Reading Order
What Is Art? Reading Order
What Is Art? (1897) is Leo Tolstoy's most controversial critical work — a sustained attack on the idea that art can be judged by criteria of beauty or aesthetic sophistication, and an argument that genuine art is that which communicates genuine feeling between human beings and which serves the cause of universal brotherhood. The book condemned most of what is considered the greatest art in the Western canon — including his own earlier work — as decadent, exclusive, and corrupting.
Where to start
What Is Art?
Complete What Is Art? Book List
- 1Buy
What Is Art?
Leo Tolstoy·1897·Start here — his late aesthetic treatise; the argument that genuine art communicates feeling and serves brotherhood - 2Buy
A Confession
Leo Tolstoy·1882·The essential companion — his spiritual crisis and conversion; the religious framework What Is Art? applies to aesthetics - 3Buy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy·1886·The essential companion in fiction — written under the same post-conversion moral framework - 4Buy
The Kreutzer Sonata
Leo Tolstoy·1889·The essential companion in late fiction — including his critique of the music that drives men to violence - 5Buy
Hadji Murat
Leo Tolstoy·1912·His final novella — the essential companion showing what his late aesthetic principles produced when applied freely - 6Buy
The Seagull
Anton Chekhov·1896·The essential companion — Konstantin's argument for new art against the old; the theatrical response to the same questions - 7Buy
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche·1872·The essential European companion in the tradition of aesthetic argument — representing the aesthetic philosophy Tolstoy opposed - 8Buy
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf·1929·The essential twentieth-century companion in the tradition of the extended essay on art and its conditions
What Is Art? — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tolstoy's argument in What Is Art?
What Is Art? (1897) begins by surveying and rejecting all previous definitions of art (art as beauty, art as pleasure, art as expression) and proposing a new one: art is the communication of feeling. A genuine work of art is one in which the artist has genuinely felt something and has communicated that feeling to the audience, infecting them with it. The test of art is not aesthetic sophistication or beauty but infectiousness — does the feeling pass from artist to audience? This definition allows Tolstoy to draw a radical distinction: most of what Western culture calls great art (Shakespeare, Beethoven, Wagner, Michelangelo, his own Anna Karenina) fails the test because it addresses only the educated elite, who have been trained to appreciate it, rather than all human beings. Genuine art is that which communicates to everyone — the simple peasant song that makes people cry, the folk story that captures a universal feeling.
What did Tolstoy condemn in What Is Art?
What Is Art? is most famous for its condemnations. Tolstoy condemned Wagner's Ring cycle as meaningless and boring — the most expensive and elaborate art for the most exclusive audience, saying nothing that everyone does not already know. He condemned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (except for the last movement). He condemned Shakespeare as overrated and immoral, not because he couldn't write but because his plays do not convey genuine feeling — they are technically accomplished exercises that leave the audience impressed but unmoved in any genuine way. He condemned his own earlier work — War and Peace, Anna Karenina — as art for the exclusive classes. He also condemned most French Symbolist poetry as incomprehensible mystification. These condemnations were received with outrage by almost every literary critic in Europe and Russia, and the book remains one of the most polemical critical works in any language.
What does Tolstoy consider genuine art in What Is Art?
The examples Tolstoy gives of genuine art are revealing: the simple folk song that makes people cry; the peasant story that conveys a universal situation; the religious art that communicates a feeling of brotherhood between all people; and, among more recent works, the novels of Dickens and the music of Bach's oratorios (which communicate feeling to everyone). He also praises Maupassant, despite finding his moral framework deficient, because his stories communicate genuine feeling. The principle is consistently that genuine art is that which can communicate to a peasant as easily as to a professor — not by being simple, but by being genuinely felt. Much of what Tolstoy considered genuine art we might now call sentimental or didactic; his aesthetic, applied consistently, would eliminate most of what we value in Western high culture.
How was What Is Art? received when it was published?
What Is Art? was received with near-universal criticism by literary and artistic figures in Russia and Europe, and with considerable interest from general readers who enjoyed seeing the great man condemn the cultural establishment. Turgenev (who had died in 1883) could not respond, but the critical tradition that valued his work found Tolstoy's condemnation of psychological realism baffling. Chekhov, who admired Tolstoy deeply and personally, thought What Is Art? was wrong but found it impossible not to take seriously. The Symbolist poets and Decadent writers who were Tolstoy's immediate targets responded with polite contempt. The book was extremely influential on some early twentieth-century thinkers who were suspicious of high culture's claims — it is a significant early text in the demotic critique of elite art that would continue through the twentieth century.
What should I read after What Is Art? by Tolstoy?
A Confession (1882) is the essential companion — the spiritual conversion that underlies What Is Art?'s aesthetic framework. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) is the essential companion in fiction — written under the same moral framework. The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) is the essential companion in late fiction — including the critique of music. Hadji Murat (1912) is the essential companion showing what his late aesthetic principles produced when applied freely. The Seagull by Chekhov (1896) is the essential companion — Konstantin's argument for new art against the old; the theatrical response. The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche (1872) represents the aesthetic philosophy Tolstoy opposed. A Room of One's Own by Woolf (1929) is the essential twentieth-century companion in the tradition of the extended essay on art and its conditions.
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