What is art?
In his book ‘What is Art?’, the Russian novelist Tolstoy wrote ‘To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art’.
This is an expressivist view, namely, that the artist has experienced a feeling and wants the audience to experience it too. It is from a subjective perspective, with the artist often using distorted forms and exaggeration to convey strong feelings, rather than an attempt to represent objective reality. Perhaps you look at Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ and feel existential angst.
Do you agree? Does a putative piece of art have to evoke the artist’s emotion in you to qualify as ‘art’? Can you be sure that the feeling the artist experienced and wants to convey is what you actually feel – perhaps you feel a different response (possibly boredom or bemusement!). Does abstract art convey an artist’s emotion?
