What Is Art? cover art

What Is Art?

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

What Is Art?

By: Leo Tolstoy
Narrated by: Geoffrey Blaisdell
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £8.99

Buy Now for £8.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 Tolstoy claims that all good art is related to the authentic life of the broader community and that the aesthetic value of a work of art is not independent of its moral content. The book is noteworthy not only for its famous iconoclasm and compelling attacks on the aestheticist notion of "art for art's sake" but even more for its wit, its lucid and beautiful prose, and its sincere expression of the deepest social conscience.

Tolstoy is an author critics typically rank alongside Shakespeare and Homer. A sustained consideration of the cultural import of art by someone who himself was an artist of the highest stature will always remain relevant and fascinating to anyone interested in the place of art and literature in society.

Public Domain (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Essays Philosophy Nonfiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Art of Literature cover art
The Golden Bough cover art
How Much Land Does a Man Need? cover art
The Art of Controversy or The Art of Being Right cover art
War and Peace cover art
Leaves of Grass cover art
Rediscovering Americanism cover art
Paradise Lost cover art
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music cover art
An Experiment in Criticism cover art
The Art of Fiction cover art
Maps of Meaning cover art
The Brothers Karamazov [Naxos AudioBooks Edition] cover art
Asian Journals cover art
Plato's Republic cover art
Atlas Shrugged cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Tolstoy has an interesting view building on Hegels idea of the end of art Tolstoy wishes to see what art truly is. He makes some great points about how art became something of the elites and by that stopped being art and become the play thing of the rich. His answers are not as great as his criticisms but it is a book worth reading

Interesting perspective

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly instructive book. Though provoking it's a very important material for such an important matter in society.

A theory of art

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
interesting analysis that doesn't answer all the questions we have about art in the 21st century but does provide some consideration of how we construct value in art which is worth listening to. Some of the sociopolitical ideas are still struggling for a hearing in the corridors of power now.

Radical forward thinking mixed with 1890s values

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It’s a marvellous text but the audio version quotes extensive sections in German and French, without translating them!

Lacks translations

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
things did not turn out quite the way Tolstoy had hoped but the difference between his vision and reality are pretty fascinating

interesting look into a past future

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews