essay on art for art's sake

Art for Art's Sake

Summary of Art for Art's Sake

Taken from the French, the term "l'art pour l'art," (Art for Art's Sake) expresses the idea that art has an inherent value independent of its subject-matter, or of any social, political, or ethical significance. By contrast, art should be judged purely on its own terms: according to whether or not it is beautiful, capable of inducing ecstasy or revery in the viewer through its formal qualities (its use of line, color, pattern, and so on). The concept became a rallying cry across nineteenth-century Britain and France, partly as a reaction against the stifling moralism of much academic art and wider society, with the writer Oscar Wilde perhaps its most famous champion. Although the phrase has been little used since the early twentieth century, its legacy lived on in many twentieth-century ideas concerning the autonomy of art, notably in various strains of formalism .

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• The idea of Art for Art's sake has its origins in nineteenth-century France, where it became associated with Parisian artists, writers, and critics, including Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire . These figures and others put forward the idea that art should stand apart from all thematic, moral, and social concerns - a significant break from the post- Renaissance artistic tradition represented by contemporary academic painting , which favored historical and mythical scenes, and held that art should have a clear ethical message often connected to religion or state power.
• Although Art for Art's Sake withdrew from all political and ideological concerns, it was nonetheless radical in rejecting the moralizing standards of its day. Artists such as Aubrey Beardsley delighted in shocking polite taste through images which had sexual or grotesque overtones. In this regard, Art for Art's Sake was often implicitly radical, and its program of seeking scandal informed the more politically charged activities of subsequent movements such as Dada and Futurism .
• Although the term Art for Art's Sake fell out of favor by the end of the nineteenth century, the idea it stood for - that art had a value which stood apart from subject-matter, purely connected to formal qualities such as line, color, and tone - remained highly significant. Some such notion is at the basis of all abstraction abstraction , for example. Art for Art Sake can thus be seen to have predicted the work of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky , for example, as well as the work of the Abstract Expressionists .

The Important Artists and Works of Art for Art's Sake

La Ghirlandata

Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A woman delicately plays a harp while two angels circle pensively above her head. The rich velvet of the woman's green dress flows into the luxurious vegetation that surrounds her, her striking red hair echoed by the garland of flowers and the angels' auburn locks. William Michael Rossetti, the brother of the artist, translated this work's as "The Garlanded Lady" or "Lady of the Wreath," with Alexa Wilding, the model depicted in the center of the work, portrayed as the ideal of love and beauty. This is a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a British artist associated with both Aestheticism and the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and known for his tempestuous and often exploitative romantic relationships with female models and artists. This work's title, along with the idealized treatment of subject matter, may be intended to evoke the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (c. 1503-19), then often known as La Giaconda ("the happy one" or "the jocund one"), and revered by critics associated with Art for Art's Sake such as Theophile Gautier and Walter Pater. In effect, Rossetti may have meant his idealized beauty to become an icon for the Aesthetic movement just as the Mona Lisa had become an icon of Renaissance art. In its guide to the work, the Guildhall Art Gallery notes that the painting ushered in "a new aesthetic of painting," as every element contributed to the elevation of beauty. William Michael Rossetti wrote that his brother's intent was to "to indicate, more or less, youth, beauty, and the faculty for art worthy of a celestial audience, all shadowed by mortal doom." In this respect, the painting summed up the "Cult of Beauty" for which the Pre-Raphaelites stood, and represents an important contribution to the principles of Art for Art's Sake.

Oil on canvas - Guildhall Art Gallery, London

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket

Artist: James Abbott McNeill Whistler

This iconic painting depicts a firework display at Cremorne Gardens in London. A few shadowy figures can be discerned in the foreground, depicting the shore of the Thames River, but most of the canvas is given over to the black night sky, lit up by the rocket's falling gold sparks and the explosive smoke from the firework battery on the horizon. With its dreamy wash of color and abstracted figures, this painting represented the emergence of a new approach within painting which emphasized the artist's freedom to represent a mood or emotion at the expense of representational accuracy. This painting, the last in Whistler's series of so-called "nocturnes," became important talismans of the idea of Art for Art's Sake, with the artist stating that "[a]rt should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear." Color and mood were crucial to Whistler's work, with his paintings often bordering on abstraction, while his titles often used musical terms such as "nocturne" and "harmony" to insist on painting's relationship to other artforms, particularly music, which had a 'pure' aesthetic quality not connected to themes or symbolism. No work is a better example of Whistler's artistic stance. Perhaps for that reason, it became the subject of legal dispute after Whistler sued the noted critic John Ruskin for attacking the painting as worthless and poorly executed. While Whistler won the case, he received only a single farthing in settlement, and his legal fees contributed to his subsequent bankruptcy. Despite this Pyrrhic victory, Whistler's defense played a key role in establishing the principles of art as an entirely liberated pursuit disconnected from all conventions of society, politics, or morality, which would be important to the development of modernism. Art critic James Jones notes that Whistler described a painting as "an arrangement of light, form and colour," an emphasis which predicts, for example, the movement of Abstract Expressionism in the mid-twentieth century.

Oil on panel - The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room

Artist: James Whistler

The concept of Art for Art's Sake, via the Aesthetic movement, had a transformative effect on interior design and architecture. As art critic Fiona MacCarthy writes, "[o]ne of the main tenets of aestheticism was that art was not confined to painting and sculpture and the false values of the art market. Potential for art is everywhere around us, in our homes and public buildings, in the detail of the way we choose to live our lives." This photograph depicts the famous Peacock Room, named for the turquoise, gold, and blue murals featuring a peacock motif and designed by James Abbott McNeill Whistler for the home of the shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. Leyland's centerpiece for his dining room was Whistler's painting The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (1863-65), while the interior design embodied Whistler's enthusiasm for Japonism, a style based on western perceptions of Japanese art and design. Whistler described his working process in the room as spontaneous and intuitive: "I just painted on. I went on - without design or sketch - it grew as I painted. And toward the end I reached [...] a point of perfection." He said the finished interior was a "harmony in blue and gold," in effect transforming the space into an artwork and elevating design to a fine art that existed for its own sake. Whistler's design was enormously influential, informing the development of both the Anglo-Japanese style and the Aesthetic movement, which included all realms of design within its dictum. In a wider sense, the decoration of this room encapsulates the idea so important to exponents of Art for Art's Sake that, by surrounding themselves with beautiful things - not just artworks but walls, tables, chairs, and so on - the artist or art lover could become beautiful themselves.

Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, leather, and wood - Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC

The Peacock Skirt

Artist: Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley's stylish ink sketch depicts the Biblical figure of Salome, whose failed seduction of John the Baptist leads to his beheading. Salome was the subject of Oscar Wilde's eponymous one-act tragedy, written in French in 1891. When the English translation was published in 1894, it contained ten woodblock illustrations based on ink sketches by Beardsley, of which The Peacock Skirt is the second. Depicting the figure of Salome to the left in a long, elaborately patterned dress, with a peacock veil and headdress, the work embodies the qualities of elaborate beauty and luxury which Beardsley and other Art-for-Art's-Sake artists promoted. At the same time, the sinister figure to the right, whose made-up face and feminine dress contrasts with their hairy legs, embraces the ideas of androgyny and sexual fluidity with which the movement was (often disapprovingly) associated. The origins of Beardsley's Salome series are in a single illustration depicting the anti-heroine kissing the severed head of John the Baptist, printed in 1893. Upon seeing the image, Wilde recognized an artistic affinity and invited Beardsley to illustrate the entire narrative. The illustration was heavily influenced by Whistler's decorations for the peacock room, as well as the stylized lines of Japanese woodblock prints; the resultant long, sinuous depiction of bodies anticipates the work of Gustave Klimt and other Art Nouveau artists. Beardsley contributed much to the Art for Art's Sake approach, in particular developing its connections with Japonism and the decorative arts. At the same time, the Salome series reflects Beardsley's interest in courting and exacerbating the scandal which the Art for Art's Sake movement was already attracting. Salome is perhaps the original femme fatale , ordering John the Baptist killed by her father Herod - himself incestuously infatuated with his daughter - after the Christian prophet refuses her sexual advances. She and her story thus represent a number of themes, such as sexual transgression, incest, and female lust, which scandalized the patriarchal, puritanical Victorian public. In focusing on her as a worthy subject of drama, Wilde and Beardsley were quite deliberately courting controversy, while promoting lifestyle choices such as plurality of gender and sexual freedom.

Woodblock Print - Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge MA.

Artist: Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp's famous artwork - consisting of a mass-manufactured urinal placed on its back and signed with the artist's pseudonym R. Mutt - powerfully challenged the idea of Art for Art's Sake, while also carrying it into new realms. Fountain was submitted to the 1917 Society for Independent Artists and should have been included in the Society's annual exhibition, since membership alone granted the right to exhibit. However, the work was rejected on the grounds of immorality (proving that, despite assumptions to the contrary, other judgments - in this case, morality - did indeed inform aesthetic judgment.) This work bore almost no trace of the artist's input or - so it seemed - creative vision or skill, thus subverting the notion foundational to Art for Art's Sake that a painting or sculpture should have an inherent aesthetic or formal value. Paradoxically, however, the work's supporters did employ a version of the notion of Art for Art's Sake to defend the object, arguing that Duchamp's mere presentation the urinal imbued it with special significance, as an artwork which he had created. So, if the controversy demonstrated the fading importance of Art for Art's Sake in the 20th century, it also showed the concept's tenacity, as it became part of the foundation of modern art. As contemporary art historian Peter Bürger wrote, "the autonomy of art is a category of bourgeois society...The relative dissociation of the work of art from the praxis of life in bourgeois society thus becomes transformed into the (erroneous) idea that the work of art is totally independent of society." Bürger noted how "Duchamp's provocation not only unmasks the art market where the signature means more than the quality of the work; it radically questions the very principle of art in bourgeois society according to which the individual is considered the creator of the work of art."

Found object

Full Fathom Five

Artist: Jackson Pollock

Full Fathom Five was among the first drip paintings Jackson Pollock completed. Its surface is clotted with an assortment of detritus, from cigarette butts to coins and a key. The uppermost layers were created by pouring lines of black and shiny silver house paint, though a large part of the paint's crust was applied by brush and palette knife, creating an angular counterpoint to the weaving lines. Pollock's drip paintings have been interpreted in numerous ways, some seeing them as inventing a new abstract language for the unconscious, others suggesting that they evoke the night sky, or in this case, the depths of the ocean. However, the critic Clement Greenberg, who was Pollock's most powerful supporter, insisted that their value lay purely in their formal elements, as he believed in the inherent value of abstract art, arguing that it offered the only means by which to say something new in a world increasingly full of conventional, representational images. He also believed that formal analysis held the key to aesthetic evaluation and that discussion of all other matters - such as theme and subject matter - was irrelevant. As art historian Anna Lovatt states, "the notion of the self-reflexive, autonomous medium propounded by modernist critics - most notably Clement Greenberg," became a leading trend in the twentieth century. In effect, while the idea of Art for Art's Sake had nominally fallen out of fashion by the early twentieth century, it continued to inform trends in modern art, and its emphasis on the value of art as disconnected from all thematic concerns, became the grounds for Greenberg's concepts of medium specificity, as well as his definition of the avant-garde and his arguments in favor of abstract art. As Lovatt adds, "[b]y emphasizing the opacity and autonomy of each 'medium', Greenberg disengaged the word from its relational and communicative connotations. Thus isolated, the modernist 'medium' was objectified and reified as a thing-in-itself, abstracted from the broader conditions of artistic production and reception."

Oil on canvas, with nails, buttons, tacks, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc. - The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

The Literary World and Théophile Gautier

The Swiss writer Benjamin Constant is thought to have been the first person to use the phrase "art for art's sake," in an 1804 diary entry. But the term is most often credited to the French philosopher Victor Cousin, who publicized it in his lectures of 1817-18. The idea of Art for Art's Sake - that art should not be judged on its relationship to social, political, or moral values, but purely for its formal and aesthetic qualities, first became popular amongst writers, encouraged by the French novelist Théophile Gautier. In the preface to his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), Gautier wrote that "nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly."

Gautier had first studied painting before turning to literature and, subsequently, he became a leading art critic, so that he influenced both the literary and visual-art worlds. The poet Charles Baudelaire , a famous art critic in his own right, dedicated his groundbreaking poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) to Gautier, whom he called "a perfect magician of French letters." In 1862 Gautier was elected chairman of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts) by a board that included Édouard Manet , Eugène Delacroix , and Gustave Doré among others. Gautier's view that aesthetic beauty was central to the value of art, and that thematically suggestive or didactic work often lacked this quality, became widely influential in securing the reputation of the Aesthetic movement.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

The American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler is generally credited with pioneering the concept of Art for Art's Sake within the visual arts. In his idiosyncratic art manifesto "The Red Rag" (1878) he wrote that "[a]rt should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone [...] and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like."

