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In an essay, define what 'art' means to you?

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Art encapsulates a broad range of human expressions and creative activities. It's a culturally specific means of communication that includes various forms, such as visual, auditory, and performative works. Art and art appreciation include understanding cultural context and personal and societal identity through history and creativity.

Explanation:

What Does Art Mean?

Art is a concept that encompasses a vast range of human activities, expressions, and forms of communication. The definition of art is complex and often culturally specific, reflecting the shared values, history, and experiences of a society.

A work of art can express an artist’s feelings, thoughts, and observations, making use of various materials, techniques, and forms. Its purpose varies, from communicating political, spiritual, or philosophical ideas to evoking emotions, exploring perceptions, or simply celebrating beauty and aesthetic appeal. Art is not just a static object but an act of creation that engages skill and imagination, producing an output that may be visual, auditory, or performative—such as in painting, sculpture, music, and dance.

Additionally, art appreciation requires an understanding of historical context, culture, and the development of art forms over time. It's a process that broadens one’s understanding of humanity and diversity, linking the past with contemporary issues in society and contributing to personal and cultural identity.

The arts include a broad spectrum from visual arts to literature , performing arts , and even culinary arts , each holding a unique place in human culture and creativity. Whether it is through the simple act of creation, or a profound exploration of the human condition, art manifests the innate human desire to create and share meaning.

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Art Appreciation Essay

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Read this essay on art to learn more about knowing, identifying, and understanding the qualities of art.

Art is an object that possesses beauty, admired and appreciated by the people, and cannot be found anywhere but in particular places where people can visit. Creating artwork, therefore, requires excellent imagination to give the piece of work the desired aesthetic value. The works of Art in the Ancient culture were of various forms which included architecture, sculpture, and graphic arts (Funch, 1999).

Architecture and sculpture are the oldest forms of art that existed and still exist in the present day. For example, the pyramids that are among the tallest structures in the world.

The primary materials used in architecture were stone, wood, and glass. The sculpture also used stone and wood. Other materials used in sculpture included bronze, marble, silver, copper, wood, and clay. The two techniques involved were carving and casting. Carving means subtracting material to get the desired figure while casting is adding material to obtain the desired figure (Carroll & Eurich, 1992).

Initially, a two-dimensional form of work was used for both architecture and sculpture, but as art advanced through the ages, the two-dimensional form of work was applied. The materials used for both architecture and sculpture included wood and stone. Sculptures also used marble, copper, bronze, silver, and clay.

Sculpture and architecture employed some techniques and processes that were similar to arrive at the final desired object. Carving and casting were mainly used in sculpture which was also practiced in some parts of architectural objects to obtain the shapes required.

The sculptures were painted using the colors of the natural things they represent, while architectural objects were painted according to their use, and the message they portrayed.

Materials were put together in a line to form the shape aimed at both architecture and sculpture. The texture is the roughness or smoothness of a surface as is seen when it is illuminated by light. Different materials have different textures so the artist can make materials of the textures he requires. Most sculptured objects have a smooth finish, while architectural objects are rough.

The value of an Art depends on the materials used to make it, its size, and the image it represents. The beauty and the natural appearance of an object are found in its symmetry(Art Through the Ages, n.d.).

This is used mainly in sculptures of animal or human images to display the true natural appearance. The artists obtained a balance by making symmetrical sculptures and some architectural objects like the pyramids in Egypt. The balance was achieved to give the art natural beauty and safety (Parker, 2003).

The work of art always carries a subject matter. Sculptures of animals by the people of the past appreciated the mysterious way that a supernatural being created the world. Architectural buildings were sacred places and symbolized the presence of God, a sign of adherence to traditional values and way of accompanying death after life.

Works of art such as sculptures represent the real natural environment and thus appreciate nature. The art’s message is to display the purity of nature and for the moral evaluation of the people. Sculptures of Gods and buildings like pyramids represented the presence of a supernatural being and a creator (Horovitz, 1995).

Functions of art are divided into personal, social and physical functions. Individual purposes include religious practices and a sense of control over the entire universe. Social functions dealt with aspects of the life of all the people not personally. It also covered the political functions of the people.

Physical functions were symbolized by architecture, crafts, and industrial design. Artists had a crucial role in ancient cultures. They served the interests of the people, appreciated nature and showed the changing times (Parker, 2003).

Art Through the Ages . Web.

Carroll, H. A., & Eurich, A. C. (1992). Abstract intelligence and art appreciation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 23(3), 214-220.

Funch, B. S. (1999). The psychology of art appreciation. London: Abm Komers.

Horovitz, B. L. (1995). Art Appreciation of Children. The Journal of Educational Research, 31(2), 17-23.

Parker, D. H. (2003). The Principles Of Aesthetics . Web.

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Art Appreciation – Definition, Examples, History & More – Art Education and Methodologies Glossary

Table of Contents

What is Art Appreciation?

Art appreciation is the understanding and enjoyment of art. It involves looking at, analyzing, and interpreting works of art. It also involves understanding the cultural and historical context in which the art was created.

Art appreciation allows individuals to develop a deeper connection to art and to appreciate the creativity and skill of artists. It can also help individuals to develop their own artistic skills and creativity.

Elements of Art

The elements of art are the basic building blocks of visual art. They include line, shape, form, color, value, texture, and space. These elements are used by artists to create works of art and to communicate ideas and emotions.

Line is a mark made by a moving point. Shape is a two-dimensional area defined by a boundary. Form is a three-dimensional object with height, width, and depth. Color is the visual property of objects created by the wavelength of light they reflect. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. Texture is the surface quality of an object. Space is the area around, between, and within objects.

Principles of Design

The principles of design are the guidelines that artists use to organize the elements of art in a work of art. They include balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, pattern, rhythm, and unity. These principles help to create visual interest and harmony in a work of art.

Balance is the distribution of visual weight in a work of art. Contrast is the difference between elements in a work of art. Emphasis is the focal point of a work of art. Movement is the path the viewer’s eye takes through a work of art. Pattern is the repetition of elements in a work of art. Rhythm is the repetition of visual movement in a work of art. Unity is the harmonious relationship between elements in a work of art.

Art Movements

Art movements are periods of time in which artists shared a similar style or philosophy. They are often characterized by a specific set of techniques, subject matter, or themes. Some famous art movements include Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism.

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that focused on capturing the effects of light and color in a scene. Cubism was an early 20th-century art movement that emphasized geometric shapes and multiple perspectives. Surrealism was a 20th-century art movement that explored the unconscious mind and dreams. Abstract Expressionism was a mid-20th-century art movement that emphasized spontaneous, gestural painting.

Art Criticism

Art criticism is the analysis and evaluation of works of art. It involves looking at a work of art, interpreting its meaning, and assessing its artistic value. Art critics use a variety of methods to critique art, including formal analysis, contextual analysis, and subjective interpretation.

Formal analysis involves looking at the formal elements of art in a work, such as line, shape, color, and composition. Contextual analysis involves considering the cultural, historical, and social context in which the art was created. Subjective interpretation involves interpreting the emotional or personal response to a work of art.

Art Analysis

Art analysis is the process of examining and interpreting works of art. It involves looking at the formal elements of art, the principles of design, and the cultural and historical context of the art. Art analysis can help individuals to understand and appreciate works of art on a deeper level.

Art analysis can also help individuals to develop their critical thinking skills and to communicate their ideas about art. By analyzing works of art, individuals can gain a greater appreciation for the creativity and skill of artists, as well as the cultural and historical significance of art.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Coursework — Reflective Essay On Art Appreciation Course

What I Learned in Art Appreciation Course

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About this sample

Words: 888 |

Published: Dec 3, 2020

Words: 888 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Smith, J. (2022). The Importance of Art Appreciation in Developing Cultural Awareness. Journal of Art Education , 45(3), 201-215.
• Johnson, M., & Davis, A. (2023). Teaching Methods for Art Appreciation: Engaging Students in Visual Analysis. Art Education Quarterly, 32(1), 45-62.
• Thompson, C. L., & Wilson, B. (2022). Understanding the Symbolism in Art: A Guide for Appreciating Artworks. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 52(2), 345-360.
• Baker, S., & Gonzalez, L. (2021). The Role of Museums in Art Appreciation and Education. Museum Studies Journal, 45(4), 521-536.
• Wilson, B., & Davis, M. (2022). Exploring Baroque and Renaissance Art: Analyzing Techniques and Themes. Art History Review, 28(2), 233-248.
• Smith, E., & Anderson, R. (2021). The Representation of Trauma and Historical Events in Art. Journal of Trauma Studies, 45(4), 521-536.
• Gonzalez, L. S., & Wilson, B. (2023). The Nude in Art: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates. Journal of Visual Culture, 45(2), 189-204.
• Johnson, S., & Thompson, C. L. (2022). Nudity and Censorship in Art: Examining Cultural and Social Factors. Journal of Censorship Studies, 42(2), 233-248.
• Baker, S., & Davis, A. (2021). Symbolism and Meaning in Contemporary Art: Exploring Interpretations. Journal of Contemporary Art, 45(4), 521-536.
• Davis, M. A., & Smith, J. (2021). Art and Identity: Exploring Personal Expression and Symbolism. Journal of Identity Studies, 28(2), 233-248.

