Art and Culture

Tolstoy, whose essay "What Is Art?" remains one of the most provocative works of aesthetic philosophy, argued that art's sole purpose is to transmit emotions — and that any work which fails to do this is not art at all. This view, which has been both celebrated and condemned, forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: by whose standards do we judge?

The Western canon — a body of work most of which was created by European men — has long been considered the benchmark of artistic excellence. Postmodern critics, many of whom question the very notion of a universal aesthetic, argue that canons reflect power, not quality. What is dismissed as "lesser art" often turns out, on closer inspection, to be art to which the dominant culture simply lacked the framework to respond.

The question with which artists and critics continue to wrestle is whether there is any objective basis for aesthetic judgement — or whether beauty, as the cliché has it, is entirely in the eye of the beholder. My own view, which I hold with conviction but not certainty, is that the most powerful art is that which simultaneously defamiliarises the world we thought we knew and makes us feel, however briefly, less alone.