Whistler's assertion that visual art should not promote any particular subject-matter led him to compare it to the purely abstract domain of music. With reference to his "nocturnes," such as Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge (c. 1872-75), he described painting as "pure music," noting that "Beethoven and the rest wrote music [...] they constructed celestial harmonies [...] pure music."

In emphasizing the value of art for its own sake, Whistler helped to establish both the Aesthetic movement and Tonalism , the former movement having great currency in Britain, the latter in North America. In 1893, the critic George Moore, in his book Modern Painting , wrote that, "[m]ore than any other painter, Mr. Whistler's influence has made itself felt on English art. More than any other man, Mr Whistler has helped to purge art of the vice of subject and belief that the mission of the artist is to copy nature."

Aesthetic Movement

By 1860 the Aesthetic movement had emerged, coalescing around the influential idea of Art for Art's Sake, with its base in the United Kingdom. Informed by Whistler's pioneering work and Gautier's criticism, the movement became associated particularly with images of female beauty set against the decadence of the classical world, as exemplified by the work of artists such as Albert Joseph Moore and Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Aestheticism also overlapped with the worldview of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , including Dante Gabriel Rossetti , Edward Burne-Jones , and William Morris . These artists were wrapped up with what has been dubbed the "Cult of Beauty," a concept closely connected to the ideals of Art for Art's Sake, and suggesed that the formal power of the art work mattered above all else. However, many Pre-Raphaelites, such as Morris, were also invested in utopian politics, informed by an idealistic notion of the social structures of the medieval era. This suggests that the ideas of Art for Art's sake informed a slightly wider range of artistic philosophies than is sometimes imagined.

The canonical art critic Walter Pater became a leading proponent of Aestheticism. In his influential book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873) he stated that "art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality of your moments as they pass, and simply for these moments' sake." In so doing, he extended the concept of Art for Art's Sake to define the kind of experience that a viewer should derive from a particular artwork, rather than merely applying it to the artist's intentions.

The illustrator and pen-and-ink artist Aubrey Beardsley , who died in 1898 at the age of just 25, played several important roles in the development of Aestheticism - beyond his connection with the more famous Oscar Wilde . Beardsley's sketches, critical commentaries, and editorship of The Yellow Book , a literary magazine published in London from 1894 to 1897, all left their mark on the emergence of formalistic and Decadent strains during the British fin-de-siècle (the end of the nineteenth century). In fact, the literary content of The Yellow Book often represented fairly traditional veins within art criticism, while in terms of visual layout, as the art historian Linda Dowling writes, "[the] asymmetrically placed titles, lavish margins, abundance of white space, and relatively square page declare The Yellow Book 's specific and substantial debt to Whistler." Nonetheless, the journal's garish color - which associated it with illicit French novels - and Beardsley's often uncanny and grotesque illustrations, made the journal widely influential and ensured its scandalous reputation.

Decadent Movement

The Decadent movement, which began in the 1880s, developed alongside the Aesthetic movement and shared roots in the mid-nineteenth, with Beardsley a significant figure in both schools. The Decadent movement, however, was particularly associated with France, notably with the work of the French-based Belgian artist Félicien Rops. Rops was a peer of Charles Baudelaire, who had proudly declared himself a "decadent" in his Les Fleurs du Mal ("The Flowers of Evil") (1857), after which time the term became synonymous with a rejection of nineteenth-century banality, puritanism, and sentimentality. In 1886, the publication of the magazine Le Décadent in France gave the Decadent movement its name.

Théophile Gautier, for his part, saw the principles of decadence as reflecting a point of advanced aesthetic and cultural evolution - not to say fatigue and decay - within Western societies. "Art [has] arrived at that point of extreme maturity that determines civilizations which have grown old; ingenious, complicated, clever, full of delicate hints and refinements [...] listening to translate subtle confidences, confessions of depraved passions, and the odd hallucinations of a fixed idea turning to madness." In the Decadent movement, Art for Art's Sake meant not so much an emphasis on pure formal beauty as an ostentatious rejection or mockery of the ideologies and social positions for which art might have been expected to stand.

The Decadents, arguably led by Aubrey Beardsley in Britain - who was also central to the Aesthetic movement - emphasized the erotic, the scandalous, and the disturbing. The Yellow Book pioneered the trend of decadence in art, with Beardsley's drawings rumored in the press to be filled with hidden (or not so hidden) erotic and lewd references, emphasizing his defiance of Victorian moralism. As the art historian Sabine Doran writes, "from the moment of its conception, The Yellow Book presents itself as having a close relationship with the culture of scandal; it is, in fact, one of the progenitors of this culture."

The art of Tonalism , mainly based in North America, held no truck with the scandal-seeking decadence of Beardsley and his peers. However, with their glowing, mist-filled, atmospheric landscapes, the Tonalists pioneered a style that was, in its own way, equally committed to the notion of Art for Art's Sake.

Whistler was a lodestar for these artists. As the art historian David Adams Cleveland notes, Tonalism's "emphasis on balanced design, subtle patterning, and a kind of otherworldly equipoise came directly out of the Aesthetic movement and the work and artistic philosophy of Art for Art's Sake promoted by its greatest exponent, James McNeil Whistler." In works such as Nocturne: The River at Battersea (1878), Whistler emphasized mood and atmosphere while exploring a simplified, almost abstract landscape in terms of its color tonalities.

Art critic Grace Glueck describes Tonalism as "not really a movement, but a mix of tendencies that began to drift together around 1870." "[I]t remained a style without a name," she adds, "until the mid-1890s." Tonalism became a touchstone within US art, associated in particular with the North-American painters George Inness and Albert Pinkham Ryder , as well as the photographer Edward Steichen .

Whistler vs. Ruskin

Many of the principles of Art for Art's Sake were publicly exclaimed by James Abbott McNeill Whistler during a famous libel case, which pitted his views against those of the Victorian art critic John Ruskin . The roots of the dispute were in the founding of the Grosvenor gallery in London in 1877. The gallery promoted the Aesthetic movement, and, as Fiona MacCarthy notes, became a "fashionable talking shop. The gallery's proximity to the Royal Academy polarized opinion about the techniques and purposes of art."

It was this polarization of opinion which led Ruskin, a proponent of more traditional technical and moral values within art, to dismiss Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875), shown in the first Grosvenor exhibition, as the equivalent of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Never shy of publicity, Whistler sued Ruskin for libel, and the case came to court in 1878.

During the legal proceedings, Ruskin used a portrait of Vincenzo Catena's Portrait of the Doge, Andrea Gritti (1523-31), then thought to be painted by Titian , as an example of "real art" meant to counter Whistler's painting. By arguing his right to freedom from pre-imposed artistic standards, Whistler won the case. However, he was awarded only a single farthing in damages, and his legal expenses and the public controversy which the episode had caused severely impacted on his career, to the extent that he was forced to declare bankruptcy, subsequently moving to Paris.

Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Movement Teapot

Following Whistler's trial, the British public, as well as a number of powerful cultural figures, turned against the Aesthetic movement, and what they perceived as the indulgence and immorality of Art for Art's Sake. In 1881, the English dramatist W.S. Gilbert premiered Patience , a musical satirizing the leading Aesthetes, while cartoons lampooning Aestheticism appeared frequently in Punch , the leading British magazine of satire and humor.

Oscar Wilde, by this time already an established writer and a cultural celebrity, was often the target for attacks with homophobic overtones. As the art historian Sally-Anne Huxtable writes, he was "the most famous Aesthete of them all [...] at that time dressing in velvet breeches, lecturing on the topic of Art and supposedly quipping that he was 'finding it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue and white china'." In 1882, playing off the success of W.S. Gilbert's Patience , which had included a character based on Wilde called Bunthorne, the designer James Hadley, employed at the famous Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory, created his so-called Aesthetic Movement Teapot.

This piece mocks the ideals of aestheticism, particularly what was seen as its blurring of traditional gender roles. On the base of the pot appears the phrase "Fearful Consequences Through The Laws of Natural Selection & Evolution of Living up to One's Teapot," an allusion to Wilde's comment and to the idea - inferred by the public - that the Aesthetes thought they could make themselves beautiful by surrounding themselves with beautiful objects. (The line also mocks Darwin's recently published and not yet accepted theory of natural selection.) As Huxtable notes, the message of the work embodied "the self-styled 'sensible' and 'manly' world of the Victorian mainstream press", which "saw Aesthetes as effete poseurs." However, she also adds that the work became "the most iconic design object associated with British Aestheticism."

This said, the artistic debate that Hadley alluded to, masked an uglier hostility towards the homosexual tendencies seen to be wrapped up in ideas of Art for Art's Sake. Presenting a young man on one side and a young woman on the other, the teapot suggests the erosion of the traditional masculine and feminine qualities, encapsulating what Huxtable calls "the hysterical fears circulating in the 1880s about the effects that effeminacy and the blurring of gender roles might have on the future British population." These fears placed figures like Wilde in the spotlight, and in 1895, after two trials and much public scandal, he was sentenced to prison and two years' hard labor after being convicted of "gross indecency" for homosexual acts.

Concepts and Trends

The idea of aesthetic experience that informed Art for Art's Sake arguably has its roots in the work of eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who held that the true appreciation of art was a process disconnected from all worldly concerns. Subsequent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists and thinkers, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Thomas Carlyle, built upon Kant's ideas. Schiller's Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795) ("On the Aesthetic Education of Man"), inspired by Kant, developed the idea that appreciating art took the viewer away from social, political, or otherwise 'non-artistic' concerns: "beauty cajoles from [man] a delight in things for their own sake." As a result, when Benjamin Constant first used the phrase "art for art's sake" in 1804, he was coining a memorable phrase that captured an already important philosophical trend.

Art Criticism

A number of nineteenth-century art critics, particularly Théophile Gautier and Walter Pater, did much to establish the ideas of Art for Art's Sake. Pater famously described the possession of an artistic sensibility as meaning "[t]o burn always with [a] hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." As art historian Rachel Gurstein writes, "[s]uch an elevated, if extravagant, ideal of art demanded a new kind of criticism that would match, and even surpass, the intensity of the impressions that a painting evoked in the sensitive viewer, and the aesthetic critic responded with ardent prose poems of his own." She adds that "proper Victorians thought such a view of art and criticism immoral and irreligious. They were appalled by what they perceived as its decadence."

Effect on Art History

With their passionate criticism, Gautier and Pater influenced the evaluation not just of contemporary art but also of the Renaissance and classical work that influenced it. Rejecting the story-telling style and moral subject-matter of classical history painting, exemplified by Raphael and favored by the traditional academies, these two critics rediscovered the work of artists such as Botticelli . Additionally, as Rochelle Gurstein writes of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (c. 1503-19), "[a]lthough many writers associated with the art-for-art's sake movement in France and England paid enthusiastic tribute to the painting, Theophile Gautier and Walter Pater are now best known for launching it on its modern path to what is now inelegantly called 'iconicity.'"

Gautier described the "strange, almost magic charm which the portrait of Mona Lisa has for even the least enthusiastic natures." In his book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873), Pater called Mona Lisa "the symbol of the modern idea," in a lyrical passage that continues to inform our idea of what the painting represents. As Rachel Gurstein notes, "[i]n an incantatory paragraph, Pater portrayed the Mona Lisa in language that eclipsed Gautier's rhapsody and would relegate Giorgio Vasari to history. Indeed, this single passage so completely formed the imagination and the vision of art lovers who read it that no one - from Oscar Wilde to Bernard Berenson to Kenneth Clark - could speak of the Mona Lisa without uttering in the same breath that he, like everyone else of his generation, had committed Pater's luminous words to memory."

Opponents of Art for Art's Sake

From the beginning, the idea that art should be judged solely on a set of isolated aesthetic or formal criteria was opposed by a range of creatives and thinkers. Academic painters rejected the work associated with Art for Art's Sake as frivolous, lacking the moral purpose offered by the classical subjects which the Academy favored. Ruskin's criticism of Whistler's work encapsulates some aspects of this position.

Just as it was criticized by traditionalists, Art for Art's Sake also gradually fell afoul of emerging avant-garde trends in the arts. Gustave Courbet , the pioneer of Realism , generally seen as the first modern art movement, consciously distanced his aesthetic approach from Art for Art's Sake in 1854, while also rejecting the standards of the academy, presenting them as two sides of the same coin: "I was the sole judge of my painting [...] I had practiced painting not in order to make Art for Art's Sake, but rather to win my intellectual freedom."

Courbet's position anticipated that of many forward-thinking artists who felt, as the novelist George Sand wrote in 1872, that "Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for." Modernism and Avant-Garde trends in art increasingly became associated not with a mere decadent rejection of academic and Victorian morals, but with the proposition of alternative social, political, and ethical ideals.

Later Developments

According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, "[t]he Aesthetic project finally ended following the scandal of the trial, conviction and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality in 1895. The fall of Wilde effectively discredited the Aesthetic Movement with the general public, though many of its ideas and styles remained popular into the 20th century." With the decline of the Aesthetic movement, the phrase "art for art's sake" fell out of fashion, though it continued to exert a presence, often notably, in other countries.

