What Is Art? (1897) is Leo Tolstoy’s provocative treatise on the nature and purpose of art, written after his religious conversion. Rejecting beauty and pleasure as the criterion of art, Tolstoy argues that true art is the sincere communication of feeling from one person to others, and that great art unites people in the highest religious and moral sentiments of their age.
On these grounds he dismisses much celebrated work, including his own earlier fiction, as false or elitist. Bold, contentious, and deeply earnest, the book remains one of the most discussed statements in the philosophy of art. This free EPUB download is cleanly formatted for any e-reader.