The controversy brought about by the two artists, Tolstoy and Beardsley is the distinctive relationship between art and aesthetics. Tolstoy outlines art as a way of expressing a feeling or experience in such a way that can they be perceived by the audience to which the feelings or the experience are directed. Beardsley gives out three criteria- complexity, unity and intensity of human regional properties that he believed were applicable to all the arts. Aesthetics is general study of particular aspects such as nature, essence, and the importance of art in a methodical way.
It is a discipline of axiology, a field of philosophy that is concerned with the study of moral values, and It investigates the principles, and the fundamental concepts of art. For this reason, it majorly deals with the study of the essence of beauty and ugliness. It also specifies the composition of art as well as the reason for which it is created. The aesthetic is significant because it explores the reason why art existed, mankind’s burning desire to see the world in new and clear ways throughout history.
It also assesses art against the backdrop of human life, determining if it fulfils man’s intellectual demands or, on the contrary, harms or exacerbates those needs. As a result, art is the medium via which one person’s or one minute’s feelings are transferred to another. The ultimate value of art is its infectiousness, or its ability to elicit in the minds of its audience the same emotions that the creator felt when creating it.
The debate leads to the conclusion that aesthetic attributes are sensual properties that are sensed in what we experience, such as “beautiful,” “dynamic,” and “graceful.” Facts concerning the setting of production, the artist who produced the art, the time when the art was made, what were the aims of the work? and so on are examples of artistic qualities. Others have argued, and some continue to maintain, that aesthetics define art. However, there are a number of arguments against this conclusion.
We use aesthetic terms like “beautiful” to describe nature, but we do not consider nature to be a literal work of art as a result. On the other hand, much art, particularly during the previous century, is not primarily concerned with the human condition. Tolstoy defines art according to its ability to visualise the basic hypotheses of morality. According to him, aesthetic values are basically defined objectively, and therefore it’s not a criterion to define art. He argues that art is a means of communication and it expresses human feelings and experiences all aspects of human condition.
Tolstoy argues that art is the expression particular feelings or experiences that are relatively shared to the people to whom these feelings are directed. He also strongly condemns the complexity brought by other artist who argue that art is only important to a specific social class. This complexity limits the purpose which art plays and it denies its importance in the whole society. He argues that good art is comprehensible and intelligible, while bad art is unintelligible and incomprehensible. Good art communicates its meaning to many people because it expresses its meaning in an understandable manner. (Mounce, 2001).
He believes that art is considered to be good when it’s viewed as being good by the majority and argues that a specific work of art is considered great if it is understandable to everyone. An excellent art has a peculiar structure that is compatible with the ideas or feelings it represents. Contrary to this, worse art lacks compatibility in its structure with the feelings it evokes.
According to Tolstoy, the sincerity of art is its most important quality, and a true work of art portrays the original specific thoughts and feelings. He denies the concept of Christian mysticism and appeals to common sense and reasoning. He argues that everybody may have religious thoughts, and thus art is universal if it portrays these religious feelings. True art should express the conception that humans must respect and understand each other by sharing brotherhood and sisterhood feelings. His attitude towards art reveals the independent and distinctive nature of Christian perception. His theory of aesthetics is focused on his moral value theory, that true art must follow moral and social principles rather than be aesthetic. He states that excellent art must be religious and must reflect his religious beliefs.
