That's Tolstoy pictured above. I was thumbing through his "What is Art?" today and I was reminded all over again of what a terrific thinker the man was. I don't always agree but it doesn't matter. The best best writers are worth reading whether you agree or not.
Here's (above) Tolstoy's definition of art. It has to do with the transmission of experience. I assume he means transmission with skill but he doesn't say that. The word "infected" is important. It keeps coming up again and again. A great work of art infects its audience like a benign disease. They're mostly incapable of resisting the infection and they'll likely spread it to others. That's how art contributes to the spread of great ideas.
Some people through malice or stupidity are resistent to artistic infection and Tolstoy has no use for them. For Tolstoy critics fall into this category. I like critics myself. They're often wrong but they get useful arguments started and stimulate the market for art.
I wonder what Tolstoy would make of the picture of the grimacing boy above. My guess is that he'd hate it. He believed that in order to infect, a work of art has to be capable of infecting. In other words, it must contain an experience that people will welcome or that touches them deeply.
Tolstoy was a Christian and he believed that Christian themes are uniquely appealing because they deal with the universal brotherhood of man and exclude nobody. He said art can inadvertantly become exclusionary, appealing only to aristocrats or to people we'd call "hip" today. Amazingly he said Beethoven's Ninth was like that. It was something for the art crowd.
Examples of art he approved of were Dickens "Christmas Carol" and "David Copperfield" and Hugo's "Les Miserables."
Dickens also put a lot of stock in sincerity. The editor who wrote the preface thought this was ridiculous since, if you take it literally, it means that an actor who plays a killer must really want to kill the other actors. Maybe Tolstoy did take it to this extreme but the idea is still useful on some level.
Sincerity and earnestness is precicely what a lot of modern media lacks. It's a measure of the greatness of some writers that they dare to voice great truths even though the truths are intuitive and are often difficult to express with words.
Tolstoy forgot to mention that sometimes art challenges a viewer's sensibilities. Art is not only an expression of what the artist has experienced but also what's going on in his/her mind. And what goes on in there is not always pretty or agreeable. Maybe he mentions that further into the book. I don't know.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Eddie, did you see my news?
Art that challenges a viewer's sensibilities is by nature infectious - if you're challenged, that means you'd have to keep thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteEddie, how do you think Tolstoy's definition of art relates to visual memes; those being, by definition, visual images spread across society like a highly-contagious disease. Probably the most infectious image in all of time is the yellow smiley face - but I'm not sure I'd call that art.
Maybe another facet of what is art is how difficult it is to replicate either the look, the feel, or the intent of the original.
On another note, it's funny he thought that Christian art is indiscriminate when by its very nature it's only made for Christians.
That's really interesting stuff there Eddie, though I disagree with Tolstoy about the Ninth. How can anyone, anywhere resist the fourth movement when Beethoven just lets the dam burst with that chorus? (I mean, c'mon. There's a part that basically sounds like an ompah band. How can you call that elitist?) Anyway, as long as you're posting on "what is art" type stuff, could you do a post on Joyce's idea on Kinetic vs. Static art?
ReplyDeleteDavid: Wow! A completely unique film! I've never seen anything like it! Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteSoos: I don't think anyone will ever come up with a definition of art that works and you risk looking ridiculous when you try. Even so, I think it's worth doing.
Good writers shouldn't be worried about looking bad sometimes. That's part of the game. You learn through your dialogue with other people and that requires you to spell out your reasons even when you're not quite sure about them. I admire Tolstoy for sticking his neck out.
About Christian themes, I didn't mean stories that were written expressly for Christians. Maybe I misled when I illustrated my point with a picture of Christ. It was so beautiful that I couldn't resist putting it up. Be sure to click to enlarge it. It's by a Venetian painter named Jacobo Bassano who painted in the mid-1500s
Would you consider video games art Eddie? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this?
ReplyDeleteBob: Joyce had a theory about kinetic and static art? Sounds interesting. What was it?
ReplyDeleteSean: I'm sure there's an art to game graphics. All my games are for the PS2. Are there any good new games for that platform?