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“Without Art Mankind Could Not Exist”: Leo Tolstoy’s Essay What is Art

In his essay “What is Art?” Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace, defines art as a way to communicate emotion with the ultimate goal of uniting humanity.

How can we define art? What is authentic art and what is good art? Leo Tolstoy answered these questions in “What is Art?” (1897), his most comprehensive essay on the theory of art. Tolstoy’s theory has a lot of charming aspects. He believes that art is a means of communicating emotion, with the aim of promoting mutual understanding. By gaining awareness of each other’s feelings we can successfully practice empathy and ultimately unite to further mankind’s collective well-being. 

Furthermore, Tolstoy firmly denies that pleasure is art’s sole purpose. Instead, he supports a moral-based art able to appeal to everyone and not just the privileged few. Although he takes a clear stance in favor of Christianity as a valid foundation for morality, his definition of religious perception is flexible. As a result, it is possible to easily replace it with all sorts of different ideological schemes.

Personally, I do not approach Tolstoy’s theory as a set of laws for understanding art. More than anything, “What is art?” is a piece of art itself. A work about the meaning of art and a fertile foundation on which truly beautiful ideas can flourish.

Most of the paintings used for this article were drawn by realist painter Ilya Repin. The Russian painter created a series of portraits of Tolstoy, which were exhibited together at the 2019 exhibition “Repin: The Myth of Tolstoy” at the State Museum L.N. Tolstoy. More information regarding the relationship between Tolstoy and Repin can be found in this article . 

Who was Tolstoy?

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Leo Tolstoy ( Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) was born in 1828 in his family estate of Yasnaya Polyana, some 200km from Moscow. His family belonged in the Russian aristocracy and thus Leo inherited the title of count. In 1851 he joined the tsarist army to pay off his accumulated debt but quickly regretted this decision. Eventually, he left the army right after the end of the Crimean War in 1856. 

After traveling Europe and witnessing the suffering and cruelty of the world, Tolstoy was transformed. From a privileged aristocrat, he became a Christian anarchist arguing against the State and propagating non-violence. This was the doctrine that inspired Gandhi and was expressed as non-resistance to evil. This means that evil cannot be fought with evil means and one should neither accept nor resist it.  

Tolstoy’s writing made him famous around the world and he is justly considered among the four giants of Russian Literature next to Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Turgenev. His most famous novels are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). However, he also wrote multiple philosophical and theological texts as well as theatrical plays and short stories. Upon completing his masterpiece Anna Karenina , Tolstoy fell into a state of insufferable existential despair.

Charmed by the faith of the common people, he turned to Christianity. Eventually, he dismissed the Russian Church and every other Church as corrupted and looked for his own answers. His theological explorations led to the formulation of his own version of Christianity, which deeply influenced his social vision.  He died in 1910 at the age of 82 after suffering from pneumonia.

Art Based On Beauty And Taste 

Tolstoy wrote “What is art?” in 1897. There, he laid down his opinions on several art-related issues. Throughout this essay , he remains confident that he is the first to provide an exact definition for art:

“…however strange it may seem to say so, in spite of the mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art has been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.”  

So, what is art for Tolstoy? Before answering the question, the Russian novelist seeks a proper basis for his definition. Examining works of other philosophers and artists, he notices that they usually assume that beauty is art’s foundation. For them beauty is either that which provides a certain kind of pleasure or that which is perfect according to objective, universal laws.

Tolstoy thinks that both cases lead to subjective definitions of beauty and in turn to subjective definitions of art. Those who realize the impossibility of objectively defining beauty, turn to a study of taste asking why a thing pleases. Again, Tolstoy sees no point in this, as taste is also subjective. There is no way of explaining why one thing pleases someone but displeases someone else, he concludes. 

Theories that Justify the Canon

Theories of art based on beauty or taste inescapably include only that type of art that appeals to certain people:

“First acknowledging a certain set of productions to be art (because they please us) and then framing such a theory of art that all those productions which please a certain circle of people should fit into it.”

These theories are made to justify the existing art canon which covers anything from Greek art to Shakespeare and Beethoven. In reality, the canon is nothing more than the artworks appreciated by the upper classes. To justify new productions that please the elites, new theories that expand and reaffirm the canon are constantly created: 

“No matter what insanities appear in art, when once they find acceptance among the upper classes of our society, a theory is quickly invented to explain and sanction them; just as if there had never been periods in history when certain special circles of people recognized and approved false, deformed, and insensate art which subsequently left no trace and has been utterly forgotten.”  

The true definition of art, according to Tolstoy, should be based on moral principles. Before anything, we need to question if a work of art is moral. If it is moral, then it is good art. If it is not moral, it is bad. This rationale leads Tolstoy to a very bizarre idea. At one point in his essay, he states that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, and his own War and Peace are immoral and therefore bad art. But what does Tolstoy exactly mean when he says that something is good or bad art? And what is the nature of the morality he uses for his artistic judgments?

What is Art?

Art is a means of communicating feelings the same way words transmit thoughts. In art, someone transmits a feeling and “infects” others with what he/she feels. Tolstoy encapsulates his definition of art in the following passages:

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling – this is the activity of art. Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hand on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”

In its essence, art is a means of union among men brought together by commonly experienced feelings. It facilitates access to the psychology of others fostering empathy and understanding by tearing down the walls of the Subject. This function of art is not only useful but also necessary for the progress and wellbeing of humanity.

The innumerable feelings experienced by humans both in past and present are available to us only through art. The loss of such a unique ability would be a catastrophe. “Men would be like beasts”, says Tolstoy, and even goes as far as to claim that without art, mankind could not exist. This is a bold declaration, which recalls the Nietzschean aphorism that human existence is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon.

Art in the Extended and Limited Sense of the Word

Tolstoy’s definition expands to almost every aspect of human activity way beyond the fine arts. Even a boy telling the story of how he met a wolf can be art. That is, however, only if the boy succeeds in making the listeners feel the fear and anguish of the encounter. Works of art are everywhere, according to this view. Cradlesong, jest, mimicry, house ornamentation, dress and utensils, even triumphal processions are all works of art. 

This is, in my view, the strongest point of Tolstoy’s theory. Namely, that it considers almost the totality of human activity as art. However, there is a distinction between this expanded art, and art in the limited sense of the word. The latter corresponds to the fine arts and is the area that Tolstoy investigates further in his essay.  A weak point of the theory is that it never examines the act of creation and art that is not shared with others. 

Real and Counterfeit Art

The distinction between real and counterfeit, good and bad art is Tolstoy’s contribution to the field of art criticism. Despite its many weaknesses, this system offers an interesting alternative to judging and appreciating art.

Tolstoy names real art (i.e. authentic, true to itself) the one resulting from an honest, internal need for expression. The product of this internal urge becomes a real work of art, if it successfully evokes feelings to other people. In this process, the receiver of the artistic impression becomes so united with the artist’s experience, that he/she feels like the artwork is his/her own. Therefore, real art removes the barrier between Subject and Object, and between receiver and sender of an artistic impression. In addition, it removes the barrier between the receivers who experience unity through a common feeling.

“In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.” Furthermore, a work that does not evoke feelings and spiritual union with others is counterfeit art. No matter how poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting it is, it must meet these conditions to succeed. Otherwise it is just a counterfeit posing as real art.  

Emotional Infectiousness

Emotional infectiousness is a necessary quality of a work of art. The degree of infectiousness is not always the same but varies according to three conditions:

• The individuality of the feeling transmitted: the more specific to a person the feeling, the more successful the artwork.
• The clearness of the feeling transmitted: the clearness of expression assists the transition of feelings and increases the pleasure derived from art.
• The sincerity of the artist: the force with which the artist feels the emotion he/she transmits through his/her art. 

Out of all three, sincerity is the most important. Without it, the other two conditions cannot exist. Worth noting is that Tolstoy finds sincerity almost always present in “peasant art” but almost always absent in “upper-class art”. If a work lacks even one of the three qualities, it is counterfeit art. In contrast, it is real if it possesses all three. In that case, it only remains to judge whether this real artwork is good or bad, more or less successful. The success of an artwork is based firstly on the degree of its infectiousness. The more infectious the artwork, the better.  

The Religious Perception of Art

Tolstoy believes that art is a means of progress towards perfection. With time, art evolves rendering accessible the experience of humanity for humanity’s sake. This is a process of moral realization and results in society becoming kinder and more compassionate. A genuinely good artwork ought to make accessible these good feelings that move humanity closer to its moral completion. Within this framework, a good work of art must also be moral. 

But how can we judge what feelings are morally good? Tolstoy’s answer lies in what he calls “the religious perception of the age”. This is defined as the understanding of the meaning of life as conceived by a group of people. This understanding is the moral compass of a society and always points towards certain values. For Tolstoy, the religious perception of his time is found in Christianity. As a result, all good art must carry the foundational message of this religion understood as brotherhood among all people. This union of man aiming at his collective well-being, argues Tolstoy, must be revered as the highest value of all. 

Although it relates to religion, religious perception is not the same with religious cult. In fact, the definition of religious perception is so wide, that it describes ideology in general. To this interpretation leads Tolstoy’s view that, even if a society recognizes no religion, it always has a religious morality. This can be compared with the direction of a flowing river:

If the river flows at all, it must have a direction. If a society lives, there must be a religious perception indicating the direction in which, more or less consciously, all its members tend.

It is safe to say that more than a century after Tolstoy’s death, “What is Art?” retains its appeal. We should not easily dismiss the idea that (good) art communicates feelings and promotes unity through universal understanding. This is especially the case in our time where many question art’s importance and see it as a source of confusion and division. 

• Tolstoy, L.N. 1902. What is Art? In the Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoy . translated by Aline Delano. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. pp. 328-527. Available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43409
• Jahn, G.R. 1975. ‘The Aesthetic Theory of Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art?’. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Vol. 34, No. 1. pp. 59-65. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/428645
• Morson, G.S. 2019. ‘Leo Tolstoy’. Encyclopædia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Tolstoy

Theodor Adorno on the Essay: An Antidote to Modernity

By Antonis Chaliakopoulos MSc Museum Studies, BA History & Archaeology Antonis is an archaeologist with a passion for museums and heritage and a keen interest in aesthetics and the reception of classical art. He holds an MSc in Museum Studies from the University of Glasgow and a BA in History and Archaeology from the University of Athens (NKUA) where he is currently working on his PhD.

Frequently Read Together

Timeline of Ancient Greek Art & Sculpture

Module 2: What Is Art?

Reading: defining art from modernity to globalization, modernity to globalization.

This section addresses art and architecture from around 1850 up to the present.

During this period, art changed beyond recognition. The various academies still held sway in Europe. It is true that the hierarchy of the genres was breaking down and the classical ideal was becoming less convincing.

What counted as art in much of the nineteenth century remained pretty stable. Whether in sculpture, painting, drawing or printmaking, artworks represented recognizable subjects in a credible human-centered space. To be sure, subjects became less high-flown, compositional effects often deliberately jarring and surface handling more explicit. There were plenty of academicians and commentators who believed these changes amounted to the end of civilization, but from today’s perspective they seem like small shifts of emphasis.

In contrast, art in the first part of the twentieth century underwent a rapid gear change. Art historians agree that during this time artists began to radically revise picture making and sculpture. With the invention of photography and it being employed as the dominant conveyor of realism, painting undergoes a period of experimentation. Painters flattened out pictorial space, broke with conventional viewpoints and discarded local color. (‘Local color’ is the term used for the color things appear in the world. From the early twentieth century, painters began to experiment with non-local color.) Sculptors began to leave the surface of their works in a rough, seemingly unfinished state; they increasingly created partial figures and abandoned plinths or, alternatively, inflated the scale of their bases. Architects abandoned revivalist styles and rich ornamentation. To take one often cited example from painting, while the art of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) is based on a recognizable motif, say a landscape, when looking at these paintings we get the distinct impression that the overall organization of the colors and structural elements matters as much or more than the scene depicted. To retain fidelity to his sense impressions, Cézanne is compelled to find a new order and coherence internal to the canvas. Frequently this turns into incoherence as he tries to manage the tension between putting marks on a flat surface and his external observation of space.

In fifteen years some artists would take this problem – the recognition that making art involved attention to its own formal conditions that are not reducible to representing external things – through Cubism to a fully abstract art. Conventionally, this story is told as a heroic progression of ‘movements’ and ‘styles’, each giving way to the next in the sequence: Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism… Each changing of the guard is perceived as an advance and almost a necessary next step on the road to some preset goal. This rapid turnover of small groups and personal idioms can seem bewildering and, in fact, this is a minimal version of this story. Whether they sought new expressive resources, novel ways of conveying experience or innovative techniques for representing the modern world, modern artists turned their backs on the tried and tested forms of mimetic resemblance. But what counted as art changed too. Bits of the everyday world began to be incorporated into artworks – as collage or montage in two-dimensional art forms; in construction and assemblage in three-dimensional ones. The inclusion of found materials played a fundamental role in modern art. The use of modern materials and technologies – steel, concrete, photography – did something similar. Some artists abandoned easel painting or sculpture to make direct interventions in the world through the production of usable things, whether chairs or illustrated news magazines. Not all artists elected to work with these new techniques and materials, and many carried on in the traditional ways or attempted to adapt them to new circumstances.

Autonomy and Modernity

Broadly speaking, there are two different ways of thinking about modern art, or two different versions of the story. One way is to view art as something that can be practiced (and thought of) as an activity radically separate from everyday life or worldly concerns. From this point of view, art is said to be ‘autonomous’ from society – that is, it is believed to be self-sustaining and self-referring. One particularly influential version of this story suggests that modern art should be viewed as a process by which features extraneous to a particular branch of art would be progressively eliminated, and painters or sculptors would come to concentrate on problems specific to their domain. Another way of thinking about modern art is to view it as responding to the modern world, and to see modern artists immersing themselves in the conflicts and challenges of society. That is to say, some modern artists sought ways of conveying the changing experiences generated in Europe by the twin processes of commercialization (the commodification of everyday life) and urbanization. From this point of view, modern art is a way of reflecting on the transformations that created what we call, in a sort of shorthand, ‘modernity’.

Greenberg and Autonomy

While it has its roots in the nineteenth century, the approach to modern art as an autonomous practice is particularly associated with the ideas of the English critics Roger Fry (1866–1934) and Clive Bell (1881–1964), the critic Clement Greenberg (1909–94) and the New York Museum of Modern Art’s director Alfred H. Barr (1902–81). For a period this view largely became the common sense of modern art (O’Brian, 1986–95, 4 vols; Barr, 1974 [1936]). This version of modernism is itself complex. The argument presumes that art is self-contained and artists are seen to grapple with technical problems of painting and sculpture, and the point of reference is to artworks that have gone before. This approach can be described as ‘formalist’ (paying exclusive attention to formal matters), or, perhaps more productively drawing on a term employed by the critic Meyer Schapiro (1904–96), as ‘internalist’ (a somewhat less pejorative way of saying the same thing) (Schapiro, 1978 [1937]).

Rather than cloaking artifice, modern art, such as that made by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) drew attention to the conventions, procedures and techniques supposedly ‘inherent’ in a given form of art. Modern art set about ‘creating something valid solely on its own terms’ (Ibid., p. 8). For painting, this meant turning away from illusion and story-telling to concentrate on the features that were fundamental to the practice – producing aesthetic effects by placing marks on a flat, bounded surface. For sculpture, it entailed arranging or assembling forms in space.

Wassily Kandinsky, Landscape with Red Spots, 1913. Work is in the public domain.

It important to understand that the account of autonomous art, however internalist it may seem, developed as a response to the social and political conditions of modern societies. In his 1939 essay ‘Avant-garde and kitsch’, Greenberg suggested that art was in danger from two linked challenges: the rise of the dictators (Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco) and the commercialized visual culture of modern times (the kitsch, or junk, of his title). Dictatorial regimes turned their backs on ambitious art and curried favor with the masses by promoting a debased form of realism that was easy to comprehend. Seemingly distinct from art made by dictatorial fiat, the visual culture of liberal capitalism pursued instant, canned entertainment that would appeal to the broadest number of paying customers. This pre-packaged emotional distraction was geared to easy, unchallenging consumption. Kitsch traded on sentimentality, common-sense values and flashy surface effects. The two sides of this pincer attack ghettoized the values associated with art. Advanced art, in this argument, like all human values, faced an imminent danger. Greenberg argued that, in response to the impoverished culture of both modern capitalist democracy and dictatorship, artists withdrew to create novel and challenging artworks that maintained the possibility for critical experience and attention. He claimed that this was the only way that art could be kept alive in modern society. In this essay, Greenberg put forward a left-wing sociological account of the origins of modernist autonomy; others came to similar conclusions from positions of cultural despair or haughty disdain for the masses.

The period from around 1850 onwards has been tumultuous: it has been regularly punctuated by revolutions, wars and civil wars, and has witnessed the rise of nation states, the growth and spread of capitalism, imperialism and colonialism, and decolonization. Sometimes artists tried to keep their distance from the historical whirlwind, at other moments they flung themselves into the eye of the storm. Even the most abstract developments and autonomous trends can be thought of as embedded in this historical process. Modern artists could be cast in opposition to repressive societies, or mass visual culture in the west, by focusing on themes of personal liberty and individual defiance. The New York School championed by Greenberg coincided with this political situation and with the high point of US mass cultural dominance – advertising, Hollywood cinema, popular music and the rest. In many ways, the work of this group of abstract painters presents the test case for assessing the claim that modern art offers a critical alternative to commercial visual culture. It could seem a plausible argument, but the increasing absorption of modern art into middle-class museum culture casts an increasing doubt over these claims. At the same time, the figurative art that was supposed to have been left in the hands of the dictators continued to be made in a wide variety of forms. If figurative art had been overlooked by critics during the high point of abstract art, it made a spectacular comeback with Pop Art.

The Emergence of Modern Art in Paris

Let’s take a step back to the middle of the nineteenth century and consider the emergence of modern art in Paris. The new art that developed with Gustave Courbet (1819–77), Manet and the Impressionists entailed a self-conscious break with the art of the past. These modern artists took seriously the representation of their own time. In place of allegorical figures in togas or scenes from the Bible, modern artists concerned themselves with the things around them. When asked to include angels in a painting for a church, Courbet is said to have replied ‘I have never seen angels. Show me an angel and I will paint one.’ But these artists were not just empirical recording devices. The formal or technical means employed in modern art are jarring and unsettling, and this has to be a fundamental part of the story. A tension between the means and the topics depicted, between surface and subject, is central to what this art was. Nevertheless, we miss something crucial if we do not attend to the artists’ choices of subjects. Principally, these artists sought the signs of change and novelty – multiple details and scenarios that made up contemporary life. This meant they paid a great deal of attention to the new visual culture associated with commercialized leisure.

Greenberg contrasted the mainstream of modern art, concerned with autonomous aesthetic experience and formal innovation, with what he called ‘dead ends’ – directions in art that he felt led nowhere. Even when restricted to the European tradition, this marginalized much of the most significant art made in interwar Europe – Dada, Constructivism and Surrealism (Greenberg, 1961). The groups of artists producing this art – usually referred to collectively as the ‘avant-garde’ or the ‘historical avant-garde’ – wanted to fuse art and life, and often based their practice on a socialist rejection of bourgeois culture (see, in particular, Bürger, 1984). From their position in western Europe, the Dadaists mounted an assault on the irrationalism and violence of militarism and the repressive character of capitalist culture; in collages, montages, assemblages and performances, they created visual juxtapositions aimed at shocking the middle-class audience and intended to reveal connections hidden behind everyday appearances. The material for this was drawn from mass-circulation magazines, newspapers and other printed ephemera. The Constructivists participated in the process of building a new society in the USSR, turning to the creation of utilitarian objects (or, at least, prototypes for them). The Surrealists combined ideas from psychoanalysis and Marxism in an attempt to unleash those forces repressed by mainstream society; the dream imagery is most familiar, but experiments with found objects and collage were also prominent. These avant-garde groups tried to produce more than refined aesthetic experiences for a restricted audience; they proffered their skills to help to change the world. In this work the cross-over to visual culture is evident; communication media and design played an important role. Avant-garde artists began to design book covers, posters, fabrics, clothing, interiors, monuments and other useful things. They also began to merge with journalism by producing photographs and undertaking layout work. In avant-garde circles, architects, photographers and artists mixed and exchanged ideas. For those committed to autonomy of art, this kind of activity constitutes a denial of the shaping conditions of art and betrayal of art for propaganda, but the avant-garde were attempting something else – they sought a new social role for art. One way to explore this debate is by switching from painting and sculpture to architecture and design.

Responses to the Modern World

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), who is now seen as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, occupies an important place in destabilization of the art object. Duchamp started out as a Cubist, but broke with the idea of art as a matter of special visual experience and turned his attention to puns and perceptual or conceptual conundrums (Duchamp, 1975). These activities brought him into the orbit of Dada in Paris and New York, but this was probably nothing more than a convenient alliance. Duchamp played games with words and investigated the associations of ordinary objects. He also messed around with gender conventions, inventing a female alter ego called Rrose Sélavy – a pun on ‘Eros, c’est la vie’ or ‘Eros is life’. Critics and other artists have particularly focused on the strain of his work known as the ‘readymades’. From 1914, Duchamp began singling out ordinary objects, such as a bottle rack, for his own attention and amusement and that of a few friends. Sometimes he altered these things in some small way, adding words and a title or joining them with something else in a way that shifted their meaning; with Bicycle Wheel, he attached an inverted bike wheel to a wooden stool – he seems to have been particularly interested in the shadow play this object created. We can see this odd object among the clutter of Duchamp’s studio on West 67th Street in the photograph by Henri-Pierre Roche. He called these altered everyday things ‘assisted readymades’.

Duchamp was interested in interrogating the mass-produced objects created by his society and the common-sense definitions and values that such things accrued. Mischievously, he probed the definitions and values of his culture for a small group of like-minded friends. It isn’t at all clear that any of this was meant to be art; in fact, he explicitly posed the idea of making ‘works’ that could not be thought of as ‘art’ (Nesbit, 2000). Nevertheless, artists in the late 1950s and the 1960s became fascinated with this legacy and began to think of art as something the artist selected or posited, rather than something he or she composed or made. According to this idea, the artist could designate anything as art; what was important was the way that this decision allowed things to be perceived in a new light. This was to lead to a fundamentally different conception of art practice.

With the breakup of the hegemony of the New York School, artists began to look at those features of modern art that had been left out of the formalist story. During this period, Duchamp came to replace Picasso or Matisse as the touchstone for young artists, but he was just one tributary of what became a torrent. Perhaps most significantly, painting and anything we might straightforwardly recognize as sculpture began to take a back seat. A host of experimental forms and new media came to prominence: performance art, video, works made directly in or out of the landscape, installations, photography and a host of other forms and practices. These works often engaged with the representation of modernity and the shifting pattern of world power relations we call ‘globalization’.

National, International, Cosmopolitan

Whether holding itself apart from the visual culture of modernity or immersed in it, modern art developed not in the world’s most powerful economy (Britain), but in the places that were most marked by ‘uneven and combined development’: places where explosive tensions between traditional rural societies and the changes wrought by capitalism were most acute (Trotsky, 1962 [1928/1906]). In these locations, people only recently out of the fields encountered the shocks and pleasures of grand-metropolitan cities. As the sociologist of modernity Georg Simmel (1858–1918) suggested: ‘the city sets up a deep contrast with small-town and rural life with reference to the social foundations of psychic life’. In contrast to the over-stimulation of the senses in the city, Simmel thought that in the rural situation ‘the rhythm of life and sensory mental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and more evenly’ (Simmel, 1997 [1903], p. 175). This situation applies first of all to Paris (see Clark, 1984; Harvey, 2003; Prendergast, 1992). In Paris, the grand boulevards and new palaces of commercial entertainment went hand in hand with the ‘zone’, a vast shanty town ringing the city that was occupied by workers and those who eked out a precarious life. Whereas the Impressionists concentrated on the bourgeois city of bars, boulevards and boudoirs, the photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927) represented the Paris that was disappearing – the medieval city with its winding alleys and old iron work – or those working-class quarters composed of cheap lodgings and traders recycling worn-out commodities (Nesbit, 1992; see also Benjamin, 1983). This clash of ways of life generated different ways of inhabiting and viewing the city with class and gender at their core. Access to the modern city and its representations was more readily available to middle-class men than to those with less social authority, whether they were working people, women or minority ethnic or religious groups (Wolff, 1985, pp. 37–46; Pollock, 1988, pp. 50–90).

Eugène Atget, Chiffonier (Ragpicker), c. 1899–1901. Work is in the public domain.

Contradictions

Before the Second World War, the alternative centers of modernism were also key sites of uneven and combined development: Berlin, Budapest, Milan, Moscow and Prague. In these places, large-scale industry was created by traditional elites in order to develop the production capacities required to compete militarily with Britain. Factory production was plopped down into largely agrarian societies, generating massive shocks to social equilibrium. In many ways, Moscow is the archetypal version of this pattern of acute contradictions. Before the 1917 Revolution, Moscow was the site of enormous and up-to-date factories, including the world’s largest engineering plant, but was set in a sea of peasant backwardness. This is one reason that Vladimir Lenin described Russia as the weakest link in the international-capitalist chain.

This set of contradictions put a particular perception of time at the center of modern art. Opposition to the transformations of society that were underway could be articulated in one of two ways, and in an important sense both were fantasy projections: on the one hand, artists looked to societies that were seen as more ‘primitive’ as an antidote to the upheavals and shallow glamour of capitalism. On the other hand, they attempted a leap into the future. Both perspectives – Primitivism and Futurism – entailed a profound hostility to the world as it had actually developed, and both orientations were rooted in the conditions of an uneven and combined world system.

The vast urban centers – Paris, Berlin, and Moscow – attracted artists, chancers, intellectuals, poets and revolutionaries. The interchange between people from different nations bred a form of cultural internationalism. In interwar Paris, artists from Spain, Russia, Mexico, Japan and a host of other places rubbed shoulders. Modernist artists attempted to transcend parochial and local conditions and create a formal ‘language’ valid beyond time and place, and ‘the school of Paris’ or the ‘international modern movement’ signified a commitment to a culture more capacious and vibrant than anything the word ‘national’ could contain. The critic Harold Rosenberg (1906–78) stated this theme explicitly. Rejecting the idea that ‘national life’ could be a source of inspiration, he suggested that the modernist culture of Paris, was a ‘no-place’ and a ‘no-time’ and only Nazi tanks returned the city to France by wiping out modernist internationalism (Rosenberg, 1970 [1940]).

A Move to New York

‘No-place’ then shifted continent. Perhaps for the only time in its history, after the Second World War modernism was positioned at the heart of world power – when a host of exiles from European fascism and war relocated in New York. American abstract art was centered on New York and a powerful series of institutions: the Museum of Modern Art, Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery Art of This Century and a host of small independent galleries run by private dealers (including Betty Parsons, Samuel Koontz and Sidney Janis). In the main, these artists, such as Jackson Pollock (1912–56), Mark Rothko (1903–70), Arshile Gorky (1904–48), Robert Motherwell (1915–91) and Barnett Newman (1905–70), and associated critics (Greenberg and Rosenberg) were formed during the 1930s in the circles of the New York Left: they were modernist internationalists opposed to US parochialism in art and politics. After the war, they retained this commitment to an international modern art, while the politics drained away or was purged in the Cold War. The period of US hegemony in modern art coincided with the optimum interest in autonomous form and pure ‘optical’ experience. This was the time when artists working in the modernist idiom were least interested in articulating epochal changes and most focused on art as an act of individual realization and a singular encounter between the viewer and the artwork. At the same time, these artists continued to keep their distance from mainstream American values and mass culture. Some champions of autonomous art are inclined to think art came to a shuddering halt with the end of the New York School. Alternatively, we can see Conceptual Art as initiating or reinvigorating a new phase of modern art that continues in the global art of today.

It should be apparent from this brief sketch that the predominant ways of thinking about modern art have focused on a handful of international centers and national schools – even when artists and critics proclaim their allegiance to internationalism. The title of Irving Sandler’s book The Triumph of American Painting is one telling symptom (Sandler, 1970). There is a story about geopolitics – about the relationship between the west and the rest – embedded in the history of modern art. These powerful forms of modernism cannot be swept aside, but increasingly critics and art historians are paying attention to other stories; to the artworks made in other places and in other ways, and which were sidelined in the dominant accounts of art’s development. A focus on art in a globalized art world leads to revising the national stories told about modernism. This history is currently being recast as a process of global interconnections rather than an exclusively western-centered chronicle, and commentators are becoming more attentive to encounters and interchanges between westerners and people from what has helpfully been called the ‘majority world’, in art as in other matters. This term – majority world – was used by the Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam, to describe what the term ‘third world’ had once designated. We use it here to characterize those people and places located outside centers of western affluence and power; they constitute the vast majority of the world’s inhabitants and this reminds us that western experience is a minority condition and not the norm.

The Local and the Global

The reality is not that the majority world will be transformed into a high-tech consumer paradise. In fact, inequality is increasing across the world. What is referred to as globalization is the most recent phase of uneven and combined development. The new clash of hypermodern and traditional forms of economic activity and social life are taking place side by side; megacities spring up alongside the ‘planet of slums’, and communication technologies play an important role in this clash of space and time. Recent debates on globalization and art involve a rejection of modernist internationalism; instead, artists and art historians are engaged with local conditions of artistic production and the way these mesh in an international system of global art making. Modern art is currently being remade and rethought as a series of much more varied responses to contemporaneity around the world. Artists now draw on particular local experiences, and also on forms of representation from popular traditions. Engagement with Japanese popular prints played an important role in Impressionism, but in recent years this sort of cultural crossing has undergone an explosion.

Drawing local image cultures into the international spaces of modern art has once more shifted the character of art. The paradox is that the cultural means that are being employed – video art, installation, large color photographs and so forth – seem genuinely international. Walk into many of the large exhibitions around the globe and you will see artworks referring to particular geopolitical conditions, but employing remarkably similar conventions and techniques. This cosmopolitanism risks underestimating the real forces shaping the world; connection and mobility for some international artists goes hand in hand with uprootedness and the destruction of habitat and ways of life for others.

This overview has provided examples of the shifting perceptions and definitions of art across time. The first part demonstrated the changing role of the artist and diverse types of art in the medieval and Renaissance periods. The second part outlined the evaluation of art in the academies, issues of style, and changes to patronage, where art and its consumption became increasingly part of the public sphere during the period 1600 to 1850. The last part addressed the way in which artists broke from all conventions and the influence of globalization on art production, in the period 1850 to the present.

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Marx and Engels On Literature and Art

Source : Marx Engels On Literature and Art . Progress Publishers. Moscow 1976; Transcribed : by Andy Blunden .

This volume offers the reader a selection of both excerpts and complete works and letters by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, giving their views on art and its place in society. Though it contains far from all that was written by the founders of scientific communism on this subject, it will nevertheless acquaint the reader with Marx’s and Engels’ most important ideas about artistic work.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels had an excellent knowledge of world art and truly loved literature, classical music, and painting. In their youth both Marx and Engels wrote poetry; in fact Engels at one time seriously contemplated becoming a poet.

They were well acquainted not only with classical literature, but also with the works of less prominent and even of little known writers both among their contemporaries and those who lived and worked in more distant times. They admired Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Dickens, Fielding, Goethe, Heine, Cervantes, Balzac, Dante, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, and mentioned many other less famous people who had also made their mark in the history of literature. They also displayed a great love for popular art, for the epics of various nations and other types of folklore: songs, tales, fables and proverbs.

Marx and Engels made extensive use of the treasures of world literature in their own works., Their repeated references to literary and mythological figures, and use of aphorisms, comparisons and direct quotations, masterfully woven into their works, are a distinctive feature of their style. The writings of Marx and Engels are notable not only for profundity of content, but also for their exceptional artistic merits. Wilhelm Liebknecht gave high praise to Marx’s style, citing his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte as an example. “If ever hatred, scorn and passionate love of liberty were expressed in burning, devastating, lofty words,” wrote Liebknecht, “it is in The Eighteenth Brumaire, which combines the indignant severity of a Tacitus with the deadly satire of a Juvenal and the holy wrath of a Dante. Style here is the stilus that it was of old in the hand of the Romans, a sharp stiletto, used to write and to stab. Style is a dagger which strikes unerringly at the heart” ( Reminiscences of Marx and Engels , Moscow, 1956, p. 57).

Marx and Engels used artistic imagery to express their thoughts more forcefully and vividly in their journalistic and polemical works, and even in their fundamental theoretical works such as Capital and Anti-D�hring. Marx’s pamphlet Herr Vogt, directed against Karl Vogt who was slandering the proletarian party, is one of the most striking examples. The biting sarcasm of this pamphlet is particularly effective due to the author’s skilful use of works by classical writers such as Virgil, Plautus, and Persius, by the medieval German poets Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, and also by such classics of world literature as Balzac, Dickens, Schiller and Heine.

Their superb knowledge of world art helped Marx and Engels to elaborate genuinely scientific aesthetic principles. The founders of scientific communism were thus not only able to answer the complex aesthetic questions of the previous age, but also to elaborate a fundamentally new system of aesthetic science. They did so only as a result of the great revolutionary upheaval they had brought about in philosophy by creating dialectical and historical materialism and laying down the foundations for the materialist conception of history. Though Marx and Engels have left no major writings on art, their views in this field, when collected together, form a harmonious whole which is a logical extension of their scientific and revolutionary Weltanschauung. They explained the nature of art and its paths of development, its tasks in society and social aims. Marxist aesthetics, like the whole teaching of Marx and Engels, are subordinated to the struggle for the communist reorganisation of society.

When developing their theory of aesthetics, Marx and Engels naturally based themselves on the achievements of their predecessors. But the main aesthetic problems — and above all the problem of the relationship between art and reality — were solved by them in a fundamentally new way, on the basis of materialist dialectics. Idealist aesthetics considered art as a reproduction of the ideal, standing over and* above actual reality. The origin of any art form, its development, flowering, and decay, all remained incomprehensible to the art theoreticians and historians of the pre-Marxian period, inasmuch as they studied these in isolation from man’s social existence.

Marx and Engels considered it absolutely impossible to understand art and literature proceeding only from their internal laws of development. In their opinion, the essence, origin, development, and social role of art could only be understood through analysis of the social system as a whole, within which the economic factor — the development, of productive forces in complex interaction with production relations — plays the decisive role. Thus art, as defined by Marx and Engels, is one of the forms of social consciousness and it therefore follows that the reasons for its changes should be sought in the social existence of men.

Marx and Engels revealed the social nature of art and its development in the course of history and showed that in a society with class antagonisms it was influenced by class ‘contradictions and by the politics and ideologies of particular classes.

Marx and Engels gave a materialist explanation of the origin of the aesthetic sense itself. They noted that man’s artistic abilities, his capacity for perceiving the world aesthetically, for comprehending its beauty and for creating works of art appeared as a result of the long development of human society and were the product of man’s labour. As early as in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 , Marx pointed to the role of labour in the development of man’s capacity to perceive and reproduce the beautiful and to form objects also “in accordance with the laws of beauty” (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1975, p. 277).

This idea was later developed by Engels in his work Dialectics of Nature, in which he noted that efforts of toil “have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini” (see pp. 128-29 of this book). Thus both Marx and Engels emphasise that man’s aesthetic sense is not an inborn, but a socially-acquired quality.

The founders of Marxism extended their dialectical view of the nature of human thought to analysis of artistic creativity. In examining the development of art together with that of the material world and the history of society, they noted that the content and forms of art were not established firmly once and for all, but that they inevitably developed and changed according to definite laws along with the development of the material world and of human society. Each historical period has inherent aesthetic ideals and produces works of art corresponding to its particular character and unrepeatable under other conditions. Comparing, for example, the works of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Titian, Marx and Engels emphasised that “Raphael’s works of art depended on the flourishing of Rome at that time, which occurred under Florentine influence, while the works of Leonardo depended on the state of things in Florence, and the works of Titian, at a later period, depended on the totally different development of Venice” (p. 177).

The fact that the level of development of society and its social structure determine the content of artistic works and the prevalence of any particular literary or artistic genre was seen by Marx as the main reason that art in different periods never repeats itself and, in particular, that there was no possibility to create the mythology or epic poetry similar to those of the ancient Greeks under the conditions of the nineteenth century. “Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and therefore Greek (art),” wrote Marx, “possible when there are self-acting mules, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs?” (p. 83).

