Response to Sara's post on art and connectivity as influenced by Tolstoy

It only matters in Tolstoy's view if the emotion intended by the artists is actually realized by the observer or listener. That would mean that Justin Beiber and Katy Perry are only artists if people really feel the emotions that they are trying to portray. I know that many people enjoy their music, but I don't know if they would say they are infected with the emotions. I know that listening to I Kissed a Girl never made me feel promiscuous. This would mean that artistry is potentially open to anyone as anyone can try to be an artist, as I think we would consider positive in this country, but not everyone can achieve true art. It also means that monetary and popular successes are not the same as creating good art. The whole world could like someone’s art and never completely feel the artists emotion.  

 I do question whether it is important for people to have an understanding of art to enjoy it but I do not have much knowledge of art and there is art that I appreciate. I also do not think that Tolstoy is concerned only with purity and truth in art. He is famous for works like War and Peace that address a lot of the horrors of war and he certainly would not restrict art to the positive emotions. Even in the example in his text he discusses a boy’s ability to tell the story of an encounter with a wolf, either real or imagined, in such a way that it inspires the fear he experienced in the audience. Since this example allows for the encounter with the wolf to be an aspect of the imagination it is not truth and it is not really pure. Unless you mean that the emotion is unchanged from the feelings the boy experienced. In that way the emotion itself would always be pure and truthful even if the medium it is presented through is not.

Assuming that people try to connect to each other every day both the popular description of art and Tolstoy’s definition allow for this. Through popular music, books and other forms of art people are able to find things in common that they all know and discuss. Through Tolstoy’s description of art people are able to communicate emotions to each other in a way that simple dialogue does not allow them to adequately do. Even if one does not understand something and cannot describe what it is or means they still may feel something when they look at it or hear it. This is an emotional connection between artist and layman viewer even if these people do not understand the art.

Does understanding become a necessary component in connecting to something?

Art as Language

Tolstoy describes art as a form of language. It is a way that people communicate the emotions they have experienced to other people. If art is a language, does that mean that people have to learn not only to create it but to understand it? When people teach art in the classroom, they are teaching how to make it in the same way one might teach how to speak or write in a language. In a language class, though, people are also taught how to listen to the speech and how to read as well as how to speak or write. Without all of these skills one will never learn the language. It would seem to follow that people would need lessons in art comprehension before they could understand what the artist is trying to say. It would hardly be fair to condemn a piece of literature in German because it does not impact English speakers emotionally and other art that is not language specific might be the same way.

                If this is true, than art should be judged by whether people who “understand its language” are infected by the emotions the artist intends and not by just anybodies response. This puts less stress on the artist who is not expected to be able to infect even people who profess to hate art, but only those who are inclined to understand. On the other hand, it reduces the viewership of art to those who have taken classes on it or studied it. It also makes art into something for the educated and not for the common man. Limiting art to the realm of the educated seems to be a mistake, but so does accepting only art that can infect people with emotions. In the latter case many pieces of art that are commonly well regarded would be considered bad art because it is asking a lot for people to not only see the emotion in the art, but to actually experience it for themselves.

                Is art expected to instill emotions in people or is receiving impressions of emotions sufficient to make it good art?

Tolstoy and Art

Tolstoy’s definition of art requires that the artist intend to infect another with an emotion and that the viewer is effectively infected. This seems like a difficult task to accomplish. It also eliminates taste as a factor in art. The entire world could like the look of one painting, but unless they became emotionally infected they could not call it art. The idea of infecting people with emotions provides art with a lot of power if it is true. It would mean that looking at a painting that is intended to show anger will actually make you angry. It would mean that surrounding people with certain art would be an excellent form of propaganda. If you want people to go to war, surround them with art that evokes anger and hate of those people. This art would also be good art according to Tolstoy’s definition because art “is that human activity which consists in one man’s consciously conveying to others, by certain external signs, the feelings he has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them”(108). One concern would be art’s infection creating an epidemic. This possibility that art could change the emotional outlook of a people for the worse, especially if they were constantly surrounded by art that provoked negative emotions, is a cause for concern if Tolstoy’s definition of art and its abilities is accurate. Of course, he does not specify the amount of time that art infects people. If someone hears a song and for a few seconds they are infected with an emotion it will not likely have a very strong impact. Another unaddressed issue is art’s lasting impact on the same person in multiple viewings or hearings. If one song infects me emotionally once for a few seconds than this would fit his definition of art, but would not seem to be a problem for emotionally leading people. If one song infects someone for hours each time they listen to it, then art becomes a dangerous way of controlling people. People are often guided by emotions and Tolstoy’s definition seems to give artists the potential to control the audience’s emotions. Tolstoy finds art is a positive aspect of society but this conclusion does not seem to be the only natural progression from his analysis.

                How powerful do you think art is over people and their actions?