Writing In and About the Performing and Visual Arts

Tolstoy's famous essay asks what art is and what it is for. His answer, that true art transmits feeling from one person to another, is still one of the most debated ideas in aesthetics.

Leo Tolstoy

Kandinsky's manifesto on abstraction and the inner life of art. He explains how color and form speak directly to the soul, in the book that opened the door to abstract painting.

Wassily Kandinsky

The essay that introduced the idea of significant form: what moves us in a painting is the arrangement of lines and colors, not the story it tells. A key text of modern art criticism.

Clive Bell

Essays by the critic who introduced Cézanne and the Post-Impressionists to the English-speaking world. Fry writes on aesthetics, art history and non-Western art, with 40 illustrations.

Roger Fry