Tolstoy defined art, and not incidentally characterized its value, this way: “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”
The value of art, then, is one with the value of empathy.
Portrait of Tolstoy by Repin (wonderful!, I experienced this painting at the Royal Academy of Art in London).
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