What Is Art?

Explore 2 quotes from What Is Art?

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Leo Tolstoy

What Is Art?

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More information about this quote

Topic

Purpose of art

Author

Leo Tolstoy

Source

What Is Art?

Medium

Essay

Statement Type

Definition

Language

Russian

Time

1897 1890s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art? London: The Brotherhood Publishing Company, 1898.

Current Citation

Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin Classics, 1996.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

Leo Tolstoy

Read What Is Art? at Project Gutenberg

More information about this quote

Topic

Nature of art Purpose of art Art

Author

Leo Tolstoy

Source

What Is Art?

Medium

Essay

Language

Russian

Time

1897 1890s 19th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art? London: The Brotherhood Publishing Company, 1898.

Current Citation

Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin Classics, 1996.