What Is Art? What Is Art? What is Art? ( "Chto takoye iskusstvo?") is a book by Leo Tolstoy. It was completed in Russian in 1897 but first published in English due to difficulties with the Russian censors. Tolstoy cites the time, effort, public funds, and public respect spent on art and artists as well as the imprecision of general opinions on art as reason for writing the book. In his words, "it is difficult to say what is meant by art, and especially what is good, useful art, art for the sake of which we might condone such sacrifices as are being
What Is the What "we really hadn’t decided whether I was just helping Valentino write his own book, or if I was writing a book about him." Valentino points out that, "I thought I might want to write my own book, but I learned that I was not ready to do this. I was still taking classes in basic writing at Georgia Perimeter College." Dave Eggers discusses the difficulties in writing a book of this nature: "For a long while there, we continued doing interviews, and I gathered the material. But all along, I really didn’t know exactly what form it would finally take—whether