In St. Petersburg in 1899 Sergei Diaghilev , along with Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, founded the magazine Mir iskusstva ("World of Art"). The magazine was allied with a group of young artists in St. Petersburg which had formed the World of Art movement the preceding year. Promoting Art for Art's Sake and artistic individualism, the group had perhaps its greatest impact through the formation of the groundbreaking Ballets Russes, which Diaghilev founded in 1907, and which operated until 1927.

The idea of Art for Art's Sake had a profound if somewhat paradoxical influence on avant-garde art. As art historian Doug Singsen notes, "the avant-garde was not simply a negation of l'art pour l'art but rather both a negation and continuation of it." Many leading twentieth-century artists dismissed it. Pablo Picasso stated "[t]his idea of art for art's sake is a hoax," while Wassily Kandinsky wrote that "[t]his neglect of inner meanings, which is the life of colours, this vain squandering of artistic power is called 'art for art's sake.'" Nonetheless, the concept was often met with ambiguity. Kandinsky empathized with the concept to a limited extent, describing it as "an unconscious protest against materialism, against the demand that everything should have a use and practical value."

The leading art critic Clement Greenberg , who promoted Abstract Expressionism in the post-World War II era, build his concepts of medium specificity and formalism upon the groundwork of Art for Art's Sake. As art historian Anna Lovatt writes, "Greenberg expanded the concept of art's autonomy as he developed his concept of medium specificity." Contemporary art historian Paul Bürger described the concept of Art for Art's Sake as fundamental to the evolution of the avant-garde and modernism in his influential 1974 text Theory of the Avant-Garde : "the autonomy of art is a category of bourgeois society. It permits the description of art's detachment from the context of practical life as a historical development."

Social historian Rochelle Gurstein notes that "Pater's style was a harbinger of modernity." His influence continued into the twentieth century, particularly among noted critics and writers. Contemporary critic Denis Donoghue describes Pater's influence as "a shade or trace in virtually every writer of significance from [Gerard Manley] Hopkins and [Oscar] Wilde to [John] Ashbery." During the era of postmodernism in literary studies, many critics also took an interest in Pater's worldview as a precursor to modern ideas of "deconstruction." In 1991, scholar Jonathan Loesberg argued in Aestheticism and Deconstruction: Pater, Derrida, and de Man that aestheticism and modern deconstruction produced similar forms of philosophical knowledge and political effect through a process of self-questioning or "self-resistance," and through the internal critique and destabilization of hegemonic truths.

In 2011 the Victoria & Albert Museum held The Cult of Beauty exhibition on the aesthetic movement. As curator Stephen Calloway noted, "the idea of looking at an art movement where, consciously, beauty and quality are central ideas, seems to me extraordinarily timely," suggesting that Art for Art's Sake is an idea with ongoing currency in the information and opinion-saturated contemporary world.

Useful Resources on Art for Art's Sake

• Art for Art's Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting Our Pick By Elizabeth Prettejohn
• The Aesthetic Movement By Lionel Lambourne
• Art for Art's Sake & Literary Life (Stages) By Gene H. Bell-Villada
• Aestheticism 1868-1900 Our Pick Google Arts and Culture
• The Theory of the Avant-Garde By Peter Bürger
• Aesthetics By Thomas Munro et al.
• The American Avant-Garde By Clement Greenberg
• Towards a Newer Laocoön Clement Greenberg
• The Mystic Smile Our Pick By Rochelle Gurstein / The New Republic / July 22,2002
• Kant and the Autonomy of Art By Casey Haskins / The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism / Vol. 47, no. 1, 1989, pp. 43-54
• The pre-Raphaelites: Art for art's sake: V&A to celebrate aesthetic movement By Mark Brown / The Guardian / September 14, 2010
• Kandinsky on "art for art's sake" By Elena Maslova-Levin / sonnetsincolour.org / December 25, 2014
• The Aesthetic Movement Our Pick By Fiona MacCarthy / The Guardian / March 26, 2011
• Art vs. aestheticism: the case of Walter Pater Our Pick By Roger Kimball / New Criterion / May 1995
• What Is Tonalism? (12 Essential Characteristics) By David Adams Cleveland / Artsy / July 10, 2015
• The Misty Mood of the Tonalists By Grace Glueck / New York Times / April 25, 1997
• Pure Art, Pure Desire: Changing Definitions of 'L'art Pour L'art' from Kant to Gautier By Margueritte Murphy / Studies in Romanticism / Bol. 47, no. 2, 2008, pp. 147-160.
• The Beginnings of l'Art Pour l'Art By John Wilcox / The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism / Vol. 11, no. 4, 1953, pp. 360-377
• INDIVIDUALISM: Art for Art's Sake, or Art for Society's Sake? By Suzi Gablik
• Ideas in Transmission: LeWitt's Wall Drawings and the Question of Medium By Anna Lovatt / Tate Papers / No.14, Autumn 2010
• The Red Rag By James McNeill Whistler / Obelisk / 1878
• Artists v critics, round one By Jonathan Jones / The Guardian / June 26, 2003
• The Historical Avant-Garde from 1830 to 1939: l'art pour l'art, blague, and Our Pick By Doug Singsen / Gesamtkunstwerk / August 30, 2020
• Théophile Gautier: Posthuman Decadence and the Philosophy of Closure Dr. Rinaldi's Horror Cabinet / August 30, 2015
• Living Up To One's Teapot: Oscar Wilde, Aestheticism and Victorian Satire Our Pick By Dr. Sally-Anne Huxtable / National Museums Scotland / March 23, 2021
• An Introduction to the Aesthetic Movement Victoria and Albert Museum
• Dangerous Ideas By Tom Ball / telos tv / October 27, 2017
• The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 Our Pick Victoria and Albert Museum / March 26, 2019

Related Artists

Related Movements & Topics

Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Greg Thomas

Art for Art’s Sake – The Meaning of Art for its Own Sake

What is the meaning of art for art’s sake? Creating art for the sake of art refers to making “true” art that is not based on any practical function or tied to any specific social values. This concept has permeated several movements and styles, leaving a significant mark on the world of art through the years. Below, we explore all there is to know about the concept of art for the sake of art!

Table of Contents

• 1 The Meaning of Art for Art’s Sake
• 2.1 Important Figures
• 3 Critics of Art for Art’s Sake
• 4.1 The Aesthetic Movement
• 4.2 The Decadent Movement
• 4.3 Tonalism
• 5 Art for Art’s Sake’s Effect on Art History
• 6 The Later Developments of Art for Art’s Sake
• 7.1 Impact on Art Mediums and Art Theory
• 8.1 What Is the Meaning of Art for Art’s Sake?
• 8.2 Is Art for the Sake of Art Still Relevant Today?

The Meaning of Art for Art’s Sake

Art for the sake of art is the belief held by certain artists that art has intrinsic worth irrespective of any political, social, or ethical relevance. They believe that art should be assessed only on its own merits: whether it is aesthetically pleasing or not, and capable of creating a sense of awe in the observer through its formal features. 

This idea became a rallying cry across 19th-century France and Britain, partially in response to the suffocating moralism that characterized much academic art and broader culture, with writer Oscar Wilde arguably its most prominent defender. Although the expression has seldom been employed since the early 20th century, its impact and legacy can be observed in a number of 20th-century ideas about art’s autonomy, particularly in different kinds of formalism.

The Origins of the Concept of Art for the Sake of Art

This concept can be traced back to the European Romantic movement , notably in Germany and England, when artists and intellectuals started advocating for the idea that art should be appreciated for its intrinsic characteristics rather than for any external or utilitarian role. Prior to this change, art was often considered a way of communicating certain political, religious, or moral ideas, or as a kind of social commentary. Artists were required to follow particular rules and regulations, and their artwork was judged based on its ability to represent certain concepts or ideals. 

As the Romantic movement gained traction, however, there was a rising desire for artistic freedom that would break away from these restraints and enable art to exist and be enjoyed solely for its visual and emotional impact.

Important Figures

One of the significant individuals involved with the formation of the notion of art for the sake of art was Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher. Kant asserted in his important book The Critique of Judgment (1790) that the ultimate goal of art was to offer an enjoyable experience independent of any utilitarian or moral concerns. He stressed the autonomous nature of aesthetic judgments, implying that the significance and value of art lay in its ability to elicit pleasure in the observer.

Another significant individual who believed in art for art’s sake was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a critic, and poet from England. He asserted that the essential goal of art was to provoke and communicate emotions, arguing that art should be independent of any external aim or message. Coleridge’s opinions, like those of other Romantic writers like John Keats and William Wordsworth, contributed to the emerging movement that valued art for its own inherent merits. In the 19th century, the idea of art for art’s sake continued to expand and gain popularity, notably through the works of French figures such as Charles Baudelaire, Walter Pater, and Théophile Gautier.

In his prologue to the book of poems Émaux et Camées (1852), Gautier famously wrote, “Art for art’s sake”, demonstrating how popular the idea had grown.

Being artistically inclined, according to Pater, is “to shine constantly with a hard, gem-like fire, and to preserve this ecstasy, is an accomplishment in life”. As one historian put it, “Such a heightened, if excessive, ideal of art sought a new kind of critique that would meet, and even exceed, the power of the impressions that a work of art stirred in the responsive audience, and the aesthetic critic answered with passionate poems of his own. Proper Victorians considered such a vision of art and criticism to be sinful and irreligious. They were horrified by what they considered to be debauchery”.

Critics of Art for Art’s Sake

Many artists and intellectuals have challenged the notion that art should be evaluated purely on a set of discrete aesthetic or formal standards from the start. Academic artists disagreed with the Art for Art’s Sake movement because they argued that it lacked the moral significance that the Academy’s preferred classical topics provided. Certain aspects of this perspective are expressed in Ruskin’s critique of Whistler’s artwork. Art for art’s sake was derided by the new avant-garde movements in the arts, similar to how traditionalists condemned it, despite both movements being on the extreme opposite sides of the art spectrum.

In 1854, Gustave Courbet, the founder of Realism, widely regarded as the first modern art movement , intentionally made a distinction between his aesthetic philosophy and art for art’s sake and rejected the academy’s standards, portraying them as two opposing sides of essentially the same coin: “I was the sole judge of my artwork. In order to gain my intellectual independence, I had been practicing painting, not creating art for the sake of creating art”. Courbet’s perspective mirrored that of numerous other forward-thinking artists who believed, as author George Sand said in 1872, that “art for art’s sake is a meaningless term. That is the faith I seek: art for truth’s sake, art created for the sake of the beautiful and the good”.  

Avant-Garde and Modernism art movements became more closely associated with the advancement of alternative political, social, and ethical values, rather than just a hedonistic disdain of academic and Victorian standards.

Art Movements Associated with Art for Art’s Sake

Benjamin Constant, the Swiss writer, is considered to have first used the term “art for art’s sake” in a diary entry from 1804. The concept was popularized among authors, largely thanks to Théophile Gautier, the novelist from France. James Abbott McNeill Whistler , the renowned artist from the States is often considered the forefather of the idea of art for art’s sake in the visual arts. Whistler’s stance that visual art should not be used for representing a certain theme led him to equate it to the abstract sphere of music. Whistler contributed to the development of both the Aesthetic movement and Tonalism by highlighting the significance of art for the sake of art.

The Aesthetic Movement

The Aesthetic movement had begun to emerge by 1860, based in the United Kingdom, and focused on the essential principles of art for art’s sake. The movement came to be associated with depictions of feminine beauty juxtaposed against the decadent nature of the classical world, as represented by the works of painters such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Albert Joseph Moore, who were influenced by Whistler’s pioneering work and Gautier’s critique. Aestheticism also intersected with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s worldview, which included Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti , and William Morris.

These artists became consumed by the “Cult of Beauty”, a concept significantly related to the principles of art for the sake of art that suggested that the formal force of the art piece was more important than anything else.

Yet, many Pre-Raphaelites, like Morris, were also involved in utopian politics, driven by an idealized view of medieval social institutions. This indicates that the concepts of art for art’s sake influenced a wider variety of artistic ideologies than is often assumed. Walter Pater rose to prominence as a strong proponent of Aestheticism. He remarked in his works that art comes to one offering openly to provide nothing but the finest qualities to one’s passing moments, merely for the sake of these moments.

In doing so, Pater broadened the idea to describe the sort of experience that someone looking at it should have from a certain artwork, instead of simply applying it to the intentions of the artist. Aubrey Beardsley, an illustrator, was also influential in the development of the Aestheticism movement. Beardsley’s editorship, drawings, and critical commentary in The Yellow Book , a literary journal published from 1894 to 1897, all had an impact on the formation of formalistic and Decadent tendencies around the turn of the century in Britain.

