Art: What Is It? Can It Infect Things? Let’s Ask A Christian Anarchist From 19th Century Russia!

Tolstoy sees art as a means of emotional communication. He believes it is “a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.” The idea of “infectiousness” is useful in understanding this concept of art because when multiple people experience the same work of art they are all infected with the feelings of its creator, and thus share an additional emotional connection with each other through their infection. To Tolstoy, the quality of art (not considering its subject matter) is based on how effectively it accomplishes this goal of emotional infection. This effectiveness is derived from the originality of the emotion being expressed, the manner in which it is conveyed, and the sincerity and intensity with which the art’s creator feels it.

Based on these criteria, Tolstoy contends that the viewer can judge whether something is art by seeing if they “experience a mental condition which unites [them] with [the artist] and with other people who also partake of that work of art.” He argues that this condition is inherently obvious and unmistakable (if the viewer’s sense of art has not been “atrophied,” at least), though it is not clear how this is possible when the viewer does not know for certain what the artist’s feeling in creating the work was, and thus cannot be sure whether they are being emotionally united. Irregardless, Tolstoy advocates using this distinguishing method to seek out and promote art that fits his definition and reject “counterfeit” art which focuses merely on producing pleasure rather than on emotional communication.

Tolstoy’s understanding of art is a compelling and valuable one, but it is incomplete. He is quite correct about the importance of conveying emotion and thus creating empathy and connection through art, and his method of evaluation is a useful first step in deciding whether to classify something as art and a productive method of artistic analysis. However, art can actually have value beyond its efficacy in evoking the artist’s feelings in the viewer, and Tolstoy’s definition of art is too narrow. For instance, there is a movie called The Room which by all indications was created with the purpose of seriously expressing feelings about the pain caused by love, the fickle nature of the world, and other such profound topics. It fails spectacularly at this task, and is widely considered one of the worst films ever made, but in the process it is extremely funny and can evoke quite strongly in the viewer emotions which were entirely unintended by its creator. The fact that this emotional experience is not shared by the artist does not make it any less valuable, or the work that evoked it any less a work of art. Tolstoy’s infectiousness is an important component of art, but it falls short in cases such as this one and is not a complete encapsulation of the myriad varieties of art produced by humans.

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