“What is art?” is a question that is asked again and again.
Every one has an opinion. I’ve met people that say “Look this is art, it took the artist months to complete!” or “Look this is art it has so much detail!” or “Oh wow this is art, the painting looks like a photo!” or “Look at this, this is art, it has so much texture.” or “Art is what history decides it to be!”
I disagree with all of the above. I don’t think technique decides what art is, nor does the time it took to create it. I could be a minute or a decade, or a lifetime times has no significance as to the determination of art. It could be done by a child or by a genius, by a madman or a saint. Who the creator is, is insignificant as to what makes art. Art can be a poem, a painting, an object, a song or a play.
I tend to agree with “Leonid Tolstoy” who said:
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.
The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s – as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist – not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the same work – then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.
And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:
- On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;
- on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted;
- on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.
I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may be all summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e., that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else; and the more individual it is – the more the artist has drawn it from the depths of his nature – the more sympathetic and sincere will it be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit.
Therefore this third condition – sincerity – is the most important of the three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.
Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits, and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its subject matter.
Read the full transcript to “What is Art” HERE
