What thoughtful man has not been perplexed by problems relating to art? An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt the charm of the music and ritual of the services of the Russo-Greek Church ...

This book of mine, What Is Art? appears now for the first time in its true form. More than one edition has already been issued in Russia, but in each case it has been so mutilated by the “Censor,” tha...

Take up any one of our ordinary newspapers, and you will find a part devoted to the theatre and music. In almost every number you will find a description of some art exhibition, or of some particular ...

For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition, picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and unwilling labour of thousands and thousands of people is needed at what is o...

I begin with the founder of aesthetics, Baumgarten (1714⁠–⁠1762). According to Baumgarten,10 the object of logical knowledge is Truth, the object of aesthetic (i.e. sensuous) knowledge is Beauty. Beau...

To what do these definitions of beauty amount? Not reckoning the thoroughly inaccurate definitions of beauty which fail to cover the conception of art, and which suppose beauty to consist either in ut...

What is art, if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses the whole matter? The latest and most comprehensible definitions of art, apart from the conception of beauty, are the following:⁠—...

But how could it happen that that very art, which in ancient times was merely tolerated (if tolerated at all), should have come, in our times, to be invariably considered a good thing if only it affor...

From the time that people of the upper classes lost faith in Church Christianity, beauty (i.e. the pleasure received from art) became their standard of good and bad art. And, in accordance with that v...

But if art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen, how could it be that humanity for a certain rather considerab...

The unbelief of the upper classes of the European world had this effect, that instead of an artistic activity aiming at transmitting the highest feelings to which humanity has attained⁠—those flowing ...

In consequence of their unbelief the art of the upper classes became poor in subject-matter. But besides that, becoming continually more and more exclusive, it became at the same time continually more...

Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter and more and more unintelligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its latest productions, has even lost all the characteristics of art, and h...

In our society three conditions cooperate to cause the production of objects of counterfeit art. They are⁠—(1) the considerable remuneration of artists for their productions and the professionalisatio...

To what an extent people of our circle and time have lost the capacity to receive real art, and have become accustomed to accept as art things that have nothing in common with it, is best seen from th...

I know that most men⁠—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical or philosophic problems⁠—can very seldom...

Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about th...

How in art are we to decide what is good and what is bad in subject-matter? Art, like speech, is a means of communication, and therefore of progress, i.e. of the movement of humanity forward towards p...

Art is one of two organs of human progress. By words man interchanges thoughts, by the forms of art he interchanges feelings, and this with all men, not only of the present time, but also of the past ...

The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen was that people of the upper classes, having ceased to believe in the Church teaching (called Christian), did not resolve to accept tr...

People talk of the art of the future, meaning by “art of the future” some especially refined, new art, which, as they imagine, will be developed out of that exclusive art of one class which is now con...

I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has occupied me for fifteen years, on a subject near to me⁠—that of art. By saying that this subject has occupied me for fifteen years, ...

This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book Divagations:⁠— Le phénomène futur Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être partir avec les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée de...

This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book Divagations:⁠— Le phénomène futur Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être partir avec les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée de...

The following verses are by Vielé-Griffin, from page 28 of a volume of his Poems:⁠— Oiseau bleu couleur du temps 1. Sait-tu l’oubli D’un vain doux rêve, Oiseau moqueur De la forêt? Le jour pâlit, La n...

These are the contents of The Nibelung’s Ring:⁠— The first part tells that the nymphs, the daughters of the Rhine, for some reason guard gold in the Rhine, and sing: Weia, Waga, Woge du Welle, Walle z...

Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil No. XXIV I adore thee as much as the vaults of night, O vase full of grief, taciturnity great, And I love thee the more because of thy flight. It seemeth, my night’s beaut...

Bolton Hall has recently published a little work, Life, and Love, and Death, with the object of making the philosophy contained in On Life more easily accessible in English. ↩ Tolstoy’s remarks on Chu...