If the artist does a "good" job and his artwork conveys a very strong emotion and message, however, the audience is unresponsive and doesn't feel this emotion, is the artwork considered a failure? This question was recently asked by Brycen on his blog. 
I feel that Tolstoy lacks many details in his works which attempt to explain art. According to Tolstoy if an artist cannot successfully convey his or her emotion to the audience then the artist's creation is not art. As mentioned in my previous blog entry, I strongly disagree with Tolstoy's ideas. In history there have been several artists ahead of their times, who's work received little praise at the time and the audience seemed unresponsive to the emotion(s) the artist tried to convey. This is most likely the cause of art which does gain a response from an audience. The artist did his or her job well, however the audience most likely does not understand the art produced because the artist was brilliant enough to grasp at concepts ahead of his or her time. Someday, the art will produce a response.