What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation)

Their wordsHundreds of thousands of workmen,—carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers, moulders, type-setters,—spend their whole lives in hard labour to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.

Their wordsAnd in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense serve as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art should be.

Their wordsTherefore, however strange it may seem to say so, in spite of the mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art has been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.

Their wordsArt 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.

Their wordsIn every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is bad, and it is this religious conception that decides the value of the feelings transmitted by art.

Their wordsBut if art is an important matter, a spiritual blessing, essential for all men (“like religion,” as the devotees of art are fond of saying), then it should be accessible to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to all men, then one of two things: either art is not the vital matter it is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not the real thing.

Their wordsWe think the feelings experienced by people of our day and our class are very important and varied; but in reality almost all the feelings of people of our class amount to but three very insignificant and simple feelings—the feeling of pride, the feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of life.

Their wordsBut an artistic impression, i.e. infection, is only received when an author has, in the manner peculiar to himself, experienced the feeling which he transmits, and not when he passes on another man’s feeling previously transmitted to him.

Their wordsProfessionalism is the first condition of the diffusion of false, counterfeit art.

Their wordsThe interpretation of works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter is himself incapable of feeling the infection of art.

Their wordsNo school can evoke feeling in a man, and still less can it teach him how to manifest it in the one particular manner natural to him alone.

Their wordsAnd thus, thanks to the masterly skill with which it counterfeits art while having nothing in common with it, a meaningless, coarse, spurious production finds acceptance all over the world, costs millions of roubles to produce, and assists more and more to pervert the taste of people of the upper classes and their conception of what is art.

Their wordsThis investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost all that our society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far from being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all, but only a counterfeit of it.

Their wordsAnd not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.

Their wordsI have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may all be summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e. that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling.

Their wordsAnd this criterion, coinciding with the indications of plain and sane sense, indubitably shows me that that symphony by Beethoven is not a good work of art.

Their wordsIt is often said that it is horrible and pitiful to see little acrobats putting their legs over their necks, but it is not less pitiful to see children of 10 giving concerts, and it is still worse to see schoolboys of 10 who, as a preparation for literary work, have learnt by heart the exceptions to the Latin grammar.

Their wordsThere is no position more injurious to an artist’s productiveness than that position of complete security and luxury in which artists usually live in our society.

Their wordsThe task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood and love of one’s neighbour, now attained only by the best members of the society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men.

Their wordsI must, moreover, mention that I consign my own artistic productions to the category of bad art, excepting the story God sees the Truth, which seeks a place in the first class, and The Prisoner of the Caucasus, which belongs to the second.