Art Leo Tolstoy challenges elite artistic circles through his work, “What is Art.” In it, Tolstoy argues that while many believe that great art is that which only a few “elite” are able to comprehend, truly great art is that which evokes great emotion and feeling in the masses of people. Those who believe that great art is only great because only few understand it are blaming the viewer for not understanding, when Tolstoy actually blames the artist. It is not the fault of the viewer that he or she does not see what the artist sees. Tolstoy’s argument is that a great piece of art is created when the artist can manage to have all viewers see and feel as he sees and feels through his work. Exploring this concept of great art through movies, two great movies stick out: Inception and Forrest Gump. Although there is a significant group of people that would agree that Inception is a great movie, according to Tolstoy’s definition of great art, it should not be classified as so because the movie explores concepts and themes that are not universally understood by the average person. Whereas a movie such as Forrest Gump would fit into Tolstoy’s definition of great art because …show more content…
The greatest works of art have always included books of the Bible, fairy tales, and folk songs that are appreciated and recognized as so by all (266). Tolstoy also points out that the proponents of such elite artwork blame the viewers for not understanding the greatness in it. It is their fault that they do not have the knowledge or intellect to grasp the complex ideas conveyed in the work. Tolstoy argues the opposite once again as he states, “So that, if art fails to move men, it cannot be said that this is due to the spectators’ or hearers’ lack of understanding…” (267). He is suggesting that it is the artist who is to blame for the disconnect in emotion and
Arts sole purpose is to evoke an emotion out of its audience and influence them as well. Whether art makes you feel euphoric or sad, it resonates within every individual differently. In this day in age, artists utilize the internet as a method of sharing their work freely with others. According to Lethem, “The American commons include tangible assets such as public for public assets such as public forests and minerals, intangible wealth such as copyrights and patents, critical infrastructures such as the Internet and government research , and cultural resources such as the broadcast airwaves and public spaces. They include resources we’ve paid for as taxpayers and inherited from previous generations” (222). This suggests the Internet is a creative resource that is invaluable to the art community; however, it should be used with caution. The internet is not a resource that can be owned or privatized, which is why individuals can be exposed to anything at any time. On the internet, many images pop up quite frequently and they evoke little to no emotion from those who see it, because they have seen it a numerous amount of times. This is unfortunate, because the quality of one’s work is being diminished if people have become indifferent towards it. Nelson argues that, “But there are also perils. And one is that in cultural moment defined (by some, for some) by image flow, the question of what one should look at, along with attendant inquiries into nature and effect of images blowing by, has creepy way of overtaking almost all other questions” (304). This infers that image flow is something that alters how individuals are affected by art and the feelings one should have toward it. Although technology has been beneficial to the art community, image flow continues to damage the effect that art is intended to have. Seeing
I was fortuned to have had parents who had a respect for all kinds of art and approached life with an open mind. Thus being furthered blessed to grow up near a metropolis which possesses a major art museum and galleries showcasing new talent, filling young eyes with wonderment. An art appreciation study early own in life would have been beneficial but alas, I burn with shame as one who falls in the class of “I know what I like” when asked about art. I am all agog for semester’s end to be better equipped to articulate on why I am moved by a particular piece. After listening to the first week lecture and reading the first two chapters of the course text, it was difficult to narrow the subject of my essay to one subject. But, Chapter Ones quotes
Most pieces of art have a deeper meaning than what is simply expressed on the surface. Through emotions, symbols, and motifs, an artist can portray a unique story; however, despite the use of creative symbols, distinct stories can show a similar theme. Two such examples are the short film Destino by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which share the common theme of “the struggle of obtaining dreams”. Based on what is shown in these works of art, it is a challenge to attain dreams.
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe they are worth far more than that. Pictures, although seemingly simple in nature, are extremely complex. Far too often, people overlook what a picture truly is. When a person looks at an image, they most likely see only the image, nothing else. Many people do not look deep enough into an image to fully comprehend the true meaning of it. However, when an individual begins to truly study an image in an attempt to understand the true complexity of it, they will be surprised at what they overlooked before. As stated by French Realist Painter, Gustave Courbet, “Fine art is knowledge made visible.”
In a world that has become immune to accepting all types of art, Marya Mannes believes we have lost our standards and ability to identify something as “good” or “bad”. In her essay, “How Do You Know It’s Good”, she discusses society’s tendency to accept everything out of fear of wrongly labelling something as being good or bad. She touches on various criteria to judge art, such as the artist’s purpose, skill and craftsmanship, originality, timelessness, as well as unity within a piece rather than chaos. She says that an individual must decide if something is good “on the basis of instinct, experience, and association” (Mannes). I believe that by using standards and the process of association, we will be able to judge what makes an art piece good in comparison to others. However, Mannes forces me to consider the difference between what may be appealing versus what is actually good, and when deciding which art we should accept, which is truly more important. I believe that “good” and “bad” are two ends of a large, subjective spectrum of grey area. It is possible for a piece of art to be good in some areas and bad in others, and if something does not live up to all of our standards, it does not necessarily mean it should be dismissed. Thus, I believe my personal standards for judging art are based on which my standards are largely based on the personal reaction evoked from a piece of art. Though I agree with Mannes’ standards to an extent, I believe that certain standards, such as evoking a personal response, can be more telling of if a piece of art is good as opposed to its timelessness, or the level of experience of an artist in his/her craft.
