Chapter XV: Part XIII: What Is Art?

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Time and labour spent on art--Lives stunted in its
service--Morality sacrificed to, and anger justified by,
art--The rehearsal of an opera described.

CHAPTER II

Does art compensate for so much evil?--What is art?--Confusion of
opinions--Is it “that which produces beauty”?--The word “beauty”
in Russian--Chaos in esthetics.

CHAPTER III

Summary of various esthetic theories and definitions, from
Baumgarten to the present day.

CHAPTER IV

Definitions of art founded on beauty--Taste not definable--A clear
definition needed to enable us to recognise works of art.

CHAPTER V

Definitions not founded on beauty--Tolstoy’s definition--The extent
and necessity of art--How people in the past distinguished good
from bad in art.

CHAPTER VI

How art for pleasure came into esteem--Religions indicate
what is considered good and bad--Church Christianity--The
Renaissance--Scepticism of the upper classes--They confound
beauty with goodness.

CHAPTER VII

An esthetic theory framed to suit the view of life of the ruling
classes.

CHAPTER VIII

Who have adopted it?--Real art needful for all men--Our art
too expensive, too unintelligible, and too harmful, for the
masses--“The elect” in art.

CHAPTER IX

Perversion of our art--It has lost its natural subject-matter--Has
no flow of fresh feeling--Transmits chiefly three base emotions.

CHAPTER X

Loss of comprehensibility--Decadent art--Recent French art--Have
we a right to say it is bad, and that what we like is good
art?--The highest art has always been comprehensible to normal
people--What fails to infect normal people is not art.

CHAPTER XI

Counterfeits of art produced by: Borrowing; Imitating; Arranging
effects; Creating interest--Qualifications needful for the
production of real works of art, and those sufficient for
production of counterfeits.

CHAPTER XII

Causes of production of
counterfeits--Professionalism--Criticism--Schools of art.

CHAPTER XIII

Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung” a type of counterfeit art--Its
success, and the reasons thereof.

CHAPTER XIV

Truths fatal to preconceived views are not readily
recognised--Proportion of works of art to
counterfeits--Perversion of taste and incapacity to recognise
art--Examples.

CHAPTER XV

The quality of art, considered apart from its subject-matter--The
sign of art: infectiousness--Incomprehensible to those whose
taste is perverted--Conditions of infection: Individuality;
Clearness; Sincerity.

CHAPTER XVI

The quality of art, considered according to its subject-matter--The
better the feeling the better the art--The cultured crowd--The
religious perception of our age--New ideals put fresh demands to
art--Art unites--Religious art--Universal art--Both co-operate
to one result--The new appraisement of art--Bad art--Examples of
art--How to test a work claiming to be art.

CHAPTER XVII

Results of absence of true art--Results of perversion of art:
Labour and lives spent on what is useless and harmful--The
abnormal life of the rich--Perplexity of children and
plain folk--Confusion of right and wrong--Nietzsche and
Redbeard--Superstition, Patriotism, and Sensuality.

CHAPTER XVIII

The purpose of human life is the brotherly union of man--Art must
be guided by this perception.

CHAPTER XIX

The art of the future not the possession of a select minority, but
a means toward perfection and unity.

CHAPTER XX

The connection between science and art--The mendacious sciences;
the trivial sciences--Science should deal with the great
problems of human life and serve as a basis for art.

APPENDICES

Appendix I. Translations of French poems and prose quoted in
Chap. X of _What is Art?_

Appendix II. Translation from Mallarmé.

Appendix III. Poems by Henri de Régnier, Vielé-Griffin, Verhaeren,
Moréas, and Montesquiou, with translations.

Appendix IV. The contents of Wagner’s _Nibelungen Ring_.

(This Table of Contents is compiled by the translator.)