The Decadent Movement

Emerging in the 1880s, the Decadent movement flourished alongside the Aesthetic movement and shared its origins in the mid-19th century, with Beardsley playing an important role in both movements. The Decadent movement, though, was mostly associated with France, particularly with the artwork of Félicien Rops, a Belgian artist who lived in France. Rops was a contemporary of Charles Baudelaire, who proudly called himself a “decadent” in 1857, and the phrase grew to be associated with a rejection of 19th-century puritanism, dreariness, and sentimentality. Art for art’s sake, as defined by the Decadent movement, was an apparent rejection or mocking of the philosophies and societal positions for which art would have been expected to represent. The Decadents focused on the sexual, disturbing, and scandalous. 

Beardsley’s illustrations in The Yellow Book were reported in the press to be laden with concealed erotic references, demonstrating his rejection of Victorian moralism.

Tonalism, which was mostly practiced in North America, had nothing to do with the scandal-seeking decadent nature of Beardsley and his contemporaries. The Tonalists, however, established a style that was equally dedicated to the concept of art for the sake of art, with their misty and glowing atmospheric landscapes. The Tonalism movement’s emphasis on delicate patterning, balanced design, and otherworldliness arose directly from the Aesthetic movement and the works and creative philosophies of art for the sake of art championed by its most prominent advocate, James McNeil Whistler.

He focused on mood and ambiance while experimenting with a simpler, almost abstract world in terms of color tonality. Tonalism, according to some art critics, was a collection of trends that began to converge about 1870, and was not really a unified movement. It stayed an unnamed style until the mid-1890s. Tonalism became a significant influence in American art, particularly in the work of North American artists Albert Pinkham Ryder and George Inness, in addition to Edward Steichen, the photographer.

Art for Art’s Sake’s Effect on Art History

Pater and Gautier’s intense critique affected not just the evaluation of contemporary artwork, but also of the classical and Renaissance artwork that preceded it. Rejecting the story-telling technique and ethical subject matter of classical history art, as illustrated by Raphael and celebrated by conventional academies, these two critics reexamined the works of artists like Botticelli. 

Furthermore, according to Rochelle Gurstein, “while numerous authors associated with the Art for the Sake of Art movement in England and France paid enthusiastic respect to the artwork, Pater and Gautier have become most recognized for launching it on its current path to what is now inelegantly referred to as iconicity”.

Gautier emphasized the peculiar, almost magical allure that the Mona Lisa possesses for even the greatest skeptics. Pater dubbed the Mona Lisa “the emblem of the modern idea”, in a poetic statement that continues to shape our understanding of what the painting signifies. In fact, no one – from Bernard Berenson to Oscar Wilde – could speak of the painting without referring to Pater’s illuminated words, which many of them had committed to memory.

The Later Developments of Art for Art’s Sake

Following the controversy of Oscar Wilde’s trial, conviction, and incarceration in 1895 for homosexuality, the Aesthetic movement came to an end. Oscar Wilde’s fall from public grace largely discredited the Aesthetic Movement in the eyes of the people in general, but many of its concepts and forms persisted into the 20th century. With the demise of the Aesthetic movement, the expression “art for art’s sake” fell out of favor, yet it remained prominent in other countries. Léon Bakst, Sergei Diaghilev, and Alexandre Benois launched the periodical Mir Iskusstva in St. Petersburg in 1899. The journal was affiliated with the World of Art movement, which was founded the previous year by a group of young painters in St. Petersburg.

The organization, which promoted art for the sake of art and creative independence, undoubtedly had its biggest influence through the founding of the pioneering Ballets Russes, which Diaghilev formed in 1907 and managed until 1927.

The concept of art for the sake of art had a significant, if sometimes counterintuitive, impact on avant-garde art . The avant-garde was not merely a rejection of art for the sake of art, but also in many senses a continuation of it. Many prominent 20th-century painters ignored it or derided it. Pablo Picasso declared that art for the sake of art was a deception, whereas Wassily Kandinsky argued that art for the sake of art refers to the disregard of underlying meanings, which is the life of colors, and the waste of artistic power.

Despite this, the idea was often greeted with ambiguity. To a certain extent, Kandinsky understood the idea, defining it as an inner reaction against materialism, against the requirement that everything must have a utilitarian function. Clement Greenberg, a famous art critic who advocated Abstract Expressionism after WWII, based his notions of media specificity and formalism on the foundations of art for art’s sake. As he established his idea of media specificity, Greenberg broadened the concept of art’s autonomy. According to historian Paul Bürger, the theory of art for the sake of art was an important factor in the emergence of avant-garde and modernist artworks.

He considered art autonomy to be a characteristic of bourgeois society. Pater’s style foreshadowed modernism. His impact lasted well into the 20th century, especially among notable critics and authors. Many literary critics were interested in Pater’s perspective as a predecessor to current theories of deconstruction during the postmodernism era. Aestheticism and modern deconstruction, according to scholars, developed comparable kinds of philosophical knowledge through the act of self-questioning, as well as internal critique and the disruption of hegemonic beliefs.

The Influence of Art for Art’s Sake in the Modern Era

The concept of appreciating art for its inherent characteristics was fundamental in the development of many movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Notable art movements such as Symbolism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism , and Abstract Expressionism, welcomed the concept of art as a vehicle of personal expression and concentrated on examining the formal components of art. These movements stressed the importance of subjective interpretation and experimentation with new creative approaches to the aesthetic experience. It has additionally promoted the concepts of artistic independence and individuality in art.

Modern artists are free to follow their creative visions without any regard for external expectations or obligations.

This artistic liberation has resulted in the exploration of new concepts and materials and an erosion of established aesthetic limitations. The emphasis on aesthetic experience has become a major feature of modern art evaluation. Audiences are invited to interact with art on a far more personal level, examining their intellectual and emotional reactions. As a result, instead of depending on predetermined interpretations or messages, there is now an increased focus on the individual’s perception and experience of art.

Impact on Art Mediums and Art Theory

The idea of appreciating art for the sake of art has inspired artists to experiment with and push beyond the limits of their artistic mediums. As a result, new types of art such as installation art, performance art, video art, and digital art have emerged and flourished. These mediums typically value aesthetic enjoyment and exploration far more than the need for any practical purpose or social commentary.

This idea has spawned various theoretical debates regarding the nature and meaning of art.

It has prompted discussions regarding the importance of aesthetics, artistic autonomy, the connection between art and the society in which it was created, and the significance of artistic expression. The discourse around contemporary art has been fundamentally shaped by these conversations, and it still influences the way we make and critique art today.

Many British, French, and American authors, painters, and supporters of the Aesthetic movement, like Walter Pater, embraced the idea of art for the sake of art. It was seen as a vehement rejection of Victorian-era moralism, as well as the practice of art serving the official religion or state since the Counter-Reformation of the 16th century. The Impressionist movement and contemporary art movement were able to express themselves freely as a result of this change in direction. This idea arose in opposition to those who believed that the intrinsic value of art depended on having some moral objective. The idea of art for the sake of art is still relevant in today’s debates over censorship, as well as the nature of art in general.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the meaning of art for art’s sake.

For much of art history, artworks were produced to serve a specific function in society. They tended to be produced to communicate certain religious and political ideals. The concept of art for the sake of art, however, revolves around the idea that art should first and foremost be created and appreciated for the sheer aesthetic pleasures of art. Many notable French and English authors embraced the idea that art required no justification, that it was not required to fulfill any specific purpose, and that the aesthetic appeal of the fine arts was more than enough reason for exploring them.

Is Art for the Sake of Art Still Relevant Today?

This concept changed the way people both produced and enjoyed art. Today, artists are able to create works that are not required to meet any specific criteria or advocate any specific idea. They can produce art for the pleasure of producing art, and it can be appreciated merely for its intrinsic aesthetic qualities. This is a huge departure from the time when artists were forced to produce work to fulfill commissions from the state or religious institutes. This effectively changed art from a means of spreading propaganda to an expression of the artist’s inner world. 

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Art for Art’s Sake – The Meaning of Art for its Own Sake.” Art in Context. July 10, 2023. URL: https://artincontext.org/art-for-arts-sake/

Meyer, I. (2023, 10 July). Art for Art’s Sake – The Meaning of Art for its Own Sake. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/art-for-arts-sake/

Meyer, Isabella. “Art for Art’s Sake – The Meaning of Art for its Own Sake.” Art in Context , July 10, 2023. https://artincontext.org/art-for-arts-sake/ .

Similar Posts

Early Renaissance – Exploring the Early Italian Renaissance Art Period

Trench Art – From the Front Lines to Fine Art

What Are Artifacts? – The Historical and Cultural Value of Objects

Readymade Art – The Legacy of Repurposed Art

Post-Minimalism – A Detailed Movement Overview

Pyramids of Giza – Everything About the Great Pyramids of Giza

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors!

Oscar Wilde on Art for Art's Sake

George p. landow.

[ Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Aesthetes and Decadents —> Oscar Wilde —> Liteary relations ]

Wilde continues: “It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is its sterility.” Wilde, as in so much of his writing, here follows John Ruskin , who argued against both didactic art and the commonplace eighteenth-century theory that beauty in art and nature derive from utility. Wilde characteristically continues by asserting that “if the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression” (478). Again, one can see that Wilde does not want to function as propaganda or indoctrination, but given that, according to him, art creates a mood, it cannot be sterile, superbly or otherwise.

The sloganeering continues when Wilde adds in his second and last paragraph that “A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental, It is a misuse. All this is very obscure. But the subject is a long one” (478-79). Yes, it is, but Wilde here doesn't manage to rise above naive sentimentalism, for flowers do not blossom for their “own joy” — the very notion lapses into what Ruskin called the Pathetic (that is, emotional) Fallacy . In fact, flowers exist in a complex network of relations with their environment that includes other organisms. Throughout their history flowering plants entered into complex symbiotic relationships with insects. Later in their history, millions of years after they first evolved, they engaged human beings who worked hard to cultivate and develop flowers for their beauty. By ignoring these complex relationships, which provide the context of floral beauty, Wilde reveals the essential superficiality of the notion of art for art's sake.

Wilde of course does not really believe in Art for Art's Sake, something he makes in his richer works from “The Decay of Lying” to De Profundis .

Related material

• Aesthetes, Decadents, and the Idea of Art for Art's Sake

Bibliography

Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Letters . Ed. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Fourth Estate, 2000.

Last modified 18 November 2017

• Increase Font Size

15 Art for Art’s Sake

Dr. Valiur Rehman

This module defines and characterizes the decadent literary movement and the critical school called Art for Art’s Sake or Aestheticism. It includes a brief literature review, etymology, genesis, and practitioners of Art for Art’s Sake along with their distinct principles and critical reception before 1960 and after.

Introduction

Art for Art’s Sake is a slogan of the literary movement Aestheticism developed in the Decadent period. The opening verse lines of John Keats’s Endymion , “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever / Its loveliness increases / it will never / Pass into nothingness” epitomize the principles represented through the slogan. Keats, therefore, is regarded as progenitor of Aestheticism.

The major pronouncement of Literature produced under the impact of Art for Art’s Sake is that Literature reveals the power of beauty and taste before its readers and audiences. Art for Art’s Sake is the trans-creation of l’art pour l’art , which has expounded the tenets of the Aestheticism. Thus, Art for Art’s Sake and Aestheticism has similar salient features as literary movements. Literally, Aestheticism is concerned with ‘a set of principles, the nature, and appreciation of beauty’ (COED 11th Edition). There are authors and artists who consciously have elevated the art to a position of supreme importance and to an autonomous sphere. Such artists or authors are the Aesthetes. They believe that the art has no social function. They attempt to separate artistry from life-description. The works of Théophile Gautier (1811-72) and his followers in France; the works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and his followers in the America; and the works of Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894) and his followers in England expounded the Art for Art’s Sake as the literary movement.

J. E. Spingarn’s essay “Art for Art’s Sake: A Query” (1907) reports that the term Art for Art’s Sake is found in Thackeray’s letter written in 1839: “Please God we shall begin, ere long, to love art for art’s sake” ( Chapter From Some Memoirs 1895). However, the literary historians think that the outset of Art for Art’s Sake is firstly observed in Victor Cousin’s series of lectures  delivered in 1818, which was published later, entitled Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good (1854). Cousin mentions in the lecture:

We must have religion for religion’s sake, morality for morality’s sake, as with art for art’s sake . . . the beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself. (Quoted in Stephen Davies et al. Companion to Aesthetics 129)

Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957), in an essay “Saintsbury and Art for Art’s Sake in England” (1944) justifies Saintsbury as the follower of the Art for Art’s Sake and the English aesthetic critic. In this essay she epitomizes the objective of Art for Art’s Sake by illustrating one of Saintsbury’s statements (1895): “The whole end, aim, and object of literature … as of all art … is beauty” (Richardson). Albert Guérard in the essay “Art for Art’s Sake” has also defined it in terms of signifying Literature as the paramount object of beauty:

Art for Art’s Sake means Art Dominant, Life for the Sake of Art, life subordinated to the service of beauty, a pilgrimage to the Land of Esthetic Promise…Art for Art’s Sake is best revealed, not in the impalpably inane, but in clashes with reality. The evangel of Beauty refuses to submit to Science, Business, Morality, the three idols of the modern world.