Oh yeah, he basically lays it all out in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" through the main character Stephen. Anyway, the idea is that all art that excites desire or repulsion is "kinetic". This includes pornography, social/politcal works, etc. Basically, if your reaction to a work of art is either "hey, I want that" or "oh, that's terrible," then it's kinetic. And Joyce doesn't have a problem with that at all, but he beleived that the greatest form of art is "static", that is, art that excites neither desire nor loathing but a sort of "aesthetic arrest" where you are just overcome entirely by what you're looking at, ("sublime" I think is the right word. Mozart's Requiem does this for me.) He beleived that while kinetic art appeals to our animal instincts, (and if you've ever read his letters to his wife you know that he has nothing against those...) static art lifts us up out of the material world into a spiritual state, sense of oneness with the universe, etc. etc. He expands on all this a great deal other places, with refrences to Aquinas and Aristotle and others, but that's the jist of it.
ReplyDeleteWhat about art that is made to disturb. like stuff with blood and guts, I won't waste any time on it, I always look for art that I find beautiful or that can make me feel good... Who wats to feel miserable and frightened.
ReplyDeleteI think this post was good and warrants a second posting on it.
ReplyDeleteYou may want to try Odin Sphere for ps2 Eddie. Nice 2d sprite animation in it (however it is done in the anime style so I'm not sure if you'll like it). Try Viewtiful Joe 1 & 2 that is good and has some nice 3d cell shaded graphics (to achieve a 2d look) and my favorite Katamari Damacy (for good eye popping simplistic color art) and it's sequel We Love Katamari. They should run under 20 dollars for most of them and in plenty of supply over your local game store.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do believe there is an art to game graphics, do you see the games themselves as being an art or simply an overglorified toy? I feel art is something more displayed and observed rather than interactive, but that's my opinion. This is coming from a game artist such as myself.
Do you think I'm entering a grey area when I say that? I just feel art should be moving and make me feel something.
There has yet to be a game that makes me cry, although not all art has to. I've just been struggling with this theory for awhile and want to hear more from your theories Eddie. Thanks for the article by the way :).
Wait,
ReplyDeleteDidn't you work on Go! Go! Hypergrind for Gamecube Eddie? Nice work btw! :).
-Sean
I've almost never agreed with Tolstoy, and don't worry I'm going to start now, but about the Ninth he was probably thinking of the first three movements. The egalitarian, almost Tolstoyan choral movement (... diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt...) doesn't really fit with them very well.
ReplyDeleteEddie: Ah, sorry! I wasn't attacking Tolstoy - actually, I pretty much agree with his definition. However, at his time, there was no way he could have foreseen the sheer number of creative outlets this generation would have easy access to. It's interesting to think of visual memes as possibly being more potent than "art" as they take over the viewer and make him a participant.
ReplyDelete(And you're right - people should take a chance and voice their uncensored opinions! Not just writers, either. It's a shame so many people fall into this trap of trying to appease as many people as possible by saying nothing.)
I think I might be misunderstanding the point about Christian themes. What would be a good example of the kind of themes Tolstoy was talking about?
And sorry to hijack Sean's conversation, but I feel like with games, the "art" lies as much in the visual information as it does in the way the player interacts with the game. The campy Metal Gear Solid series has some ingenious game-design theories behind its memorable visuals.
There's also Spore, which looks completely fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA
A 100% open expression of oneself brings with it some degree of rejection. Even the most successful artists aren't universally accepted. So an artist has to be fearless socially (in a way)....if they want to sincerely/candidly express themselves.
ReplyDeleteBob: Intereting! Thanks for the explanation. I like both kinds of art myself and the hybrids are interesting.
ReplyDeletePeld: I'll do a post about another art theory soon. Examples of Christian themes are in the books I mentioned that Tolstoy approved of.
My computer isn't cutting and pasting for some reason so I can't look up your link but I'll try again later.
Sean: Wow! Thanks for the tips! I'll check them out!
I worked on a couple of video games. Maybe I'll post about them one of these days.
I think if you succeed in transmitting a feeling, you have succeeded artistically, by Tolstoy's definition. You hope that the skill, like the acting or especially the drawing is transparent. That's the part that can take someone 20 years of practice.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Sir Ian, philosophically. There's a lot of common sense & useful technique in the "scientific" method of Stanislavsky, but it still has to be in service of playacting.
In the fourth to the last paragraph I meant to begin with "Tolstoy", not "Dickens." Sorry.
ReplyDelete