|
Ilya Efimovich Repin, Portrait of
Tolstoy, 1901 |
  
Entry on "Tolstoy" from A Companion
to Aesthetics, Cooper, 1995.
 | Click on the above boxes to read an enlarged version
of the text. |
|
Tolstoy’s main claims
Works of art…
1.
are not simply works of beauty
-
since what is beautiful is defined in terms of pleasures and
these, in turn, are defined according to psychology, history, physiology,
etc. and do not belong, properly, to art.
2.
are human activities
-
as distinct from natural activities
3.
are created by an artist who means to convey a particular emotion
or feeling
-
which infects the audience
-
and does so with the exact emotion or feeling the artist
feels
-
and which is transmitted unaltered, directly and immediately
4.
evoke a feeling of “joy and of spiritual union with another”
5.
create in spectators an emotion so vivid that they feel that they
have created the work themselves
6.
are powerful in their communicative abilities and can even be
dangerous
Spectators who fail to feel the emotions of an artist even when the
artist has conveyed them properly, are those who…
7.
have had their “feelings for art” become either “perverted”
or
“atrophied” through lack of use, or
8.
are seekers of “diversion and a certain excitement” rather than
of true art
|
|