The idea of art being a unique interpretation of what an artist’s feels towards a particular thing has always been a given when talking about art. However, where is the line drawn on what art truly is and what it means to its audience? To do this, the idea of what art means must be applied to the idea of what art is. In Dorothy Allison’s This is Our World, the author touches on points of what art is and what it means to its viewers. These points and supporting stories point to the idea that art is subjective, personal, and provocative. This allows Allison to draw her conclusion that arts purpose is to depict the deeper meaning into situations and incidents that occur in our world. In Dorothy Allison’s journal, one can see how the author effectively conveys the ideas of art being personal and subjective, but fails at detailing how art can be subjective.
Throughout the centuries, artists, literary or otherwise, created masterpieces that remain invaluable to the present day. Therefore, several would question why there are so few masterpieces in the many years humanity had to to develop them. Gertrude Stein answers this question in her essay What are Masterpieces and Why are there so Few of Them?
Art has been a factor of our life as long as humanity has existed. For thousands of years, art has been created, observed, critiqued, and enjoyed by human beings in many regions across the world. Art aren’t just murals, sculptures, music, books or anything that someone may define as art but more of a bigger picture like if has a deeper meaning such a message or a theme that is looked upon. Art can be viewed at as many different ways in terms of people having different reactions or observing it in a different meaning. Someone could feel that the art work is very extraordinary and unique but someone else can have a different reaction and feel like it is no different than other artworks and have a literalist view upon the art. One art that made
Tolstoy talks about a sort of scholarly emergency that he endured late in his life, and his recuperation from it. In spite of the fact that Tolstoy appreciated what might conventionally be viewed as a successful and agreeable life, he started feeling tormented by worries of unimportance. Specifically, he reports starting to question why he should think about things that he once thought about, or why he should do the things that he would choose to do. At last, he discovered it inconceivably hard to give answers to these inquiries. The outcome, he reports, is feeling as though his life were a doltish, pointless trap played someone has bestowed upon him. He felt as though every individual task he attempted, and also his life in its totality, were without importance.
According to Tolstoy, the true purpose of art is connected to our abilities to feel emotion. “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art” (Tolstoy,66 ). Much like food is necessary for sustenance, art is necessary for our sympathetic capacities. In order for this form of communication to occur, the artist must have the capacity to express and transmit through his art, while the audience must have the capacity for sympathy in order to feel the artist’s expression. According to Tolstoy, simply transmitting an emotion is not enough to define art. A true work of art must be infectious to its audience and be able to express individual feelings lucidly and purposefully.
Steven Spielberg is one of the most successful directors of all time (in fact, may people would argue that he is the most successful director there has ever been) and his movies have been some of the most profitable and well known in history. His opening sequences are noted for being captivating, gripping and often scary, building tension and suspense. Born in 1946 in Ohio, Spielberg has become elite among directors. The gross of the films he has directed is estimated at $8.5 billion, and three of his films – Jurassic Park, Jaws and E.T. the extra-terrestrial – have achieved box office records.
As literary critics, Plato and Aristotle disagree profoundly about the value of art in human society. Plato attempts to strip artists of the power and prominence they enjoy in his society, while Aristotle tries to develop a method of inquiry to determine the merits of an individual work of art. It is interesting to note that these two disparate notions of art are based upon the same fundamental assumption: that art is a form of mimesis, imitation. Both philosophers are concerned with the artist's ability to have significant impact on others. It is the imitative function of art which promotes disdain in Plato and curiosity in Aristotle. Examining the reality that art
Leo Tolstoy compares art to speech by mentioning that art is a form of communication. The communication that Tolstoy writes about in “What Is Art?” is of two types, good and bad. According to Tolstoy, good art is what carries humanity towards perfection (Tolstoy 383). It is this movement forward in humanity that is emphasized by Tolstoy. Tolstoy informs his readers that speech is what teaches knowledge from human history, but art is what teaches the emotions of mankind’s past. As knowledge becomes obsolete in society it is replaced by new and more relevant information. Tolstoy asserts that emotions act the same way. The purpose of art is to express new and more relevant feelings to humankind. The new feelings are for the
For over two thousand years, various philosophers have questioned the influence of art in our society. They have used abstract reasoning, human emotions, and logic to go beyond this world in the search for answers about arts' existence. For philosophers, art was not viewed for its own beauty, but rather for the question of how art and artists can help make our society more stable for the next generation. Plato, a Greek philosopher who lived during 420-348 B.C. in Athens, and Aristotle, Plato’s student who argued against his beliefs, have no exceptions to the steps they had to take in order to understand the purpose of art and artists. Though these two philosophers made marvelous discoveries about the existence of art, artists, and
For Tolstoy, the value of art comes from the function art serves in society and in human historical development. Art appears in everything that lives and should have the force to bring people together as a community. For him expressionism in art is a means of communication, in such as a language. Therefore, language can be described as a form of art under the theory of expressionism. Speech transmits the thoughts and experiences of mankind, serving as a means of expression among them; art also acts in a similar manner by sharing emotions. If people could not be affected by art, we would still be in the era of savagery. Referring back to the author of our book, John Fisher, emotional communication is essential to art. Fisher also states that too much harnessed emotion will tend to lower the value of art.