Tolstoy uses the test of infectiousness, not only as a descriptive measure for what should count as art, but also as a standard for good art (#28-32). What does he mean by this standard? How does he suggest we apply this test to evaluate art? Is this a useful proposal for evaluating the quality of art? If you disagree with this proposal, how would you challenge it?
What Tolstoy means by an art’s infectiousness is its tendency to strike a shared emotional state with it’s audience. For example, if one were to listen to a song and feel moved, it would be considered infectious. It happens that a piece of art will tend to move people in a similar way and the artist is satisfied when the emotions they felt were successfully transmitted. How ever if you were to listen to a song and feel confused or unmoved then either you are not the target audience that the artist was trying to connect to or the artist failed to do their job.
I think that this is a useful and insightful tool for measuring art and also for keeping in mind when creating art. I write songs on guitar and like to learn other people’s songs. The songs I’m most interested in learning have a message that relates to me that is also articulated with wit, grace and vulnerability. However I would disagree with Aristotle in that I do think art comes from the divine. Now the definition of divine is different for most people so lets just say from a detached, subconscious and vulnerable state. They often sing things they don’t plan to sing or mold a piece of clay without knowing its final form. Because of this a piece of art that is widely presented may be a small number of pieces that an artist made. These remaining pieces are less infectious than their popular counterparts but they still hold value to the artist; sometimes undesired pieces hold more value to the artist that the infectious ones. And there are many things that are infectious arts today that I would not consider good art. Some songs, name brands, TV shows will grab the attention and be alluring but are difficult to relate to. One show that is hard for me to relate to is Netflix’s Dare devil. It had so much potential! The main characters run a law firm where they fight for social justice and the superhero/lawyer is blind. It has such a great staging but the dialogue and interactions between the characters were so clique, dry and wholesome that the show sucks. I could not relate to many of the characters. However there’s another show called Trailer Park Boys that was started independently in Canada with a shit budget and a faulty premise. According to Trailer Park Boy’s Wikipedia ” The show focuses on the misadventures of a group of trailer park residents, some of whom are ex-convicts, living in the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. ” Many of the dialogues were improvised and the characters were all far from perfect which it was easy to find a flaw to relate to and laugh about. I Think Tolstoy would agree with me when I say the Dare Devil failed and Trailer Park Boys was successful.
tangent alert!
One of my favorite parts from this reading is when Tolstoy says that art can give us an expression for a feeling or idea that we have long known.
word count 510
Scribbled symphony 