

     That great thinker and artist, Count Tolstoy, in the course of his life turned his formidable mind to many varied topics. Among these is the question of the onology of art and its proper role in society. He addresses these issues and investigates many examples of art from different periods and media to determine whether or not they are real and if they are good. His ideas about art are most comprehensively formed in his essay "What is Art?"

     He begins by defining art as a form of communication. However, in contrast to words and speech which convey ideas, artworks convey feelings. In particular, by the use of devices that will invoke whatever feeling the artist wants to share in the viewer/listener. In contrast to his views on the ontology of artwork, he proceeds upon an impressively erudite diatribe against aesthetic theory from Baumgarten to his contemporaries. He has two main problems with these thinkers. The primary flaw that he sees in aesthetics is that it transfers the question of what art is to the "realm of metaphysics." In other words, for Tolstoy, all these thinkers simply claim that art is about beauty or pleasure and proceed to build their theories on how one judges these properties. This leads to other problem that he sees, and that is that these theories are shifty and are malleable enough to simply absorb any kind of artwork thereby defeating the purpose of claiming to have truth about what art is and more specifically what good art is. I can see the truth in this by the way anti-art like Duchamp's The Founatin is absorbed into the canon of art.

After he makes the distinction between art and Beauty, he explains the way he sees art coming into existence and how its value is determined. Quite simply, the value of an artwork is dependent on the respective culture's ideas about the meaning of life. The meaning if life is determined by what is morally good and evil. And morality is determined by the religion of the culture. An important break in this narrative is the Renaissance. He says that the upper class lost faith in the church and therefore continued to make art in the vein of the church but whilst actually worshiping not God but Beauty itself. Perhaps this is the first real divide in upper and lower art.

     After explicating what art is and how it comes to be valued and judged and where the story took a new turn with the seeking of Beauty for its own sake, he explains more specifically what good art is. There are three things that he specifically does not have patience for in art. First, imitation. If art is the pure feeling that is communicated to the viewer than imitation art is that artwork that instead of trying to capture that feeling from the experience itself but instead from another work of art. He gives the example of Faust by Goethe as false art because of this. Secondly, if the artwork has the wrong moral message. This occurs when the artist has an incorrect view of morality. Therefore, this has two parts. Obvious examples for him are artworks that try to glorify art itself or worse, sexual lust. He gives examples of paintings that contain the nude human form and also lots (lots!) of French verse describing scenes and acts of debauchery. Third, art that does not connect with its viewer. If the viewer cannot receive a feeling or invocation from the art than the art has failed. He uses the example of how a peasant cannot understand the Ninth Symphony and therefore is not good art in contrast with the joyful song of a peasant.

     To his first problem with art that imitation of other art is false art or bad art. How can it be any other way? Should Goethe's Faust really be dismissed as good art because it is based on an older tale?  Tolstoy explicitly mentions this as an example of imitation art. In his biography about Dickens, Chesterton mentions that when Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers there was some controversy about whether or not the story was original to Dickens or if in fact someone else had suggested the concept to him. Chesterton says that it doesn't matter either way. What matters is the genius of Dickens. Dickens was such a powerful talent at writing comedy that the actual idea for the character meant next to nothing compared to what he did with them. The same thing can perhaps be said about Faust, in that the great value of Faust is not the originality of the story but the handling of it by that powerful genius Goethe. It also seems that there is nothing truly original in a pure sense of the word. Instead, there is a tradition that is drawn on and reacted against. Why would this mean that the artist could not convey that feeling that Tolstoy wants using well-known motifs and traditions?

     Secondly, the fact that the artist may have had an incorrect view of morality means that artwork is poor or non-art. The problem with this is that one cannot withhold a reaction from an artwork until she has understood the intent of the artist. For example, a deeply pious artist may paint a version of St Anthony's Temptation that shows him being tempted by beautiful  lady. Two people could look at the painting and have completely opposite moral reactions. One fights harder against temptation and the other falls further into it. We know that Fra Filippo Lippi was a man whose moral views would not necessarily be considered "correct" and yet he paints some of the most beautiful and moving Christian pictures. Sometimes the morality of a painting is intentionally ambiguous, like those domestic scenes by the Dutch painters that feature a man and his wife counting their money while ignoring the scripture. Is this a move to secularism or a warning against moral bankruptcy? I think Tolstoy is right to call for artwork that has a positive and correct view of morality, I do not think that this is as completely dependent upon the artist herself as he claims.

     Thirdly, Tolstoy gives up on almost everyone that I might mention if asked to name a great artist from the past: Dante, Boccaccio, Bach, Raphael, etc. Instead, he praises the simple authenticity of the peasant's song and the peasant's dance. For him the greatest art is one that promotes the true simple Christian faith and the universal brotherhood of all humankind. It is a bold thing to say that these artists were thought of as inaccessible elitists when they were creating as they perhaps are now. I think he slips into a some sentimentalism for his peasant folk. I think there certainly can be authenticity and beauty in the folk culture, but I'm pretty sure that peasants were just as capable of debauchery as the French poets. Bawdy songs and the like are not a rarity amongst folk culture. I think that Tolstoy becomes too interested in simplicity as the ideal of artwork.

    Though I disagree with some of the implications of Tolstoy's views on what art is and what it is for and how it can be good, I think his critiques of the art world are not altogether unfounded. I think that morality is related to artwork and that artworks can make moral claims and that there can certainly be poor, immoral, or non-art. I am not prepared to go to the lengths that Tolstoy is to decry nearly every artist and their art from the Renaissance to his own day. This is not out of elitism but instead it is because I think that that communication of human emotion and morality is not always a simple thing but can be exceedingly complex. I want to have the humility to hear the beauty in the peasant's song and the discipline to hear it in the symphony.