Written at the tale end of the nineteenth century, before Andy Warhol and John Cage made low art worthy of praise, this book sought to define not only what a work of art is but also what a good work of art is. “In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life,” stipulated Leo Tolstoy. The critically-acclaimed novelist takes a religious approach to art, seeing it as influencing the progress of mankind, and Beethoven, Dante, Shakespeare, and even Tolstoy himself do not fair well as artists in What Is Art?