Frank Kermode in Romantic Image (1957) discusses Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium” in terms of Baudelaire’s concept of artificial paradise and has defined Art for Art’s Sake as the act of self-forgotten artist. Kermode clarifies it saying:

The paradise in which labour and beauty are one, where beauty is self-begotten and costs nothing, is the artificial paradise of a poet deeply disturbed by the cost in labour … The  artist himself may be imagined, therefore, a change-less thing of beauty, purged of shapelessness and commonness induced by labour, himself a self-begotten and self- delighting marble or bronze.

R. V. Johnson in Aestheticism (1969) has studied the aestheticism in three different applications:

• “as a view of art,” which applies for the core principle of the literary movement Art for Art’s Sake. It expresses that the art does not produce the effect of other reasons but of its own; and that the artistry makes an object a thing of beauty. Therefore, it is not the content or the subject matter but the art that sublimates a work of art. From this perspective, perhaps, Wilde in his “The Decay of Lying” (1889) has declared that lying is the proper aim of art. ( The Artist as Critic 320)
• “as a practical tendency in literature” which applies on principle that the writer is an artist and he is not a propagandist. He is not a reporter of the lives. Frank Kermode also agrees: “Art for art’s sake is a derisory sentiment, yet questions of the morality of the work will usually be answered in terms of its perfection, not of its ‘message’.” (Kermode 195) In fact, this principle was a reaction stood against artistry for the bourgeois hedonism.
• “as a view of life” for which Johnson has used “contemplative aestheticism” which refers to the art of treating the artist’s experience to represent life through elevated spirit of art that produces the aesthetic enjoyment (p 12). The artist or the writer must have the capacity to beautify his or her experience in such a manner that an experience of light incident can influence the mind of the audience. Poe’s poem, “The Bells” posthumously published in 1849 is a fine example of onomatopoetic artistry. A diacope, or repetition and reverberation of a word “bell” evoke sentiments in the reader.

Development of Art for Art’s Sake  

Art for Art’s Sake has its classical root in Alexandrian men of letters; its philosophical root in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s concept of ‘aesthetics’; and its expansion in Kantian philosophy of beauty and taste. The eclectic philosopher of France, Victor Cousin was the first one to introduce l’art pour l’art to literature. The French symbolist poet and critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) as an aesthete influenced Walter Pater whom Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) had followed throughout his life and brought out the Aesthetic movement by advocating literature across the dichotomy of good and evil. The notorious words of Walter Pater, “The office of the poet is not that of a moralist” (Pater 1986, 427) echoed in the works of Oscar Wilde. Megan Becker-Leckrone in Julian Wolfreys’s edited book, Modern British and Irish Criticism and Theory writes in this regards, “Like Pater’s, Wilde’s concept of aesthetic autonomy belongs to and raises the stakes of this intellectual current. If art does not primarily ‘copy’ life or nature, then what does it do? Wilde’s provocative response to this question at once severs and reverses this mimetic relationship, proposing instead that ‘Life imitates Art’” (2006, 18). Thus, Walter Pater typified the Art for Art’s Sake as literary movement called Aestheticism in England while Oscar Wilde strengthened it and culminated in it.

Aesthetics is an umbrella term. It has many facets, and multicolored rib tips like aesthetics of action, aesthetics of imitation, aesthetics of imagination, aesthetics of taste, aesthetics of existence and violence etc. etc. For example, Plato’s theory of ‘imitation’ and his paradigm of the cave explore the aesthetics of the composition of Truth. Aristotle’s theory of ‘imitation’ and ‘action’ explore the aesthetics of the catharsis. Plotinus’s theory of esoteric wisdom explores the aesthetics of insulatory description of beauty, and power of the beauty to elevate man from his  state of thought to the contemplation of the universe. Thus, Aesthetics as discipline, which studies the nature and appreciation of beauty, may have many dimensions to appreciate the artistic beauty whereas Aesthetic (word without /s/) is used for the literary movement emerged in the Decadent period. Aesthetic movement sublimated art as pure reason and beauty of human existence. The works, written under the impact of the Decadent literary movement, have exemplified the elements of Art for Art’s Sake.

The ideal of Art for Art’s Sake is observed in the work of four of the ablest Alexandrian men of letters who worked as librarians of the famous ancient library—Library of Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy I, the king of Egypt in 3rd BC – Zenodotus, Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus. “All four approached literary texts as aesthetic experiences to be enjoyed; they show little interest in moralizing or allegorizing, and their one concern was with the integrity of the text.” (Kennedy 205) Nevertheless, Aesthetics could not be popularized as a discipline or a school of thought, nor could even develop the believe: ‘art lives for herself’.

The German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, in his dissertation “Philosophical Considerations of Some Matters Pertaining to the Poem” (1714-68) introduced the term aesthetics in 1835 to mean “a science of how things are to be known by means of the senses.” Four years later, Baumgarten had extrapolated that definition in Metaphysica adding the “logic of the lower cognitive faculty, the philosophy of the graces and the muses, lower gnoseology, the art of thinking beautifully, the art of the analog of reason.” Another decade later, Baumgarten delivered some lectures on aesthetics in Frankfurt in 1742. His Aesthetica (1750- 58), a monumental fragment, contains these lectures. It was the first treatise published under the  title of the new subject. He combined his two previous definitions to form his final definition of the subject: “Aesthetics (the theory of the liberal arts, lower gnoseology, the art of thinking beautifully, the art of the analog of reason) is the science of sensitive cognition” He would appreciated ‘form’ as an important element of the beautiful work of art.

Since the Art for Art’s Sake is primarily concerned with taste and beauty, Emanuel Kant’s Critique for Judgment (1790) has its philosophic root. Kant revived A.G. Baumgarten’s term ‘aesthetics’ and experienced art as a sufficient entity of the universe. He considered aesthetics as the realm of disinterested pleasure. It pleases for its own sake. The source of pleasure is the taste of beauty. Victor Cousin elucidated Kant referentially and applied his philosophy of Taste and Beauty as an approach to understanding the art. Theophile Gautier (1811-72) wrote a ‘Preface’ to his novel Mademoiselle du Maupin (1836), formulated the classic expression of one extreme pole in the debate declaring the categorical independence of l’art pour l’art , or the art for art’s sake. Art, in Gautier’s view, is wholly opposed to utility and life.

The American poet Edger Allen Poe’s “The Poetic Principle” (1850) argues for the role and the power of beauty in the composition of the poetry:

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.

… pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the  soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart (“The Poetic Principle”)

This definition of poetry implies poetic autonomy –the poetry does not have any concern with things other than beauty and ‘taste of beauty” which function to elevate reader’s consciousness. The German philosopher Schopenhauer, the French Gautier and American Poe influenced Charles-Pierre Baudelaire’s anti-idealist vision of art and poetry. Baudelaire encouraged symbolist movements. He wrote about the ugliest subjects in the most beautiful manner. He as an aesthetician emphasised on two things: poetic automaton and imagination. But his theory of imagination, unlike Romanticists, refers to the creative faculty of the individual which capacitates him to grasp everything as ‘hieroglyphic’( Paris Spleen & La Fanfarlo, 2008, xxvi). Romantics worshipped nature for her nurseling and nourishing power. The Nature is an inspiring force for the poets of romantic imagination whereas Baudelaire as aesthete looks at Nature as a ‘pitiless enchantress’:

And now the depth of the sky troubles me; its limpidity exasperates me. The indifference of the sea, the immutability of the scene repulses me . . . Oh, must one either suffer eternally, or eternally flee the beautiful? Nature, you pitiless enchantress, you always victorious rival, leave me alone! Stop arousing my desires and my pride! The study of the beautiful is a duel, one that ends with the artist crying out in terror before being vanquished. (“The Artist’s Confiteor” in Paris Spleen & La Fanfarlo 7)

In his “Salon” (1859), he states that “imagination is the queen of truth … affects all the other faculties; it rouses them, it sends them into combat … It is analysis, it is synthesis … It is imagination that has taught man the moral meaning of color, of outline, of sound, and of perfume.” Baudelaire thinks Poe as a true poet who believed that poetry should have no object in view other than itself. He had firm faith that a man of imagination can beautifully write about the ugliest of human life. In his words:

The whole visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of food which the imagination must digest and transform. All the powers of the human soul must be subordinated to the imagination, which commandeers them all at one and the same time.

Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (1857) became the subject of a trial for obscenity in the same year for including some lesbian poems. He never takes care of subjects – high or low, as Shelley and Arnold has instructed to choose the “best thought” expressed with “high seriousness.” The French Symbolism remained an aesthetic movement caused by a reaction against romanticism, realism, and naturalism. Baudelaire, unlike Parnassian poets of France, followed Gautier for his emphasis on independent art as the highest form of human faculty:

It was to be an art not of mimesis but of expression, an art akin to music, that highest of all the arts according to Schopenhauer, and they reiterated Edgar Allan Poe’s statement, quoted by Baudelaire, that “it is in music perhaps that the soul most nearly attains … the creation of supernal beauty”.

Walton Litz et al remind us: “Gautier’s discussion would prompt the more probing reflections of Baudelaire in his celebrated essays on ‘The Poetic Principle’ (1850) and ‘New Notes on Edgar Poe’ (1859), and the work of both authors would migrate across the English Channel to reappear in complex ways in the works of Ruskin, Pater, Swinburne, and Wilde.”

The English Aestheticism

We  have  discussed  A.  G.  Baumgarten’s  coinage  of  ‘aesthetics’  in  the  18th   century  and its subsequent exposition in Kant’s Critique of Judgment as the result of disinterested perception. When writers of the age of doubt i.e. Victorian era tended to signify the religious cause for the life upholding against geological hypotheses, Darwinism, destructive action of science, and material revolution; when Spencer’s idea of social reality, and Huxley’s disposition of relationship between science and society, an anti-realist and anti-bourgeois disposition was also taking place in the form of two literary movements: the Pre-Raphaelite and Aestheticism. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 in England for signifying the moralized and serious art of the Middle Ages. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had ambition to reinvent the advent of the Renaissance artist Raphael and before Raphael while Aesthetic writers followed  the Parnassian poets of France inspired by Théophile Gautier and Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894), and adopted an ethic of “art for art’s sake”, and Baudelaire who was influenced by Gautier and Edgar Allan Poe’s theories of poetic composition. Since Aestheticism developed in 1889-90, it was a decadent event in the history of English literature and criticism. Its doctrines were reverberated through the aesthetics of Kant, many of the Romantics, the French Parnassians, the Pre-Raphaelites, the symbolists, the decadents, and the critical programs of the twentieth-century formalists, yet remained unique and known for its singular characteristic i.e. the work of art has no  other  function  than  to  be  a  work  of  art.  Aestheticians  of  Decadence  denied  the social,  religious, cathartic and moral function of art. They seem very experimental in approaches to opting subjects for artistic representation. Their dispositions maybe enumerated as:

• expression of artificial eroticism and sexual perversion.
• an intense self-consciousness of authorship,
• development of a restless curiosity in research and innovative approaches to experience
• subtilising refinement upon refinement
• a spiritual and moral perversity to the quest for a purity of experience and sensation.
• a disembodied voice, upholding the voice of a human soul
• a self-conscious experimental reflection of a perceived breakdown in social and cultural unity

Scottish essayist, historian and social critic, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and John Ruskin (1819-1900) English writer, art critic, and reformer, were among intellectuals of the Victorian period. Both praised beauty and its power to change the contemporary mindset. From this point of view, they are aestheticians as critics have conceded it. However, their inclination was to observe art in relation to its unavoidable function i.e. to moralize. Carlyle’s philosophical satire, Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored), first published between 1833 and 1834 in Fraser’s Magazine, seems autobiographical, but it affirms his spiritual idealism. He, in the guise of a “philosophy of clothes,” comments on the hollowness of materialism. His On Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) exemplifies Carlyle’s thought about the power of art and literature.

John Ruskin is popular literary figure for his monumental studies of architecture and its social and historical significance. His The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), its sequel, The Stones of  Venice (1851) , and the first volume of Modern Painters (1843-60) carried on the theme of relationship between art and morality . His idea of “Pathetic Fallacy,” pronounces the power of artist who can incarnate the sensation of living being in the non-living thing. The “Pathetic Fallacy” exemplifies one of the ethics of Art for Art’s Sake, yet Ruskin has maintained that art is nothing without its moral function.

Aestheticism of decadent period, as we have discussed earlier in this essay, advocates for the art minus its classical functions: to moralize, to reflect society, to imitate life, to propagate the truth etc. Walter Pater and his disciple Oscar Wilde brought forth this idea to the British culture of letters.

