Tolstoy, Art, Emotion and the Audience Argumentative Essay

This paper explains that Leo Tolstoy, in his manifesto of 1896 "What is Art?", rejected the pre-existing notions of aesthetics by stating his emotional communication theory of art thus impeding twentieth century art by stating that art, like language, properly exists as a system of emotional communication between the artist and his audience. While the idea of art as a system capable of communicating emotion is entirely possible, the author argues that the assumption that an artist creates for an external source is unsound because an artist does not need the audience to define his work as art. The paper contends rather that the conscious artist process, as demonstrated by Emily Dickinson, graffiti artist Banksy, Andy Warhol and the author, defines the liminal, has a private, internal dialogue only with himself not the audience and then makes tangible artwork.