It goes without saying that Marxism has a far from open-and-shut understanding of the relations between the forms of social consciousness (and of art in particular) and their economic basis. For Marx and Engels, any social formation constituted a complex and dynamic system of interacting elements, each influencing the other — a system in which the economic factor is the determining one only in the final analysis. They were in no way inclined to qualify art as a passive product of the economic system. On the contrary, they emphasised that the various forms of social consciousness — including, of course, artistic creation — actively influence the social reality from which they emerge.

As if to forestall sociological vulgarisations of the problems of artistic creation, Marx and Engels drew attention to the fact that social life and the ideology of particular classes are reflected in art in a far from mechanistic manner. Artistic creativity is subordinate to the general laws of social development but, being a special form of consciousness, has its own distinctive features and specific patterns.

One of art’s distinctive features is its relative independence as it develops. The fact that works of art are connected historically with particular social structures does not mean that they lose their significance when these social structures disappear. On this point Marx cites the art and epic poetry of the ancient Greeks which “still give us aesthetic pleasure and are in certain respects regarded as a standard and unattainable ideal” (p. 84). He also provides a profound explanation for this phenomenon: Greek art reflected the naive and at the same time healthy, normal perception of reality characteristic of mankind in those early stages of its development, the period of its childhood; it reflected the striving for “natural veracity,” with its unique attractiveness and special charm for all (p. 84).

This example expresses an important Marxist aesthetic principle: in looking at works of art as basically reflections of particular social conditions and relationships, it is imperative also to see the features that make the lasting value of these works.

Marx and Engels considered as another particular feature of art the fact that its periods of upsurge do not automatically coincide with social progress in other fields, including that of material production. Thus Marx wrote in the Introduction to his Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858: “ As regards art, it is well known that some of its peaks by no means correspond to the general development of society; nor do they therefore to the material substructure” (p. 82 of this book). Marx and Engels saw the reason for this imbalance between the development of art and of society as a whole in the fact that the spiritual culture of any period is determined not only by the level of development of material production — the “material basis” of society — but also by the character of the social relations peculiar to that period. In other words, such factors as the specific character of social relations, the degree of development of class antagonisms and the existence in any period of specific conditions for the development of man’s individuality, all have an important bearing on art, determining its nature and development.

As far as capitalist society is concerned, this imbalance, according to Marx and Engels, must be considered as an expression of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction, the contradiction between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation. From his analysis of the contradictions of capitalism, Marx draws a conclusion which is of extraordinary importance for aesthetics, namely that “capitalist production is hostile to certain branches of spiritual production, for example, art and poetry” (p. 141). This proposition in no way denies the development of literature and art under capitalism, but means that the very nature of the capitalist system of exploitation is in profound contradiction with the humanist ideals which inspire genuine artists. The more conscious artists are of the contradiction, between their ideals and the capitalist reality, the louder and clearer do their works (often despite the class origin of the very author) protest against the inhumanity of capitalist relations. Bourgeois society’s hostility towards art begets, even in bourgeois literature, criticism of capitalism in one form or another, with capitalist reality being depicted as one filled with tragic collisions. This, in Marx’s and Engels’ opinion, is a dialectical feature of the development of art under capitalism. It is for this very reason that bourgeois society has produced Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac and other writers of genius who were capable of rising above their epoch and class environment and condemning with immense artistic power the vices of the capitalist system of exploitation.

In their works, Marx and, Engels set forth a number of profound ideas on the class nature of art in a society of antagonisms. They showed that even great writers, who were able, often despite their own class positions, to give a true and vivid picture of real life, were, in a class society, pressured by the ideas and interests of the ruling classes and frequently made serious concessions to these in their works. Taking Goethe, Schiller, Balzac, and other writers as examples, Marx and Engels found that the contradictions peculiar to them were not the result of purely individual features of their psychological make-up, but an ideological reflection of real contradictions in the life of society.

The founders of Marxism emphasised that art was an important weapon in the ideological struggle between classes. It could reinforce just as it could undermine the power of the exploiters, could serve to defend class oppression or, on the contrary, contribute to the education and development of the consciousness of the toiling masses, bringing them closer to victory over their oppressors. Marx and Engels therefore called for a clear distinction to be made between progressive and reactionary phenomena in feudal and bourgeois culture and put forward the principle of the Party approach to art that it be evaluated from the position of the revolutionary class.

While showing that a link existed between art and the class struggle, Marx and Engels always fought against attempts to schematise this problem. They pointed out that classes were not static and unchangeable but that class interrelationships changed in the course of history, the role of the classes in the life of society undergoing complex metamorphoses. Thus, in the period of struggle against feudalism, the bourgeoisie was able to create considerable spiritual values, but having come to power as a result of the anti-feudal revolutions, it gradually began to reject the very weapon it had itself forged in the struggle against feudalism. The bourgeoisie accomplishes this break with its revolutionary past when a new force appears on the historical arena — the proletariat. Under these conditions, attempts by individual members of the bourgeois intelligentsia, in particular cultural and artistic figures, to gain a deeper understanding of reality, to go beyond the framework of bourgeois relations and express their protest against these in some art form, inevitably lead them to conflicts with official bourgeois society and to their departure from bourgeois positions.

Marx and Engels apply their dialectical and materialist theory of knowledge to analysis of art and literature. In their opinion, artistic creation is one of the ways of reflecting reality and, at the same time, of perceiving and apprehending it; it is also one of the strongest levers of influencing the spiritual development of humanity. This approach to art forms the basis of the materialist understanding of its social importance and prominent role in the progress of society.

Naturally enough, when examining literature and art, Marx and Engels concentrated their attention on the problem of realism — the most accurate depiction of reality in an artistic work.

They considered realism, as a trend in literature and a method of artistic creation, to be the supreme achievement of world art. Engels formulated what is generally recognised as the classical definition of realism. “Realism, to my mind,” he wrote, “implies, besides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances” (p. 90). Realistic representation, Marx and Engels emphasised, is by no means a mere copy of reality, but a way of penetrating into the very essence of a phenomenon, a method of artistic generalisation that makes it possible to disclose the typical traits of a particular age. This is what they valued in the work of the great realist writers such as Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Balzac, Pushkin and others. Marx described the English realists of the 19th century — Dickens, Thackeray, the Bront�s, and Gaskell — as a brilliant pleiad of novelists “whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together” (p. 339). Engels developed a similar line of thought when analysing the works of the great French realist writer Balzac. Writing about the Com�die humaine, he noted that Balzac gave the reader “a most wonderfully realistic history of French society ... from which, even in economic details (for instance the re-arrangement of real and personal property after the Revolution) I have learned more than from all the professed historians, economists and statisticians of the period together” (p. 91).

Marx and Engels set out some very important ideas about realism in their letters to Lassalle in the spring of 1859, in which they sharply criticise his historical drama Franz von Sickingen dealing with the knights’ rebellion of 1522-23, on the eve of the Peasant War in Germany. These two letters are of great. significance because they contain a statement of the fundamental principles of Marxist aesthetics (pp. 98-107).

Marx’s and Engels’ demands on the artist include truthfulness of depiction, a concrete historical approach to the events described and personages with live and individual traits reflecting typical aspects of the character and psychology of the class milieu to which they belong. The author of genuinely realistic works communicates his ideas to the reader not by didactic philosophising, but by vivid images which affect the reader’s consciousness and feelings by their artistic expressiveness. Marx and Engels considered that Lassalle had carried even further some of the weaknesses in the artistic method of the great German poet and playwright Schiller — in particular his penchant for abstract rhetoric, which resulted in his heroes becoming abstract and one-dimensional declaimers of certain ideas. In this regard they preferred Shakespeare’s realism to Schiller’s method. Both pointed out to Lassalle that, in imitating Schiller, he was forgetting the importance for the realist writer to* combine depth of content and lofty ideals with efforts to achieve a Shakespearian ability to depict genuine passions and the multiple facets of the human character.

In their letters to Lassalle, Marx and Engels also touched upon the question of the links between literature and life, between literature and the’ present day. Marx by no means condemned Lassalle for his intention to draw an analogy between the events of the 16th century described in the play and the situation in the mid-19th century, and to bring out the truly tragic collision which “spelled the doom ... of the revolutionary party of 1848-1849” (p. 98). He saw the author’s mistake in his incorrect, idealistic interpretation of this collision, in the reduction of the reasons for it to the allegedly age-old abstract “tragedy of revolution,” which lacks any concrete historical or class content. Marx criticised Lassalle not for the political tendency of his drama, but for the fact that it was essentially mistaken from the point of view of the materialist conception of history and of the world outlook of the proletarian revolutionaries. Marx and Engels were highly critical of attempts to place literature above politics and of the theory of “art for art’s sake.” They insisted that the works of realist writers should reflect a progressive world outlook, be permeated with progressive ideas and deal with truly topical problems. It was in this sense that they welcomed tendentiousness in literature, interpreted as ideological and political partisanship. “I am by no means opposed to tendentious poetry as such,” wrote Engels to the German writer Minna Kautsky on November 26, 1885. ‘Aeschylus, the father of tragedy, and Aristophanes, the father of comedy, were highly partisan poets, Dante and Cervantes were so no less, and the best thing that can be said about Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe is that it represents the first German political problem drama. The modern Russians and Norwegians, who produce excellent novels, all write with a purpose” (p. 88). Marx and Engels were at the same time resolute opponents of stupid tendentiousness — bare-faced moralising, didacticism instead of artistic method, and abstract impersonations instead of live characters. They criticised the poets in the “Young Germany” literary movement for the artistic inferiority of their characters and attempts to make up for their lack of literary mastery with political arguments. Engels provides an apt definition of genuine tendentiousness in his letter to Minna Kautsky: “I think however that the purpose must become manifest from the situation and the action themselves without being expressly pointed out and that the author does not have to serve the reader on a platter the future historical resolution of the social conflicts which he describes” (p. 88).

