First Question on Tolstoy

Are there some emotions or feelings that art should attempt to not communicate to an audience?


I don't think that art should attempt to censor itself of certain emotions. The whole point of art is to convey emotion, and there shouldn't be any exception.  Like Tolstoy mentions in his essay: "...we must not demand morality in art.  And in proof of this he advances the fact that if we admit such a demand, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister would not fit into the definition of good art..." (234). Many classic works that we now, and then, considered good art would not be considered such.


Nowadays, we don't see these works as being vulgar in any way, but there are certain pieces of literature or paintings that may fall under that label. Because of that, some people think that this art should be censored, which then leads me to ask the question above. My issue with these people is that art is purely a reflection of human emotion and nature, even the darker, more vulgar side of human nature. Humans have been known to do very bad and disturbing things over the course of history and in the modern era. It is something that cannot be avoided, and to try to do so is trying to deny humanity. An artist may convey a scene of gore and violence, or very vulgar sex, but it may not be negative. Violence in art can be speaking against violence, not necessarily for it, and even if an artist is trying to do the latter, that is a choice of the artist, and can be taken as it is by the audience; no one has to subscribe to that artist's beliefs. Sex in art isn't a problem either, for humans engage in sex, it is how we reproduce.


With that in mind, feelings like lust or anger or a part of the human condition; these are not feelings which anyone can deny, so why should art not convey these, or any emotion? Why deny ourselves as humans? Why deny evil in the world, when we know it is there? It is okay to want to ignore such things, but to ask artists not to communicate such feelings isn't the way to go about it.