Art Tolstoy Analysis

“If he causes another man to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself is obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is suffering— that does not amount to art” This quote jump started what classified as art to me. Art has to be indirect to some extent, as in for example if I were to paint a picture of an oak tree. To other people that would be just any old tree but maybe to someone else it reminds the of a time in their childhood and in remembering that moment they start feeling sad or happy. That would make my painting of the tree art because it brought emotion through a time of reflection, meaning it was caused indirectly. “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.” What I believe Tolstoy is trying to say here is if someone

So if Tolstoy came by this art piece he would not consider it art. I wanted to avoid using this last quote as an example as it is pretty clear cut and I wanted to find his other meanings but her is his clear definition of what is not art. “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