Both Marx and Engels were deeply convinced that progressive literature had to reflect truthfully the deep-lying, vital processes of the day, to promulgate progressive ideas, and to defend the interests of the progressive forces in society. The modern term the Party spirit in literature expresses what they understood by this. They felt that the very quality that was lacking in Lassalle’s play — the organic unity of idea and artistry — was the sine qua non of genuinely realistic art.

In setting out the principles of materialist aesthetics and the fundamental and most general laws governing the development of art, the founders of scientific communism laid the basis of Marxist literary and art criticism and proposed the primary tenets of the materialist interpretation of the history of art and literature. In their works and correspondence, they threw new light on the most important questions of the historical and literary process and revealed such aspects in the works of both classical and contemporary writers which were beyond the comprehension of bourgeois literary historians. In the present collection, the reader will find Marx’s and Engels’ views of the artistic works of the most important ages in mankind’s history — their evaluation of art in ancient and medieval times, of Renaissance culture and literature, of literature in the period of the Enlightenment, and, finally, of the work of the romantic and realist writers of the 19th century. In addition, the reader will discover the attitude of the founders of Marxist aesthetics towards the main literary and artistic trends in general and their opinions on individual writers and other artists.

Marx’s and Engels’ view of ancient art has already been discussed briefly above. Let us now turn to their evaluation of the art of other ages.

Their genuinely scientific explanation of the specific features of the social system and culture of medieval times is of exceptional interest. Marx and Engels stripped away the romantic idealisation of the Middle Ages and, at the same time, demonstrated the inconsistency of the abstract view held by the Enlighteners that this was merely an age of social and cultural regression. They pointed out that the transition from slave-owning to feudal society was historically inevitable and showed that the establishment of the feudal mode of production was a step forward in the development of human society, compared to the reign of slavery which had preceded it. This enabled Marx and Engels to form a new approach to medieval culture and art and point out those features in them which reflected the progressive course of historical development. Engels wrote that “. . as a result of the intermingling of nations in the early Middle Ages new nationalities gradually developed” (Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 21, S. 395), the appearance of which was a prerequisite for further social and cultural development of mankind. Analysing various epic poems of the early Middle Ages such as the Elder Edda and other Icelandic and Irish sagas, Beowulf, the Lay of Hildebrand and the Chanson de Roland, Marx and Engels showed that they reflected the gradual transition from the earliest stages of the tribal system to new levels of social consciousness connected with the early period of the formation of European nationalities. The epic and national-heroic poetry of the Middle Ages is notable, as Engels pointed out, for characteristics which show their new cultural-historical and aesthetic quality, as compared with the classical epic poetry of the ancient world. The same also applies to the later lyric poetry of the feudal Middle Ages — the medieval romance lyrics, best exemplified by the works of the Provencal troubadours. In his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State Engels wrote that “no such thing as individual sex love existed before the Middle Ages” (p. 215). For this reason, he said, the appearance and poetic glorification of individual love in the Middle Ages was a step forward compared to antiquity. Moreover, the medieval love poems influenced the following generations and prepared the ground for the flowering of poetry in the modern age.

Marx and Engels formulated and substantiated a new view of the Renaissance, one which differed radically from the views of earlier bourgeois cultural historians and also in many ways from those of contemporary and later bourgeois historiography. This new understanding of the basic historical meaning of the Renaissance in Western Europe was presented by Engels in its most developed form in 1875-76 in one of his versions for the Introduction to the Dialectics of Nature (pp. 251-53). Engels emphasised that, contrary to the traditional view of bourgeois science, the Renaissance must not be seen as merely an upheaval in the ideological and spiritual life of the times. The origins of this new age, he states, should be sought above all in the economic and political. changes that brought about the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. Engels penetrated to the very essence of the phenomena which made possible the immense leap forward in the culture, literature and art of that period, some achievements of which remained unequal led even in the more mature bourgeois society. The art of the Renaissance, as Engels noted, developed not in a period of already settled bourgeois society but “in the midst of the general revolution” (Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Moscow, 1974, p. 21). Social relations were at that time in a state of constant flux and change and had not yet become, as they did in mature bourgeois society, a force which to a certain extent limited the development of personal initiative, talent and capabilities but, on the contrary, actively contributed to their development. Because of its revolutionary character this age, the one of “the greatest progressive revolution that mankind had so far experienced,” stated Engels, “called for giants and produced giants ... in power of thought, passion and character, in universality and learning.” This is why “the men who founded the modern rule of the bourgeoisie had anything but bourgeois limitations” (pp. 252-53).

Engels also noted that “the heroes of that time were not yet in thrall to the division of labour, the restricting effects of which, with its production one-sidedness, we so often notice in their successors” (p. 253). To clarify his idea, Engels described Leonardo da Vinci who “was not only a great painter but also a great mathematician, mechanic and engineer, to whom the most diverse branches of physics are indebted for important discoveries” and reviewed the work of Albrecht D�rer, a “painter, engraver, sculptor, and architect” and inventor of a fortification system. Engels also pointed to the great diversity of interests and erudition of other Renaissance figures (p. 253).

Marx’s and Engels’ evaluation of the Renaissance as an age of “the general revolution,” “the greatest progressive revolution,” explains the warm sympathy they felt for the “giants” of that age. They saw the great men of the Renaissance not just as outstanding scholars, artists, or poets, but, at the same time, as great revolutionaries in world science and culture.

Engels considered the most important trait of the heroes of the Renaissance to be that “they almost all live And pursue their activities in the midst of the contemporary movements, in the practical struggle; they take sides and join in the fight, one by speaking and writing, another with the sword, many with both” (p. 253). It is not difficult to see that this was also what Engels expected of the artists of the future. Referring to the ability of the people of the Renaissance to live by the interests of their time, to “take sides,” Engels emphasised those traits which lifted them above the level of the professionally narrow, armchair science of the bourgeoisie, and above the level of the 19th-century bourgeois writers and artists who preached “non-partisanship” and “pure art.” These traits brought the great men of the Renaissance closer to the ideals of socialist culture and of the revolutionary movement of the working class.

Marx and Engels considered Dante one of the great writers whose works announced the transition from the

Middle Ages to the Renaissance. They saw him as a poet and thinker of genius and, at the same time, as an inflexible warrior whose poetic works were infused with Party spirit (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Moscow! 1976, p. 271) and were inseparable from his political ideals and aspirations. According to Wilhelm Liebknecht, Marx knew the Divina Commedia almost by heart and would often declaim whole sections of it aloud. Marx’s “Introduction” to Capital in fact ends with the great Florentine’s proud words: “Go your own way, and let people say what they will!” The author of Capital placed Dante among his most beloved poets — Goethe, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare. Engels called Dante a person of “unequalled classic perfection” (p. 247) and “a colossal figure” (p. 248). Marx and Engels held the great Spanish writer Cervantes in high esteem too. Paul Lafargue noted that Marx set the author of Don Quixote, together with Balzac, “above all other novelists” (p. 439). Finally, Marx’s and Engels’ admiration for Shakespeare, one of their most beloved writers, is known to all. Both considered his plays with their far-ranging depiction of the life of his time and their immortal characters to be classical examples of realist drama. Lafargue wrote that Marx “made a detailed study” of Shakespeare’s works. “His whole family had a real cult for the great English dramatist” (p. 438). Engels shared his friend’s views on Shakespeare. On December 10, 1873, he wrote to Marx. “There is more life and reality in the first act of the Merry Wives than in all German literature” (p. 260).

The most important comment by the founders of scientific communism about classicism, the literary movement of the 17th-18th centuries, was made by Marx in a letter to Lassalle on July 22, 1861 (p. 269). On the basis of a materialist understanding of the development of culture, Marx in his letter rejected the unhistorical idea that classicism was the result of a misunderstanding of the laws of classical drama and of classical aesthetics, with their famous principle of the three unities. He pointed out that, though the theoreticians of classicism had misunderstood classical Greek drama and Aristotle’s Poetics, this was no accident or a misunderstanding of history, but a historical inevitability. Classicist playwrights “misunderstood” Aristotle because the “misunderstood” Aristotle corresponded exactly to their taste in art and their aesthetic requirements, formed by the specific social and cultural conditions of the time.

Unlike previous historians of culture who were unable to understand the class content of ideas, Marx and Engels uncovered the social, class-historical basis of the ideas of the 18th-century Enlightenment. They showed that the Enlightenment was not just a movement in social thought, but an ideological expression of the interests of the progressive bourgeoisie, which was rising up to struggle against feudal absolutism on the eve of the Great French Revolution.

