Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced
Artists explore and express the condition of being human
It is quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of labor is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need not prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots or loaves than if he had to busy himself about these matters. But art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when he is living on all its sides the life natural and proper to mankind. And therefore security of maintenance is a condition most harmful to an artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition natural to all men, — that of struggle with nature for the maintenance of both his own life and that of others, — and thus deprives him of opportunity and possibility to experience the most important and natural feelings of man. There 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.
by Leo Tolstoy
(September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910)
from his essay What is Art?
translated by Aylmer Maude, Charles Johnston
image – Northampton Museum (by permission)
November 7th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Thank you for the post…
I don’t know if “complete security and luxury” are “injurious to an artist’s productiveness” but I do know that I will walk miles if necessary to photograph an item or object of interest…
Then again, maybe I’m not a true artist…:-)
November 7th, 2009 at 3:29 am
Oh, by the way, I love that shoe…
Impractical and probably impossible to wear and walk in…but it looks good:-)
November 7th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Tolstoy came from an aristocratic family. Maybe he was speaking of people like himself needing to avoid being too comfortable and insulated. I doubt that he ever made a shoe.
As for the shoe – I am sure it was worn by a fairy princess in another time-space continuum. Somehow that sort of esoteric elegance doesn’t seem possible while wearing Adidas and jeans.
If I were to wear a shoe like that I’d require six strong, beautiful men to carry my litter, and I’m not talking trash.