What is Art?

de Лев Толстой

Written at the tale end of the nineteenth century, before Andy Warhol and John Cage made low art worthy of praise, this book sought to define not only what a work of art is but also what a good work of art is. “In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life,” stipulated Leo Tolstoy. The critically-acclaimed novelist takes a religious approach to art, seeing it as influencing the progress of mankind, and Beethoven, Dante, Shakespeare, and even Tolstoy himself do not fair well as artists in What Is Art?