What Is Art? · Theme
Social Class and Exclusivity in Art
How What Is Art? develops Social Class and Exclusivity in Art.
Tolstoy critiques the art of the upper classes as exclusive, inaccessible to the common people, and dependent on the labor of the masses, arguing that this art is perverted and disconnected from universal human experience.
Where it surfaces
- Chapter VIII
Tolstoy argues that upper-class art is exclusive, inaccessible to the working majority, and sustained by their labor, making it a class-based counterfeit of true art.
- IX
The chapter contrasts the rich, varied feelings of working people with the limited, trivial feelings of the idle rich, showing how class exclusivity has narrowed art's emotional range.
- Chapter II
The poems are drawn from a 'thick book' and are presented as art for a select few, highlighting the exclusivity of upper-class art.