The English essayist and critic Walter Pater (1839-1894) developed British Aesthetic. He treats art for its pleasurable effects on reader. He explains that art should never be didactic , hortatory, religious, political, and practical. He introduced the French decadents, aesthetes, and symbolists to the English society. He followed Gautier and Baudelaire for their emphasis on the perfection of art and its self-sufficiency. For Pater, a word may include everything of which poetry is born. A unit of sound may present the whole meaning. A.C. Bradley in “Poetry for Poetry’s Sake” says, “What is the gist of Pater’s teaching about style, if it is not that in the end the one virtue of style is truth or adequacy; that the word, phrase, sentence, should express perfectly the writer’s perception, feeling, image, or thought.”

Pater concludes Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) saying that art gives pleasure for its own sake. He declares, “art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.’ His novel Marius the Epicurean (1885) is about the “sensations and ideas” of a young 2nd-century Roman  confronting Christianity. His Appreciations: with an Essay on Style (1889) is the exposition of the Romantic works of William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, and Charles Lamb. His autobiographical The Child in the House (1894) contains sketches of Pater’s early years. In all these works, Pater has shown his interest for knowing the power of artistry. He appreciated Wordsworthian imagination and its power to sketch the abstract.

Walter Pater influenced his younger contemporary Irish-born writer Oscar Wilde. Wilde professes that art is far more than a mere imitation of nature. “A Truth in Art,” he remarks in “The Truth of Masks” (1891), “is that whose contradictory is also true”. In “The Decay of Lying” he declares that ‘art never expresses anything but art itself…” and that “the telling of beautiful untrue things is the proper aim of Art.” His fiction The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) presents the theme that the artistry is beyond the dichotomies like good and bad. It exists beyond the art and morality; ethics and aesthetics. In preface to this fiction Wilde upheld, “All art is  quite useless.” Homosexual Wilde’s most influential tragedy Salome presents bizarre desire and its repulsion. It rests on hermaphroditic notions. Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas translated Salome , originally written in French, later into English in 1894. It alludes to the Bible account of the death of John the Baptist and to Flaubert’s story Herodias . The play was produced in 1931 in England. The striking unethical and unsocial theme of death and orgasm approves Pater’s anti- idealist dictum that art knows nothing but art itself. Beardsley’s penchant for drawing hermaphrodite figures caused particular offence. (Bermúdez and Sebastian 127) This book represents the poetics of painting for “not the thing but the effect it produces” (Mallarmé. Correspondance, 1862–1871 , 1959; 137)

Wilde as Art for Art’s Sake critic defines criticism in terms of creativity akin to the creativity of an artist. Criticism, for Wilde, is itself an art. His book Intentions (1891) a collection of critical essays, justifies him as a critic. These essays, entitled “The Decay of Lying”, “The Critic as Artist”, “Pen, Pencil and Poison”, “The Truth of Masks”, “Portrait of Mr. W. H.” and “The Soul of Man” represent his philosophy of works of art. In these essays, he seems to defend art as a  free phenomenon and its handler, the artist as a free individual. As he thinks that “the true critic is unfair, insincere, and not rational …” and that, “… the highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the artist had not put there’. Such criticism ‘treats the work of art simply as a starting point for a new creation”. Criticism is ‘the purest form of personal expression”. Thus, Wilde thinks about criticism as restorer of beauty, taste, culture and that which an artist forgets to create in his creation.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), American painter and etcher, followed Japanese  art styles, made technical innovations, and championed modern art. Many regard him as preeminent among etchers. His freelancing style of etching was not based on ideas of the society, problems of the politics or the nation but on the paramount vision of artistry. He had power to turn the classic into the avant-guard. He was an experimental user of erotic visual imageries. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) is not familiar as a literary writer but an English visual artist. He was a fin-de-siècle sensitive young man associated with the Aestheticism. In his short life span (his productive career spanned only six years, died of TB at 25), Beardsley won fame for his epicene drawings. He was inspired of 19th century Aestheticians of France, Japanese printmakers and the pre-Raphaelite painters. His illustrations of erotic fantasy aroused a great controversy.  He was the art editor of a periodical The Yellow Book (1894-1895) and of The Savoy (1896);  both of these publications envisage his works. He illustrated well known aestheticians of the world: editions of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (1469-1470; 1893-1894); Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1894); The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1894-1895); Aristophanes’s Lysistrata (411 BC; 1896); and Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1606; 1898). His posthumously published Under the Hill (1904) contains the designed posters, wrote fiction, and poetry. They are remarkable for experimental visual art detached from moral purposes.

Arthur William Symons (1865-1945), the English literary critic and poet, was born in Wales and educated privately. Frank Kermode called him “sinister figure, a successful but dispassionate womanizer, and a secret homosexual” ( Forms of Attention 7). As an aesthete Symons defines the job of the artist, “The artist who is above all things an artist cultivates a little choice corner of himself with elaborate care; he brings miraculous flowers to growth there, but the rest of the garden is but mown grass or tangled bushes” ( Symbolist Movements 65) . Symons’s essay “The Decadent Movement in Art and Literature” published in Harpers Monthly Magazine in November 1893 characterizes the decadent style as a vision of tortured syntax, preciosity and linguistic experimentation for its own sake. He was a great admirer of the French symbolist poets, and he expounded their ideas in The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) and Charles Baudelaire (1920). In his poems collected in Days and Nights (1889) and Silhouettes (1892), he has practiced the subjective, emotional symbolist style. His The Romantic Movement in English Poetry (1909), Studies in the Elizabethan Drama (1920), and the autobiographical Confessions (1930) established him as critic of the decadent period. These critical stances rest on his idea of imperceptible capacities of the creative authors. In The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899), he praised the abnormal experimentation of the poets (esp. of symbolists). His experimental  images and artistry shown in London Nights met with a torrent of abuse. Symons characterizes the Decadent sensibility in relation to the aim of aestheticism:

It is typical of a civilisation grown over-luxurious, over-inquiring, too languid for the relief of action, too uncertain for any emphasis in opinion or in conduct. It reflects all the moods, all the manners of a sophisticated society; its very artificiality is a way of being true to nature; simplicity, sanity, proportion – the classic qualities – how much do we possess them in our life, our surroundings, that we should look to find them in our literature – so evidently the literature of a decadence. (Quoted in “The Concept of Decadence” Art and Morality 118)

Symons praised the madness of Gerard de Nerval, a pseudonym of G. Labrunie (1808-55), as the visionary character of creative artists. He says, “we owe to the fortunate accident of madness one of the foundations of what may be called the practical aesthetics of Symbolism.” (50) Symons appreciated Villiers for the unpopularity of his work. He thinks that he “has no pathos… his mind is too abstract to contain pity, and it is in his lack of pity that he seems to put himself outside humanity.” He described Rimbound’s unique quality for ‘his mind was not the mind of the artist but of the man of action. He was a dreamer, but all his dreams were discoveries. He is a man with “the spilt wisdom of the drunkard.”

Critical Reception of “Art for Art’s Sake” or Aestheticism

The writers and artists who believe in the morality, fanaticism, responsibility of authors as social activists, propagandist, and as men of social values, they will never appreciate the doctrines of Art for Art’s Sake. The reason is that it emphasizes on the significance of the power of artistry manifested in Art; and that it inspires the artist to make a trivial thing the elevated. Art for Art’s Sake teaches the artist how to make the heinous or the repulsive desire the attractive, how to  manifest the bizarre or immoral things which seems devastative to human life in the most beautiful manner. It opposes to all instrumentalist theories of art. For example, Henry James condemns Gautier’s preface and criticized Baudelaire calling him a mere sensationalist. In “Gustave Flaubert,” he disapproved the principles of “art for art” for its detachment from morality and the responsibility of an artist i.e. to expose the inner or outer reality of human life. Its creed seemed to him to exhibit “a most injurious disbelief in the illimitable alchemy of art.” 

Thomas Stearns Eliot suggests, in “Experiment in Criticism” (1929), to read the English classics from instrumentalist points of view, and to assess the greatness of the art in literature. He epitomizes Art for Art’s Sake:

If you read carefully the famous epilogue in Pater’s Studies in the Renaissance you will see that ‘art for art’s sake’ means nothing less than art as a substitute for everything else, and as a purveyor of emotions and sensations which belong to life rather than to art … I think we should return again and again to the critical writings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to remind ourselves of that simple truth that literature is primarily literature, a means of refined and intellectual pleasure.

One year later, in “Arnold and Pater” (1930) collected in Selected Essays (1932; 1951-2) Eliot justifies ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ as an offspring of the moral visions and literary culture of Arnold, Carlyle and Ruskin. He discards the charges made against Pater’s Renaissance and defied to concede Pater’s connection with the discourse of his contemporary Art for Art’s Sake. He also thinks about ‘art for art’s sake’ as failure practice because it is fruitless for the audience.

The theory (if it can be called a theory) of ‘art for art’s sake’ is still valid in so far as it can be taken as an exhortation to the artist to stick to rules job; it never was and never can be valid for the spectator, reader or auditor.

Saintsbury praised the courage to artifice the new subject in the most beautiful manner. He says in 1895 “The whole end, aim, and object of literature … as of all art … is beauty.” (Richardson, Saintsbury and Art for Art’s Sake in England)

Art for Art’s Sake After 1960  

Michel Foucault, referentially, denies art for art’s sake thought. He talks of ‘aesthetics of existence’ ‘stylistics of existence’; metaphysics of the study of ‘existence as beautiful form’ is overshadowed by the history of subjectivity and the history of metaphysics and history of ideas devised to give ‘form to things, substances, colors, lights, sounds, and words.’ In other words, Foucault anticipates that aesthetics of art lies in describing the beauty of existence. He says, “This aesthetics of existence is an historical object which should not be neglected in favor of metaphysics of the soul or an aesthetics of things and words”

Edward W. Said has defined art and literature in terms of representation of the epochs, periods, and intellectual resistance. He appreciates Joyce’s Stephen as an artist for he has “resistant intellectual consciousness.” He equates the artist’s performance with intellectual performance. Artist, for him, is an intellectual being who advances ‘human freedom and knowledge.’ He condemned Flaubert’s The Sentimental Education for the artist’s “critique of intellectuals” and explained Deane’s unique idea about the nature of Dedalus. Said says, “Neither the protagonists of Dickens, nor Thackeray, nor Austen, nor Hardy, nor even George Eliot are young  men and women whose major concern is the life of the mind in society, whereas for young Dedalus “thinking is a mode of experiencing the world.” For him, the function of the artist is to develop “a resistant intellectual consciousness” (Said 16) in the reader. The artist should also develop “a resistant intellectual consciousness … before he can become the artist.” (Said 16) His thought of “a resistant intellectual consciousness” in artist witnesses what he further says:

After all, many novelists, painters, and poets, like Manzoni, Picasso, or Neruda, have embodied the historical experience of their people in aesthetic works, which in turn become recognized as great masterpieces. For the intellectual the task, I believe , is explicitly to universalize the crisis, to give greater human scope to what a particular race or nation suffered, to associate that experience with the sufferings of others.

Emmanuel Levinas in “Reality and its Shadow” deplores aesthetics of Art for Art’s Sake rudely. “The formula is false inasmuch as it situates art above reality and recognizes no master for it, and it is immoral inasmuch as it liberates the artist from his duties as a man and assures him of a pretentious and facile nobility… Art does not know a particular type of reality; it contrasts with knowledge.’

Jean-Francois Lyotard’s essay “An Answer to the Question: What is the Postmodern?” characterizes the aesthetics in terms of the postmodernism. For him, the social system is not representable; it does not capacitate to anyone or any source to envision itself at all. It is a challenge for art, and art takes stand against this challenge. For Lyotard, Art is potential to demonstrate world that is a discontinuous, and that is made of failure system. The job of an artist is to demonstrate this failure system. He deploys aesthetics style in defining postmodernism. Lyotard is a great admirer of Kant and Kantian tradition of the theory of sublime and beauty. For him, the formulation of the sublime is potential to present “the existence of something  unpresentable.” Postmodernism explains the threads of recurring images of the modernism that represents the failure of its attempt to present the human mind and society as they are. For this failure, postmodernism had to come in action to cope with challenges of which Modernism remained an unfinished project. This is one of the reasons for the postmodernist art seems unrepresentable. It is matter to note that the Aesthetes were also experiencing the unpresentable human society and life. Baudelaire and his followers have already illustrated the idea that everything is hieroglyphic. Lyotard differentiates the modernist and postmodernist art based on his reading of Proust and Joyce. The attributes he gives to postmodernist art are identical to the artistry of writers belonging to Art for Art’s Sake or Aestheticism. The postmodern art inquiries into new presentations – not to take pleasure in them, but to better produce the feeling that there is something unpresentable.” 