According to Beardsley, aesthetics includes both natural and unnatural experiences and judgments and it focuses on the interactions between our minds and beautiful things or surroundings. This includes, visual art, listening to music, reading poetry, watching a play, or exploring nature. In aesthetics, Beardsley classifies art into three important things. First, art itself and the people’s interests and opinions about art; second, pronouncements criticising art; and lastly, the philosophical developments, especially in analytic traditions. He argues that artwork can have nanoesthetic and other important referral characteristics. He claims that works of art are basically valued for their instrumental value, and that their aesthetic characteristics produce aesthetic experiences. Aesthetic internal consistency detaches it from the experience flow, and its detachment prevents artwork characteristics from referring to everything outside the experience. According to his view, the referential characteristics of the aesthetics of artwork are the ones that cause aesthetic experience. (Beardsley)
He argues that an artistic value is an objective value since it causes aesthetic experience. He states that there exist critical principles such as the potentiality of three aesthetic qualities: unity, intensity, and complexity for creating an aesthetical experience. The beginning of aesthetics is the metacritical task of evaluating features of criticism and referring to them as “aesthetic objects”; a firm link is thus established between metacriticism and aestheticism, with the objects of criticism identified as aesthetic features at the beginning of the book. Beardsley’s idea of artistic value is set in motion by this identification. He contends that artworks have instrumental value because their aesthetic qualities can generate aesthetic experiences.
Every work of art builds relational connection between the audience and the artist who created it, and also creating this relationship between those who perceive the same creative impression during that time, earlier, or afterwards. Just like speech, which functions as a means of bringing people together by transferring men’s thoughts and experiences, art also does the same. Art`s activity is based on the principle that a man who is able to receive another man’s expression of feelings through his senses is capable of experiencing the emotions of the person who expressed it. For example, if one guy smiles, the other who hears gets cheerful; or if one man weeps, the other who listens feels grief. (Rough, 2014).
A man shows courage and determination or melancholy and tranquillity through his gestures or the sounds of his voice, and this mental state is passed on to others. A man expresses his pain through groans and spasms, and this pain spreads to others; a man expresses his feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love for certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others acquire the same feelings. The activity of art is founded on man’s ability to acquire another’s assertion of feelings and experience those feelings for themselves. Art is not the expression of some ununderstandable idea of beauty or God; it is not a game whereby a man can spend his excess energy; it is not the external expression of feelings; it is not the creation of some enticing objects; and, most importantly, it is not pleasure; rather, it is a channel that unites men, uniting them in similar feelings and important for the life and growth of humans. (Tolstoy, 2002).
We’ve grown accustomed to thinking of art as limited to what we perceive at concerts, theatres, and exhibitions, as well as structures, statues, poems, and novels. All of this, however, is only a small portion of the art by which we connect with one another in everyday life. In every aspect of human life, origin song, humor, some types of mimicry, building decoration, attire, all the way to religious ceremonies, houses, monuments, and other processions abound. It’s all about the arts. So, by art, we do not mean all human activity that transmits sensations in the narrow definition of the word, but just that part of it that we pick for some reason and to which we assign special value.
All mankind has always placed a high value on the part of this activity that conveys sentiments derived from their religious beliefs, and this minute element of art they have dubbed art, giving it its full definition.
The conclusion drawn by the controversy is that art occurs in different concepts such paintings, sculptural designs, films, novels, dance, and music. And, because artists are constantly pushing boundaries, it’s not always apparent what the category of art precludes. Because of the creative nature of art, works or things that cause shock, indignation, censorship, or exclamations of “That’s not art!” are deemed “art.”
Aesthetic worth is not valued for its financial or social value, or even for what can be gained from it, or because it is morally good. It could do any or all of these things, or none of them at all! Because it expresses an aesthetic experience, art is seen as valuable. Self-expression, both in its creation and reception, is a sort of imaginative involvement.
We need to distinguish between goodness and badness. One sense of goodness, called the “internal” sense, is simply a question of whether the artist successfully conveys and conjures the emotions that he set out to inspire. Tolstoy claims that the success of a piece of art is conveyed down to three basic aspects in this sense of goodness: The more personal the feeling, the more powerfully it affects the audience; the more personal the nature of soul into which he is moved, the more pleasure the receiver derives, and thus the more readily and enthusiastically he joins in.
References
Beardsley, M. The Possibility of Criticism. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2025156
Mounce, H.O, (2001). Tolstoy on Aesthetics. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beardsley-aesthetics/
Rough, B, (2014). Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art.
Tolstoy, N. L, (2002). What is Art. https://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/tolstoy.html
write