书名：What is Art? 艺术论

作者：Leo Tolstoy出版社名称：Bloomsbury Academic出版时间：2016语种：英文ISBN：9781474265096商品尺寸：14.2 x 1.5 x 21.3 cm包装：平装页数：208 （以实物为准）

What is Art?《艺术论》是一代文豪列夫·托尔斯泰论述关于艺术问题不同方面的著作。这本书涉猎繁杂，但其核心的问题始终是：什么是艺术。对于这个看似简单而老套的问题，托尔斯泰提出了他的观点。

在这位老文豪的眼里，很多经典伟大的作品是坏的艺术，甚至不是艺术。而按照他的判断体系，我们的确可以得到与他相同的结论。托尔斯泰的观点触及了艺术的本质，从这些犀利和深刻的言语中，我们的艺术观将接受一次醍醐灌顶般的洗礼。 托尔斯泰以充满热切的口吻，表达了他对艺术的不满、期许，以及真正的艺术应当有的模样。百年以来，What is Art?《艺术论》以其高度争议的内容、充满力量的语言，影响了好几个世代、遍及全球的艺术工作者。 Leo Tolstoy is one of the most celebrated novelists of all time. As well as writing literary classics such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace he was also the author of some hugely influential critical and philosophical works. First published in 1898 his book length essay What is Art? has lost none of its power to challenge our perception of art and its function in society today. In this provocative work Tolstoy famously dismisses works by Shakespeare, Dante, Wagner and even many of his own works as 'bad art' based on various criteria including sincerity, ethics, morality and accessibility. Tolstoy took art seriously at a time when western civilization toyed with it as a mere pastime during the height of the Aestheticism movement. For him, art was natural and necessary to the advancement of humankind. In his introduction to this translation, W. Gareth Jones shows how vitally Tolstoy's personality and experiences in life were engaged in creating What is Art?. Jones shows how integral the essay was to his art and teaching, and why it continues to demand a response from us.

列夫·尼古拉耶维奇·托尔斯泰，19世纪中期俄国批判现实主义作家、思想家，哲学家，代表作有《战争与和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》、《复活》等。托尔斯泰晚年力求过简朴的平民生活，1910年10月从家中出走，11月病逝于一个小站，享年82岁。

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is the author of Anna Karenina, War and Peace and The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Take up any one of our ordinary newspapers, and you will find a part devoted to the theater and music. In almost every number you will find a description of some art exhibition, or of some particular picture, and you will always find reviews of new works of art that have appeared, of volumes of poems, of short stories, or of novels.

Promptly, and in detail, as soon as it has occurred, an account is published of how such and such an actress or actor played this or that role in such and such a drama, comedy, or opera; and of the merits of the performance, as well as of the contents of the new drama, comedy, or opera, with its defects and merits. With as much care and detail, or even more, we are told how such and such an artist has sung a certain piece, or has played it on the piano or violin, and what were the merits and defects of the piece and of the performance. In every large town there is sure to be at least one, if not more than one, exhibition of new pictures, the merits and defects of which are discussed in the utmost detail by critics and connoisseurs. New novels and poems, in separate volumes or in the magazines, appear almost every day, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give their readers detailed accounts of these artistic productions. For the support of art in Russia (where for the education of the people only a hundredth part is spent of what would be required to give everyone the opportunity of instruction) the government grants millions of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatoires, and theaters. In France twenty million francs are assigned for art, and similar grants are made in Germany and England. In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums, academies, conservatoires, dramatic schools, and for performances and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen—carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers, molders, typesetters—spend their whole lives in hard labor to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this. Not only is enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs rapidly(dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians), or to draw with paint and represent what they see (artists), or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme to every word. And these people, often very kind and clever, and capable of all sorts of useful labor, grow savage over their specialized and stupefying occupations, and become one-sided and self-complacent specialists, dull to all the serious phenomena of life, and skilful only at rapidly twisting their legs, their tongues, or their fingers. But even this stunting of human life is not the worst I remember being once at the rehearsal of one of the most ordinary of the new operas which are produced at all the opera houses of Europe and America. I arrived when the first act had already commenced. To reach the auditorium I had to pass through the stage entrance. By dark entrances and passages, I was led through the vaults of an enormous building, past immense machines for changing the scenery and for illuminating; and there in the gloom and dust I saw workmen busily engaged. One of these men, pale, haggard, in a dirty blouse, with dirty, work-worn hands and cramped fingers, evidently tired and out of humor, went past me, angrily scolding another man. Ascending by a dark stair, I came out on the boards behind the scenes. Amid Various poles and rings and scattered scenery, decorations and curtains, stood and moved dozens, if not hundreds, of painted and dressed-up men, in costumes fitting tight to their thighs and calves, and also women, as usual, as nearly nude as might be. These were all singers, or members of the chorus, or ballet-dancers, awaiting their turns.