A famous illustrator of books for children Sarah Garland (2008) defends and asserts that ‘far from being a de-humanized, aestheticism here offers a complex knot of human concerns. It offers an interrogation of the values and responsibilities of subjectivity, the place of desire, objects, and appearances in the most intimate levels of consciousness, and a nexus of dilemmas about class, power, taste, and interpretation’ (2008: 205)

• Baudelaire, Charles. Paris Spleen & La Fanfarlo . Hackett. 2008. Xxvi.
• Beardsley, Monroe C., Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism . New York: Harcourt Brace. 1958. Print.
• Bradley, A. C., “Poetry for Poetry’s Sake.” Oxford Lectures on Poetry . London: Macmillan, 3–36. 1909. Print.
• Bermúdez, José Luis and Sebastian Gardner, Art and Morality (2003) Routledge, 2005. 127. Print.
• Davies, Stephen et al. (1992) Companion to Aesthetics . Blackwell. 2009. Print. Eliot, T.S. Selected Essay . London: Faber & Faber. 1919. Print.
• —        “Experiment in Criticism” The Bookman ed. Seward Collins. Vol. LXX. November 1929. No. 3. Pp. 226-27
• Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde . Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1987. Print.
• Forster, E. M. “Art for Art’s Sake.” Two Cheers for Democracy . New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 88–95. 1951. Print.
• Foucault, M. The Courage of the Truth (2008). Ed. by Frédéric Gros. Trans. Graham Burchell. Palgrave 2011. UK.
• Garland, Sarah. “ “This temptation to be undone …” Sontag, Barthes, and the Uses of Style” ”. Art and Life in Aestheticism: De-Humanizing or Re-Humanizing Art . Ed. Kelly Comfort. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 2008. Print.

Notes of an Aesthete

Art for Art’s Sake in the New Century

A french history of the concept, nietzsche’s stance, and artists of the paleolithic.

For as long as it has been articulated, the concept of “art for art’s sake” has been dismissed as degenerate and trivial. But is it obsolete? Ask the question of artists today and the response will most likely be equivocal; ask it within an arts institution and the answer will almost certainly be “Yes: dead and gone.”

That we are living through a period in which the mainstream attitude toward the arts is stridently utilitarian is undeniable. An artwork’s social, political, or moral function is seen to be its essence. The expectation that artworks instruct, that they generate audiences with commitments and produce results for the present, is widely operative. Critics bestow the words “relevant” and “urgent” on books, films, and exhibitions as the highest praise. One might consider the postponing of painter Philip Guston’s retrospective in 2020 by four world-class museums, on the basis of the artist’s own political beliefs not being made explicit enough in the show, as emblematic of the time. Earlier that year, chastised by a swath of the poetry community for being “unfit to respond to the crises of our times” (crises including the “genocide against Black people”), the Poetry Foundation solemnly apologized for its “institutional silence,” pushed out its president and board chairman, announced a five-step process to addressing its “debts to Black poets,” and pledged to redirect funds to a host of social justice efforts. Writers and artists today seeking private funding would be wise to frame their work as attending to issues such as inequality, incarceration, repair, activism, and the violence of U.S. imperialism, judging by those who were named 2021 MacArthur Foundation fellows. 

The current priorities of arts institutions are signaled in part by their recent hires and the statements that accompany them. Leading art school RISD has selected for its new president the diversity, equity, and inclusion head of Boston University for her “deep commitment to leading change”: “Art, education, and equity and justice are the three foundational focuses of my life,” she said in the announcement. The Serpentine Gallery’s new director of curatorial affairs has pointed to the role of museums in “today’s imperative to attend to the most vulnerable and disenfranchised in society while dismantling white supremacy.” Two newly hired deputy directors at the Brooklyn Museum will further the institution’s “social-change efforts” and “develop a sustained, multiyear strategy to engage audiences around issues . . . including mass criminalization and climate change.” The museum also has a new president, who stated her commitments upon her appointment: “From a very young age I dreamed of leading a cultural institution, not only for my love of the arts but for the power of the arts to enact social change.” Curator of the 2023 Liverpool Biennial has been chosen on the basis of her “longstanding curatorial concerns around care and repair.” A recent profile in ARTnews of Elizabeth Alexander, head of the Mellon Foundation, says she has been “transforming . . . the nation’s largest funder of the arts and humanities, since she became president in 2018, by [in Alexander’s words] ‘doing all the work, every penny, through a social justice lens.’”

Our utilitarian era, as “change”-oriented as it is, must be historicized. Little about the imperatives newly governing the contemporary art and book worlds is new. The utilitarians are not so inventive. Throughout the 20th century in the democratic West, art movements driven by political and social messaging in pursuit of change have enjoyed widespread popularity among the public and, sooner or later, institutional backing. What was considered valuable about individual artworks was their ability to diagnose, address, and even remedy social ills. Leftist muralists and printmakers of the thirties and feminist performance artists of the seventies have their places in the history of art. Possibly what distinguishes the status of art today is the seeming rush by institutions to align themselves with the change-demanders. But even this phenomenon—whether driven by market forces, the sincere ethical commitments of provosts and executives, or something else—is far from historically unique. The Fireside poets (Longfellow, Bryant, Holmes, and Whittier) are near equivalents to the popular political poets of today, when one looks beyond their race and gender. Both then and now, these are poets acclaimed by institutions; their faces grace magazines; they teach at private universities. These are poems of the classroom—topical, moral, frequently (in the old and new definitions of the term) abolitionist.

How best to elucidate our time, to make clear the values that are obsolete and those that are alive? Which values should we claim and promote? Art for art’s sake appears to be a thoroughly neglected concept, bordering on the taboo. Yet the history of l’art pour l’art in France is not only fascinating but notably instructive. The origins and usage of the term by artists, critics, and intellectuals from the 1810s through to the 1860s are specific to the period. But the concept itself, I posit, is not historical or antiquated but has eternal life. We are subjects of our time: Consciousness, the self, social relations are all conditioned. We require concepts for understanding ourselves and the world—including the world of art—that are particular to now, whenever now is. The contours of art for art’s sake can and should be redrawn for the present. Engaging with the various adoptions and repudiations of l’art pour l’art in 19th-century France can help us in doing so.

Lovers of art in this century: There is every reason for you to espouse art for art’s sake.

Coming upon a reference to how Charles Baudelaire or Arthur Rimbaud spoke disparagingly of l’art pour l’art will naturally colour a person’s feelings about the term. After all, these are two of our most aesthetically important modern poets in the art form’s genealogy, whose writings were consequential not only for the generations of French writers that followed them but also for international Modernism in the 20th century. Were Baudelaire and Rimbaud wrong ? A better question is, What exactly were they criticizing?

We must go back to before either was born. Artists associated with the Romantic movement in France dominated for the first five decades of the 19th century. (Any discussion of artistic movements or groups, rather than discussion of individual artists’ projects, can obscure more than it reveals. However, throughout the 19th century French artists, especially writers, often overtly associated themselves with various groups, so some generalizations are worth making.) Romanticism in music, painting, sculpture, and literature arose during the period of social turmoil following the French Revolution and in reaction to the previous era of Neoclassicism in the arts. Romantic artists shunned the Enlightenment ideals of reason and order; many of them glorified nature. More stringent definitions are not especially helpful, but it’s fair to say that by midcentury, literary Romanticism’s abandonment of fixed forms was coupled with an embrace of personal, emotional, and politically or morally minded subject matters. With the fall of the Bourbon Restoration in 1830 and the unrest it precipitated, some Romantic writers doubled down on their commitment to serving society: George Sand championed “proletarian” literature; poet Alphonse de Lamartine entered politics and helped found the Second Republic; Victor Hugo wrote novels, poems, and plays in defense of the poor and oppressed.

Amid this era of social Romanticism, the concept of l’art pour l’art takes off. The most ardent broadcaster of the term is Théophile Gautier—on the one hand a Romantic and anticlassical writer, on the other a public opposer of utilitarianism in art, who declares in the preface to an 1835 novel, “All that is useful is ugly.” L’art pour l’art has been circulating among French litterateurs for a couple of decades, since émigré writers Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant returned to France from Germany, bringing with them news from the German literary and philosophical scenes, including news about the latest aesthetic theories. A professor and one of de Staël’s readers, Victor Cousin visited some of those German thinkers, pored over an eclectic mix of philosophical works, and from 1818 started lecturing to huge audiences back in Paris on aesthetics and espousing l’art pour l’art : “We must have . . . art for art’s sake,” he told audiences at the Sorbonne. “The beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.”

By 1860 a new generation of writers—tired of Romantic lyric poetry’s preoccupation with emotional subjectivity, tired of sentimentality, and tired of the demand that literature serve society—come to align themselves with Gautier. The group calls itself le Parnasse , the Parnassians (after Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses in Greek mythology). Aesthetically, the Parnassians turn back to Neoclassicism; they embrace the strict old metrical forms over the lax prosody of Romantic verse. They write impersonal poems, precise as clear-cut gems, on the subject of beautiful things. And like Gautier, they present themselves as endorsers of art for art’s sake.

We come to see it is the Parnassians whom Baudelaire and Rimbaud disparage. In the Parnassian usage, the l’art pour l’art slogan has come to mean, on the one hand, an elevation of formal technique over content and, on the other, emotional vacancy. Neither Baudelaire nor Rimbaud has given his life over to poetry only to treat the art form as an arena for demonstrating skill. It is no mystery why both poets, committed as they are to the imagination, to the ecstasies and torments of the spirit, resist; why Baudelaire calls the art-for-art’s-sake school “sterile” and a “puerile utopia”; why Rimbaud can submit poems to the Parnassians at age fifteen and rail against them a year later in his lettres du voyant . To Rimbaud, the failure of contemporary verse is clear: “We require new ideas and forms of our poets.” Shunning the l’art pour l’art movement, in this period in France, is in no way equivalent to denying the autonomy of art.

Ah— but Baudelaire never insists on the separation of art from its social context, and Rimbaud is inspired by the Paris Commune, scholars will retort. This assertion confuses social criticism, rebellion against sexual mores, support for revolting workers, and attacks on bourgeois values with promotion of a political agenda. Neither poet in his literary works ever had anything close to an activist agenda. But such scholars also would have us think of both men as politico-aesthetic theorists first and poets second.

Deep in their ideologies, academics have long tried to explain away art for art’s sake in the period as a mistaken concept. Some, beholden to the more enervating strains of Marxist critique, have argued l’art pour l’art can be understood as market-driven, as though art is no different from journalism or factory parts. Still others have written off the Parnassian and Symbolist movements as forebears of Surrealism in their shunning of “real life”—in favour, presumably, of some other, fake sort of life. If this critique sounds resolutely utilitarian, that’s because it is. Today’s academics will tend to argue that art for art’s sake is nonviable because they are desperate to see their own work as socially responsible.

What both Baudelaire and Rimbaud do insist is that artists can take on anything as their subject matter. Today’s aesthete—the nonutilitarian lover of art—knows the significance of this imperative, without which Modernism will never go on to happen. No subject is off-limits to Baudelaire and Rimbaud! Their paying attention to marginalized figures does not make them political poets.   

Baudelaire:

A crowd of people think that the goal of poetry is a kind of lesson, that it must fortify the conscience, perfect social mores, and ultimately demonstrate in some way or another its utility. Poetry, provided that one is willing to descend into oneself, interrogate one’s soul, recall one’s memories of enthusiasm, has no other goal than Itself. . . . I don’t mean that poetry doesn’t ennoble our mores—let me be understood—or that its final result is not to elevate humankind above the level of vulgar interests; that would be an evident absurdity. I mean that if the poet pursues a moral goal, it diminishes his poetic power; and it would not be imprudent to bet that his work will be bad. (“Théophile Gautier” in L’Artiste , 1859)

L’art pour l’art is free of the Parnassian baggage for other artists. As an expression of belief in the autonomy of art, and a refusal to value art on the basis of its political, religious, or moral utility, the concept appeals to stylistically diverse writers and painters. (Asserting his commitment to social justice, Hugo in 1864 makes the rather insipid statement, “Art for art’s sake can be beautiful, but art for progress is more beautiful.”) In the visual arts, the concept is adopted particularly by those who oppose the new Realist movement, itself a turn away from Romanticism. Novelist Émile Zola, writing in 1866, invokes art for art’s sake in celebration of Édouard Manet, who is helping usher in Impressionism, the great development in painting after Realism: “One must not judge him as a moralist or as a writer; one must judge him as a painter. . . . He knows neither how to sing nor how to philosophize. He knows how to paint, and that’s it.” No moralizing veil overlays Manet’s images, which are not allegorical or drawn from history. Manet paints scenes from his social environment, but not as a documentarian. He cares about the image, the experience of beholding the image, and the paint.

A close friend of Manet’s, poet Stéphane Mallarmé comes to be closely associated with le symbolisme , France’s late 19th-century Symbolist movement. In 1891 Mallarmé will describe Symbolism’s departure from other poetic modes: The Parnassians disappoint because their poems “lack mystery; they steal from readers’ minds the delicious joy of believing that they create.” With Mallarmé, the “art for art’s sake” concept becomes articulated in the ideal of “pure” art, l’oeuvre pure . For him there are two types of language—that of “elementary discourse,” which is descriptive, utilitarian, and brute; and that of poetry, “which is primarily dream and song” and is essential.

