Art and Soul

[Philosophy Now]

by Rick Lewis

https://philosophynow.org/issues/57/Art_and_Soul

[Nick_A]

“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, What Is Art?

Art for me as distinguished from expression is the qualitative emotional equivalent of a text on physics as compared to a dime store novel. The physics text book is direct communication. The author knows facts and introduces them in a manner in which a person with sufficient knowledge will understand.

Art is like this. There is the artist, the work of art, and the viewer. The artist feels an objective quality of emotion. His skill as an artist including knowledge of the effects of color etc enables him to "feel" and transmit the intended quality of emotion. The viewer is the person who experiences what is intended and completes the cycle.

Art as I understand it doesn't exist. Like a phone call it occurs when the communication has taken place. Art is objective emotional communication while expression is fantasy interpreted into fantasy. To make money people call expression art so it will sell. There is nothing wrong with fantasy. IMO it shouldn't be confused with art. They are of different qualities and serve different purposes

[-1-]

Art is the art of making the obvious obvious.

[Dubious]

Art was once and not too long ago an intense polarity leading from the mundane to the exceptional and from there to the sublime. Most of this has disappeared. What now serves to enhance emotion is of a far more vulgar kind called sports because it's only that stupid shit one hears about incessantly. Even the mundane becomes ever more diminished and art as one of the main historical features of the so-called human spirit is dead, dead, dead!

Long live art...or better still, forget about it entirely!

[-1-]

Art was once and not too long ago an intense polarity leading from the mundane to the exceptional and from there to the sublime. Most of this has disappeared. What now serves to enhance emotion is of a far more vulgar kind called sports because it's only that stupid shit one hears about incessantly. Even the mundane becomes ever more diminished and art as one of the main historical features of the so-called human spirit is dead, dead, dead!

Long live art...or better still, forget about it entirely!

People still talk about Art, Dubious. Take Art Stockend, the football player for the Yankees. Or there is ole' Art Guberer, the owner of the Los Angeles Yankees. Or... or Art Daruber, the world-famous centreback for the Leafs. Or... or... for instance, an Art collector, Jack Dodd, who only hires people with the first name Art on his team, since he took over the Motreal Pigmies. Or Pimpies. I know,... Pinguins.

[Nick_A]

Art was once and not too long ago an intense polarity leading from the mundane to the exceptional and from there to the sublime. Most of this has disappeared. What now serves to enhance emotion is of a far more vulgar kind called sports because it's only that stupid shit one hears about incessantly. Even the mundane becomes ever more diminished and art as one of the main historical features of the so-called human spirit is dead, dead, dead!

Long live art...or better still, forget about it entirely!

Have you ever been moved by a work of art to experience a quality of feelings that are normally absent in your life? If so ask yourself if art is dead or is our celebrated negativity killing us. Compare an artist of the past with the expressions of a current favorite and ask yourself where the warm human quality has gone rather than just complain about it. The problem isn't art any more than science; it is what we allow ourselves to define as quality and pervert wht science and art are capable of..

[Dubious]

...or Art Daruber, the world-famous centreback for the Leafs.

Is that the world-famous brother of Art Darunter?

[Dubious]

Tolstoy, though a great writer, had nothing intelligent to say about art. In fact he could be quite stupid about it! But then he did turn into a rabid theist which would explain it!

Many years of pondering on questions of aesthetics and the place of art in life resulted in the pamphlet What is Art? (1898), in which Tolstoy attacked most of the recognized authorities of the past, including Shakespeare, Goethe, and Beethoven, for having produced works that were unintelligible to ordinary people, ultimately leading to the decadent 'artists' of the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly Wagner, all of whom, as Tolstoy argued, merely catered to the depraved tastes of an idle social élite. As counter-examples of true Christian art he singled out for praise works by Schiller, Victor Hugo, Dickens, George Eliot, and Dostoyevsky. The folksongs of all countries were also "true art" in his view since they were inspired by real emotions and could communicate these to others, in contrast to the "artificial" music of Beethoven's late period. As for his own literary works, Tolstoy condemned these, too, as the products of youthful vanity and ambition, but in the years that followed he still continued writing fiction, notably the short novel Hadji Murat, which was not published until after his death.

[-1-]

...or Art Daruber, the world-famous centreback for the Leafs.

Is that the world-famous brother of Art Darunter?

Yes, yes, you got it right! And he's also the older sister of Art Dabei.

[Belinda]

Art, of which religion is one medium, is man's quest to make life meaningful.

[Nick_A]

One of my favorite sites to browse is brainpickings. Even as quality thoughts are diminishing in the world, sites like brainpickings help to maintain them for those who profit from them. Excerpts from Tolstoy's "What is Art" are included here

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/09/0 ... tiousness/

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. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.

[…]

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. … And it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based.

"A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist."

This core quality of art Tolstoy calls its “infectiousness,” and upon the artist’s ability to “infect” others depends the very recognition of something as art:

"If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.

Art 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................"

So art is direct emotional quality communication and its quality is defined by the quality of emotion being shared.

Of course it is rare to find people who have this quality of appreciation for what art is capable of but it is good to know there have been and even now still are those who support the distinction between art and expressions and the unique value and purpose of art[/quote]