Fisher, Ch2: Tolstoy's Challenge: Is Art's Assumed High Value Justified?

Art's high value an unquestioned and unexplained assumption

Art has the highest cultural value
Even people who don't go to art museums and listen to classical music accept worth of these institutions
Believe that art adds to our lives: art improves and uplifts audience, our lives better for poetry and music, etc
Bel good ed must give skills and knowledge to appreciate the arts
Believe art of past has intrinsic value (for own sake)
Art so significant it can make up for moral defects of those who create and support it

Moral failings of renaissance Papacy (scandal ridden, oppressive, nepotism) made up for by its great support and contribution to art.

Art's high status something it acquired in modern period

Not always regarded so highly
Artists used to be regarded as of equal worth to craftsman (carpenters)
They became friends of kings and considered geniuses
Art acquired the status of a religion

Michelangelo's Fresco of creation used to exist for sake of Sistine Chapel, now the chapel exists for the sake of the fresco

Are reasons that propelled art to its high status still valid to us today?

Objective Beauty no longer do the job (we think beauty subjective and much art today has repudiated beauty)
Continued high status of arts based on mere cultural inertia?
Fisher: Need to rethink the basis for our belief in art's great significance/meaning

TOLSTOY'S CHALLENGE

Fisher's overall characterization of Tolstoy's position in "What is Art?"

Tolstoy: 19^th century Russian novelist (War and Peace, Death of Ivan Ilych)
Not attacking art in general but what was considered art in 19^th century
He thought art is enormously important, but 19^th century forgotten why
We tend to accept everything labeled as art as art and of significant value

Tolstoy's view may not be art at all

Art's costs are real and significant and art's value must be such as to justify those costs/resources

Value of result (art) should be roughly comparable in importance to value of resources used
Utilitarian view of art?
Moralistic view of art?

Tolstoy on costs of (resources spent on) arts (Tolstoy himself)

Only military gets more resources devoted to it

Vast amount of resources used

Large buildings in every town

Thousands of people engaged in hard labor

Opera production: stage hands, musicians, performers, chorus, music director, dramaticist, dancing master

Stunting of human lives to become artists

Thousands of people devote whole lives from childhood on to twirling legs, or fingers or tongue quickly
Grow savage and one-sided due to specialized and stupefying labor and become dull to serious aspects of life

Is it true that artists tend to be one-sided?

Transgressions against morality in producing art

Directors abuse performers
6 hour rehearsals where performers demoralized
Best conductors do this (engage in brutal cruelty)
Tradition of great artists (musicians) to be so carried away by greatness of their business that they can't pause to consider feelings of other artists
Difficult to find a more repulsive sight

Tolstoy on the value of what art is produced

Lack of value in product (the art itself)
Ordinary opera: A gigantic absurdity

What do in opera not like what happens anywhere else but in opera
No one is moved by such performances

Ballet--half naked women voluptuously moving their bodies is simply a lewd performance
Some of this art is useless and some even harmful

Further, no one can agree what art is and what is good art

Art critics contradict each other

Tolstoy's conclusion

Unclear that the sacrifices offered at the shrine of art are justified
Society (and artists themselves) need to find out if all that professes to be art is really art
And if all that is art is so important that worth sacrifices necessary to produce it

One Response to Tolstoy: His example is of bad art

And it is good art, great masterpieces of art that justify art

Worry that this would only lead to support of only the very best art

Another argument for need to justify art's value: Resources spend on art could feed the starving

Given highly important alternative uses for the scarce resources that go to art-millions lack basic human needs, for food, shelter and medical care
People are homeless and yet we give hundreds of thousands to Chas Symphony?
Why spend this money on activities that are marginally important to many citizens?

One justification for spending on art Fisher thinks won't work

Fisher thinks that only if art has extremely high value can we answer Tolstoy's challenge

Art is an entertainment business (like sports and other and leisure activities) justified by free choice of participants and enjoyment of people involved

Problems with art as entertainment business reply

Doesn't explain why arts have higher status than other special interests
Doesn't explain need for subsidies ( public & private) to make art available to more than only a few

Why should those who don't gain pleasure from art support giving entertaining art lovers? Role of government to do this?

Fails to see art as a "Public good"-like science, education, libraries, preservation of nature

Worth supporting even when doesn't "turn a profit"

Business model of art-producers/consumers is a false idea: Producer/artists doing what chooses and adequately paid, consumer who enjoys and pays for the product

Works for prof sports and entertainment

Poor understanding of most serious art

Worries/questions for Fisher

But is the idea that for art to be serious, it can't pay for itself

If your art sells so well that you make a good living, then it is not serious art?

Or if an art form can pay for itself, it's not serious art

Main subsidizers of art are artists themselves

Not only: Paying audience, taxpayers, corporations, foundations

But mainly the artists themselves

Subsidize own activities by devotion labor and personal resources to produce art

T.S. Elliot: No honest poet ever feels quite sure of permanent value of what he's written; may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing

By accepting a reduced standard of living, at least in our society

German opera houses

Poet, painter, musician, starving in an attic

Should pay artists more?:

Doesn't make sense, if art of real importance, for majority of artists to be treated as economically marginal, in contrast to other professions of our society (doctors, lawyers corp exec.

Is being a poet a good career choice?

Lonely poets using lives to create poetry

But being a poet gives one a sense of self-worth and this makes life worthwhile, but then must be something worthwhile about poetry, an important value

Ned: Art must have great value for people to dedicate their lives to it with little economic reward

Miscellaneous

Art and Morality

Traditional assumed that art improves and uplifts audience, our lives better for poetry and music

Recent artists say independent of morality and can disregard and contradict it

Recent art neither pleasurable to or understandable by lay person

Beauty once was the basis for the importance of the arts

Beauty is objective and objectively good and arts participated in it

No longer possible

Now think of beauty as subjective

Much of 20^th century art has repudiated beauty

But don't the champion other positive aesthetic values?

They don't champion ugliness, do they?

Tolstoy accepted a version of expression theory

True function of art is expression of feeling

A function as vital to society as communication of facts and ideas by language

Real art as important to society as food and water, false/counterfeit art of no value at all.

By this standard much art of his day was not true art, and much not thought to be art was art

Fisher says even some great art doesn't perform this function

Given costs, would be irrational to say no account of value of art required

Would be irrational to provide resources unless art had some positive value