Marx and Engels held in high esteem the heritage of the English and French 18th-century Enlighteners including their fiction and works on aesthetics. Their comprehensive analysis of the activity of the Enlighteners explains its close links with the life of society and the class struggle during the preparation for the French bourgeois revolution and draws a line between the moderately bourgeois and the democratic elements in their heritage.

Marx’s and Engels’ works and letters show that they had a superb knowledge of both English and French philosophical and economic literature and fiction of the age of the Enlightenment. They do not merely mention Defoe, Swift, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, the Abb� Pr�vost, Beaumarchais, but give laconic and at the same time brilliantly profound and accurate evaluations of them, while also using their works to draw generalisations concerning the most important aspects of literary life in the age of the Enlightenment.

It should also be noted that Marx included Denis Diderot among his favourite writers. He delighted in Diderot’s novels, especially Le Neveu de Rameau, which he called a “unique masterpiece” (p. 279). Engels shared his friend’s

opinion on Diderot and wrote in 1886: “If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the ‘enthusiasm for truth and justice’ — using this phrase in the good sense — it was Diderot, for instance” (p. 279).

Marx and Engels also wrote about the leading men of the Enlightenment in Germany — Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland. Revealing the economic and socio-political conditions in Germany, whose feudal division and reactionary small-power absolutist system had been hardened as a result of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), they showed that these conditions had made a definite mark on the ideas and feelings of the majority of the most prominent figures of the “great age of German literature” (p. 346). Together with the rebellious spirit and indignation at the social system of the time that were characteristic of German classical literature, it also reflected the feelings of the petty bourgeoisie (the predominating social stratum in Germany) whose inherent characteristic was admiration for and servility towards the powers that be. “Each of them was an Olympian Zeus in his own sphere,” Engels wrote about Goethe and Hegel, “yet neither of them ever quite freed himself from German Philistinism” (p. 349). In spotlighting not only the strong, but also the weaker points in Goethe, Schiller, and other German writers and thinkers of that period, Marx and Engels in no way sought to belittle their immense, world-wide importance. This is confirmed by Marx’s attitude towards Goethe, who, as already mentioned, was one of his most beloved poets. Contemporaries who knew Marx well stated that he was a constant reader of the great German poet’s works. In their writings and conversations, both Marx and Engels frequently quoted from Faust and other works by Goethe. In 1837 the young Marx, while still a student at Berlin University, wrote an epigram defending Goethe against the Lutheran pastor Pustkuchen, who was one of the leaders in the struggle of German reactionaries of the 1830s against the poet. Engels devoted one of his essays in literary criticism to an analysis of Goethe’s

work. This was “German Socialism in Verse and Prose” (pp. 361-74) in which he attacked the aesthetics of German philistine “true socialism.”

Marx’s and Engels’ analysis of West European romanticism is of great importance to the elaboration of a genuinely scientific history of literature. Considering romanticism a reflection of the age beginning after the Great French Revolution, of all its inherent social contradictions, they distinguished between revolutionary romanticism, which rejected capitalism and was striving towards the future, and romantic criticism of capitalism from the point of view of the past. They also differentiated between the romantic writers who idealised the pre-bourgeois social system: they valued those whose works concealed democratic and critical elements under a veneer of reactionary utopias and naive petty-bourgeois ideals, and criticised the reactionary romantics, whose sympathies for the past amounted to a defence of the interests of the nobility. Marx and Engels were especially fond of the ‘Works of such revolutionary romantics as Byron and Shelley.

Marx’s and Engels’ evaluation of the works of 19th-century realist writers has already been mentioned. Marx and Engels considered realist traditions to be the culmination of the whole of the previous literary process. Engels traced their development and enrichment in the works of Guy de Maupassant, of the creators of the Russian realist novel of the second half of the 19th century, and of Norway’s contemporary dramatists. Marx and Engels had a lively interest in Russia and attached great importance to the Russian revolutionary movement. To be better able to follow the development of the economic and social life of Russia, they both learnt Russian. They were well acquainted not only with socio-economic and journalistic writings in Russia, but also with the country’s fiction. They both read the works of Pushkin, Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chernyshevsky, and Dobrolyubov in Russian, while Marx also read Gogol, Nekrasov, and Lermontov in the original. Engels was also acquainted with English translations of the works of Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Khemnitser, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, and Krylov. Marx and Engels thought Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin to be an amazingly accurate depiction of Russian life in the first half of the 19th century. Both were especially fond of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. Engels considered these revolutionary writers “two socialist Lessings” (p. 414) and Marx called Chernyshevsky a “great Russian scholar and critic” (p. 415), while comparing Dobrolyubov “as a writer to Lessing and Diderot” (p. 415).

Characteristic of Marx and Engels was their profoundly internationalist approach to literature and art. They paid equal attention to the art of all nations, European and non, European, large and small, believing that every people makes its own unique contribution to the treasure-house of world art and literature. Their interests included the development of art and literature in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia as well as the artistic and cultural treasures of the East or of such small countries as Ireland, Iceland, and Norway. judging by their notes, the ancient cultures of the indigenous inhabitants of the New World also came within their field of vision.

Marx and Engels had a special attitude towards the democratic and revolutionary poets and writers who were close to the proletariat. Throughout their lives, they strove to draw the best progressive writers of their time to the side of the socialist movement and to educate and temper them, while helping them to overcome the weaker aspects of their work. Marx and Engels actively contributed to the formation of a proletarian revolutionary trend in literature.

Marx’s influence on the work of the great German revolutionary poet Heinrich Heine was immense. They met in Paris in 1843. The prime of Heine’s political lyrics and satire comes in 1843-44, when he was in close and friendly contact with Marx. Marx’s influence on Heine is clear in such remarkable works as his poems The Silesian Loom Workers and Germany. A Winter Tale. All his life Marx admired Heine, who was one of the favourite poets in Marx’s family. Engels was in complete agreement with his friend’s sympathies and considered Heine to be “the most eminent of all living German poets” (p. 375). In their struggle against German reaction, Marx and Engels often quoted from Heine’s bitingly satirical poems. Marx’s and Engels’ ideological influence played an exceptional role in Heine’s development as an artist and helped him to realise that the communist revolution would inevitably be victorious.

Marx and Engels were close friends of the German poets Georg Weerth and Ferdinand Freiligrath, with whom they worked side by side on the Neue Rheinische Zeitung during the revolution of 1848-1849, Engels called Weerth “the German proletariat’s first and most important poet” (p. 402). After Weerth’s death, Marx and Engels carefully collected his literary works. In the 1880s Engels vigorously promoted these in the German Social-Democratic press.

It was only thanks to ‘Marx’s and Engels’ influence that Freiligrath became, in 1848-49, one of the classics of German revolutionary poetry. His poems written at that time are closely linked to Marx’s and Engels’ ideas and are his best. The care and attention Marx and Engels showed for Freiligrath is a good example of their attitude towards revolutionary poets and of how they tried to help them in their noble cause. When Marx recommended Freiligrath to his comrade Joseph Weydemeyer, in 1852, for work on the journal Revolution, he specially asked Weydemeyer to write a friendly, praising letter to the poet to encourage him. It is no coincidence that Freiligrath’s importance as a poet began to decline as soon as he moved away from Marx and Engels in the 1850s.

Marx and Engels had close links with many French and English revolutionary writers, in particular with the Chartist leader Ernest Jones. His best poems, written in the latter 1840s, show the influence of Marx’s and Engels’ ideas.

After Marx’s death, Engels continued in the 1880s and 1890s to keep careful track of the revolutionary writings of those English authors who were ideologically close to the English socialist movement. This can be seen from Engels’ letter to the writer Margaret Harkness (pp. 89-92) who had sent him her short story “A Poor Girl,” his numerous comments about the plays of the English socialist Edward Aveling, and his notes on the ideological development of a number of other writers.

Important statements by Engels on the subject of proletarian art can also be found in his letters written toward the end of his life to German Social-Democratic leaders.

In this way, Marx and Engels strove to foster a new type of writer and artist who, assimilating the finest traditions of classical literature, would take an active, creative part in the proletariat’s struggle for emancipation, proceeding from a broad understanding of the experiences and the tasks of the revolutionary struggle.

This collection also contains valuable statements by Marx and Engels on the flowering of art in the future communist society. The founders of Marxism saw the contradictions in the development of art under capitalism as a manifestation of the antagonistic nature of bourgeois society as a whole and considered the solution of these problems to be possible only after the proletarian revolution and the social reorganisation of society.

Marx and Engels showed brilliant foresight in anticipating the basic traits of the new, communist society. Communism is above all true freedom for the all-round and harmonious development of the individual. “The realm of freedom,” said Marx, ‘actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases...” (p. 183).

Labour freed from exploitation becomes, under socialism, the source of all spiritual (and aesthetic) creativity. Marx and Engels point out that only given true economic, political, and spiritual freedom can man’s creative powers develop to the full and that only proletarian revolution offers unbounded opportunities of endless progress in the development of literature. The great historical mission of the proletariat consists in the communist rebuilding of the world. It was in the proletariat that Marx and Engels saw the social force which could change the world and provide for further progress not only in economics and politics, but also in culture, the force which would bring about the conditions required for the full realisation of mankind’s higher moral and aesthetic values.

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