Some excerpts & comments from "Art as Communication of Feelings: Leo N. Tolstoy," from Wartenberg’s “The Nature of Art” ...
P.98:
“In order to defend art as a social enterprise, Tolstoy offers a definition: Through the use of such devices as color, sound, and movement, art communicates to its audience a feeling or emotion that the artist has previously experienced.”
The role of the artist is to capture that emotion and translate it to others. The artist may have experienced the emotion in 3-D reality or through a vision or imagination.
“No one can doubt the importance of speech, for it allows human beings to convey to one another their thoughts and experiences. In Tolstoy’s view, art is no less central to human existence, for it makes accessible the feelings of other human beings. This is vital to solidarity, for it allows one access to the felt experience of those in circumstances other than one’s own. Moreover, by making the best feelings of one age accessible to the next, art furthers the spiritual evolution of humankind.”
Art reflects the times – which do not necessarily build on one another.
P.103:
“Every work of art results in the one who receives it entering into a certain kind of communion with the one who produced or is producing the art, and with all those who, simultaneously with him, before him, or after him, have received or will receive the same impression.
“As the word which conveys men’s thoughts and experiences serves to unite people, so art serves in exactly the same way. The peculiarity of this means of communion, which distinguishes it from communion by means of the word, is that through the word a man conveys his thoughts to another, while through art people convey their feelings to each other.”
Viewers will have their own sets of values, understandings, intellects, and/or experiences they bring to art. People may or may not have the same experience as the artist or with the art. We stood in front of a large and magnificent Rothko painting with a friend we helped emigrate from China.; the aesthetic baffled her, as Chinese art is primarily representational. She couldn’t relate to it at all.
“On the capacity of people to be infected by the feelings of other people, the activity of art is based.”
Awkwardly phrased, but true.
P.104:
“Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”
We humans do have, within us, a deep desire to create.
“Once the spectators or listeners are infected by the same feeling the author has experienced, this is art.”
Not necessarily; how do we know what the artist was feeling?
We know what the artist was feeling because we, as spectators or listeners, are infected with it according to the author. Your final question is akin to being given the following statement and then asking the following question;
ReplyDeleteMe:Bob gives Sally three apples.
You:Not necessarily; where did Sally get the apples?
It doesn't make sense.
That aside, art is fueled by emotion. Ideally the art would be a manifestation of that emotion. Properly equipped and properly conveyed through the art, those who witness it also participate in that emotion. Should the art create a different emotion in its audience, then one could argue that a new kind of art is being created. But that is a different discussion.