importance of arts

Now we must study the following questions: What significance does art acquire if we assume that our interpretation of it is correct? What is the relation between aesthetic response and all other forms of human behavior? How do we explain the role and importance of art in the general behavioral system of man? There are as many different answers to these questions as there are different ways of evaluating the importance of art. Some believe art is the supreme human activity while others consider it nothing but leisure and fun. The evaluation of art depends directly on the psychological viewpoint from which we approach it. If we want to find out what the relationship between art and life is, if we want to solve the problem of art in terms of applied psychology, we must adopt a valid general theory for solving these problems. The first and most widespread view holds that art infects us with emotions and is therefore based upon contamination. Tolstoy says, “The activity of art is based on the capacity of people to infect others with their own emotions and to be infected by the emotions of others. ... Strong emotions, weak emotions, important emotions, or irrelevant emotions, good emotions or bad emotions – if they contaminate the reader, the spectator, or the listener – become the subject of art.
This statement means that since art is but common emotion, there is no substantial difference between an ordinary feeling and a feeling stirred by art. Consequently, art functions simply as a resonator, an amplifier, or a transmitter for the infection of feeling. Art has n6 specific distinction; hence the evaluation of art must proceed from the same criterion which we use to evaluate any feeling. Art may be good or bad if it infects us with good or bad feelings. Art in itself is neither good nor bad; it is a language of feeling which we must evaluate in accordance with what it expresses. Thus, Tolstoy came to the natural conclusion that art must be evaluated from a moral