“But this ‘art for art’s sake’ business did not spontaneously begin with the French,” philosophically minded critics will insist. In tracing the concept’s history, we are not helped by those thinkers who construe every noteworthy idea from 1800 onward as a bastardization of something first expressed by Immanuel Kant. Exactly how many paintings did he see in Königsberg before forming his theory of aesthetic judgment? In their visits to Germany, de Staël, Constant, and Cousin had become acquainted with aspects of Kant’s aesthetic theories, as well as those of philosophers Schiller and Schelling. This fact aside, it does not follow that any culture’s or individual’s appreciation of art necessarily owes much at all to these thinkers. Try as the art lover might, she will find Kant’s writings of little help when developing her own aesthetic sensibility. In the first place, Kant proposes in his 1790 Critique of Judgment an analysis of aesthetic judgment that is concerned not with art but instead with beauty. But we go on. For Kant, aesthetic judgments are unlike other judgments—say, about what things one likes or about what is morally good—in that aesthetic judgments are “disinterested,” meaning they are “merely contemplative” and “indifferent to the existence of the object.” The kind of pleasure one takes in beautiful things depends on the harmonious play of one’s imagination and understanding. And while beautiful things do not serve any presupposed purpose—that is, they do not serve as means to any ends—still they have the quality of “formal purposiveness.”

Why are not aesthetes drawn to unifying theories of art? you may wonder. Building on his assertion that beauty is “purposive without a purpose,” Kant goes on to relate how beautiful things are, indeed, “purposive in reference to the moral feeling .” So while it’s true that one’s aesthetic judgments are disinterested, so too is it true that engaging with art makes one grow as a moral and social being. From there, Kant goes on to argue in his closing passages for the binding together of beauty and ethics. For the individual, art —he tells us— civilizes . This dubious idea is totally alive among artists and audiences today. We hear it expressed by those novelists and filmmakers who will plainly state that their intention is to improve and educate their readers and viewers.

I hope a short, two-part retort will suffice. For Kant the faculties involved in aesthetic judgment are imagination and understanding—and not, specifically, the faculty of cognition. Whereas for the aesthete, or really anyone capable of being affected by an artwork, responding to art involves a whole range of attentivenesses, all working in combination: the spiritual, emotional, psychological, sensual, and intellectual.

Second, the person who cares about art, who has no doubt that experiences of art have made her life more worthwhile, in an instinctual way understands aesthetics not as a series of principles she holds but as an activity she carries out. It is by aesthetics that she lives her life. In comparison to her are those who don’t care about art, whose lives have not been enriched by artworks, and for whom aesthetics might at best be something of a philosophical posture.

Regrettably, writing in the early 20th century, Walter Benjamin misrepresented the Baudelairean figure, the modern flâneur, as one alienated by modern life. Sociologists from midcentury to the present have similarly argued that art for art’s sake reflects the alienation of the artist in bourgeois society. Baudelaire, however, wrote of the modern artist in no such way. His flâneur is explicitly not a dandy—not indifferent, not an idle wanderer— but “ruled by an insatiable passion.” His is more accurately a Nietzschean figure, a passionate lover of life.

Nietzsche himself, writing in 1888, took issue with the idea of l’art pour l’art , and in the process advanced what might be considered a different but related concept, what we might term “art for life’s sake.” In Nietzsche’s words:

The struggle against purpose in art is always a struggle against the moralizing tendency in art, against the subordination of art to morality.  L’art pour l’art means: “the devil take morality!” — But this very hostility betrays that moral prejudice is still dominant. When one has excluded from art the purpose of moral preaching and human improvement it by no means follows that art is completely purposeless, goalless, meaningless. . . . Art is the great stimulus to life: how could it be thought purposeless, aimless, l’art pour l’art ? ( Twilight of the Idols )

I adore the vigour of Nietzsche’s statement—again, what might be expressed as “art for life’s sake.” I struggle to challenge or correct it. That art is the great stimulus to life, its great validator—that the appreciation of art gives purpose and value to life—is a tenet absolutely held by art lovers.

It is not my project here to offer a full definition of “life” in Nietzsche’s terms. Certainly Nietzsche was concerned with how we live, how our minds and days are shaped for and by us.  For the aesthete’s purposes, “life” in “art for life’s sake” need not be abstract but can instead refer to the finite and brief life of the individual art lover. For her, deriving meaning from artworks involves hours upon hours of attention and the slow cultivation of taste, art-historical knowledge, and an aesthetic sensibility.

And yet: What “art for life’s sake” does not encapsulate is, for the aesthete, the singularly important fact of art’s autonomy. Art—for the art lover, and intrinsic to her appreciation of artworks—has its own life, an inorganic vitality. The life of art is entwined with but separable from the life of humankind. Art’s genealogy, stretching back through the centuries and millennia, is alive at every point, along every line of descendance. Older art does not “live on” in what succeeds it, but lives ; its insights are obtainable always. Unlike individuals and institutions, species and social systems, great art never dies, dissolves, or goes extinct. Long after the artist and his way of being in the world are gone, great art remains.

Ultimately, the aesthete appreciates great artworks not only because of what they do for her but because of what they are, and what they have made—or will make—possible for the future of their artistic medium. Recognition of this fact makes the “art for art’s sake” formulation necessarily true for the present.

Finally, I do have a small disagreement with Nietzsche on the purported “hostility” of l’art pour l’art . The inaccuracy of this claim—that the concept betrays itself as a reaction against “moral prejudice . . . still dominant”—is easier to see from the vantage point of the early 21st century, and can be shown by reflecting, briefly, on the deep history of art.

Simply stated, for those artists who believe in the autonomy of art, their creations do not need or seek any external justification. The “art for art’s sake” expression is, in one language or another, most likely a few centuries old. But the foundational concept under consideration—that of appreciating or making art for its own sake—is every bit as old as the first artworks, which is to say, far older than society and its groupings, certainly older than the self (a later invention). A simple desire courses through the blood of our species: to make , to make things other than tools , and not just because particular problems need to be solved but because it is in our nature to make . Possibly all hominins shared with us this drive.

Neanderthals, we’re learning , made some of the oldest known cave paintings. A zigzag pattern scratched with a shark tooth into a mussel shell around five hundred thousand years ago, which experts disagree on whether to consider the earliest example of art, was made by someone of the homo erectus species, an ancestor to Neanderthals and us both. As long as three million years ago, our prehuman ancestors were collecting stones, minerals, shells, and fossils for their visual and tactile qualities, for their weight, colours, and shapes. Early humans, unfulfilled by nature’s pleasing objects, later began working nature’s products through sculpture and marking for nonutilitarian purposes. Cupules, indentations made in rock by pecking, would evolve from the first artists’ gestures into abstract forms, then on to the earliest figurative engravings . Incidental marks found on animal bones became the basis of carved geometric patterns.

The archaeological record shows how gradually across the planet, over hundreds of millennia, artistic phenomena emerged, withdrew, spread, and developed. By the Upper Paleolithic, humans were creating figurative art objects and cave paintings, works often of overwhelming majesty and naturalism that demonstrate irrefutably the refinement of those artists. What symbolic or mystical significance art held for Paleolithic people can only be guessed at, but we do know that their spiritual concerns were independent of their need for survival.

From early in the life of the species, the human imagination, our spirit, has found expression in aesthetic and symbolic gestures. Because of this deep history of ours, the “art for art’s sake” concept always will be best understood not as reactive—in rejecting this or that political, social, or moral dictate—but as active : generative, innate, spirit-affirming . It is the original value system of art.

Ready for more?

Engaging Matters

Doug Borwick on vibrant arts and communities

Art for Art’s Sake Revisited

January 13, 2016 by Doug Borwick

Over the last year I’ve seen a number of references to on the one hand the importance of maintaining the purity of intent that AfAS conveys and on the other hand the potential dangers of promoting the concept. Coming down (substantially) on the latter side, let me present here a brief segment from one of my presentations that address the question.

When I taught music, I would use one of the profession’s most closely held truisms to challenge my students’ understanding of the field. “Music is the universal language” is a sentence repeated with the reverence of scripture. It also happens to be false. Music is universal, but its language, grammar, and syntax are not. Traditional Chinese opera is as foreign and incomprehensible to Western ears as Strauss’s tone poems are to aboriginal peoples. That does not diminish either. It simply forces us to question what we mean by “music is universal.”

Similarly, a truism we all hold precious is the merit of “art for art’s sake.” It is a shorthand for art being important, art being meaningful. With that I whole-heartedly agree. Unfortunately, it can serve as an inadvertent barrier for those who have not felt art’s power in their own lives. For them the notion is so incomprehensible it can be off-putting the way rabid sports fans can be intimidating to those not similarly minded.

I understand why we are attracted to the concept. It springs from our appreciation of art as transcendent experience. Beyond the secret handshake aspect of it, however, the real danger is that it has led some to lose sight of the fact that the arts provide transcendent human experience. The “art for art’s sake” mindset can imply that it is the art that is important. It is not. This perspective can also function as an excuse, conscious or not, for ignoring community. These “artcentric” views need addressing.

The question, as I would frame it in this context, is “Do we serve a what or a whom?” Many of our mission statements are mostly or entirely focused on a what–the art that is the medium of our work. Consider this, while serving art may be what’s in the front of our minds, doing so

1) is not at heart what many of us really want to do,

Most artists are invested in their work because they want other people to share the joy they experience in it. While this may look or feel like focus on the art, their core purpose grows out of the impact of that art on people.

and 2) is a pretty strange thing to do.

Divorced from art’s impact (or potential impact) on others, serving art is–let’s be frank–a kind of idolatry.

The concept of art for art’s sake is a self-evident truth for all of us (and, again, I include myself here) for whom it is self-evident. However, for the many who are not true believers the concept is either incomprehensible, off-putting, or both . I worry that emphasis on this much-loved, long-held concept can get in the way of them taking advantage of the benefits and the value that the arts can provide. And that would be a tragedy.

Share this:

• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)

January 13, 2016 at 10:15 am

I think you fail to present a fair portrait of the ‘art for arts’ concept. But more importantly you level an unfair criticism against Art. Should we change science because many “are not true believers the concept is either incomprehensible, off-putting, or both”? Should history be a type of education that focuses on what happen in the past or rather should it be a basis for what the majority of people would like to think happened? I could argue that in an attempt to engage with community politicians pretend climate change isn’t happening. Should engagement be the end -all be- all goal? You want the arts to be something it’s not. That’s your right. But changing it’s definition to suit your idea-that would be a tragedy.

January 13, 2016 at 11:41 am

Doug, I appreciate your emphasis on connecting art with a larger sense of purpose and impact, and ensuring we’re not blocking access to that purpose with the language we use. But you’re playing fast and loose with some definitions here, or at least conflating things without saying that you’re doing it.

First off, I would disagree that the phrase “art for art’s sake” is necessarily “a shorthand for art being important, art being meaningful.” That’s certainly one interpretation. The other is that an artist is often concerned primarily with the integrity, connection, and expressive power of the work. Many artists choose to focus that energy toward a social issue, a community goal, or an audience. Successful artists find an audience, sometimes through intent, sometimes through the resonance of their vision (and the help of the arts system to connect the dots). Some artists don’t find an audience in their lifetime, and in fact don’t look for one (Emily Dickinson is but one example).

If you haven’t read E.M. Forster’s essay titled “Art for Art’s Sake” (Harper’s Magazine, August 1, 1949), it’s worth reading. He says the above much more elegantly than I do.

You also glance over a rather bold assertion about what artists do, and why they do it by saying “most artists are invested in their work because they want other people to share the joy they experience in it.” That’s certainly true of many artists I know (and I tend to know the artists who are driven by this impulse, because their work tends to find an audience and a public eye). But I’d challenge your assumption about “most”.

You also seem to be conflating artists and arts organizations in a rather hazy way. This feels a bit like clumping water and pipes into the same group. Admittedly, the distinction between artist and arts organization is more complex than that, but only a little.

I completely agree that saying something like “you should care for and support the arts because you should,” is limiting and damaging. But I would ALSO support the effort to make something beautiful simply because you choose to…because the impulse and the work is justification enough. That’s what I hear in “art for art’s sake.” And I’m all in.

January 14, 2016 at 9:33 am

Andrew, short blog posts are not well suited to addressing the full complexity of any issue. In this case, particularly, your response has helped me better understand what I was attempting to do here. There are two points I was trying to make. First and by far the more important one in the context of this blog was that AfAS is insider baseball that is mystifying to outsiders and, potentially, an impediment to bringing them to an appreciation of the power of the arts.

Second–and I see this now as something I perhaps should have addressed separately–is an observation that we should examine our insider use of the phrase AfAS like I was suggesting with my observations about “music is the universal language.” The words AfAS do not really mean anything that most people who use them intend: art for the sake of art. I continue to believe the face value meaning of those words is not what we are trying to say. Our allegiance to AfAS as a truism is rooted in our understanding of what the phrase represents. I did not intend for my framing of “art being important” as being the only meaning of it, though I see how it can be read that way. I could also make a case for your view of some artists being “concerned primarily with the integrity, connection, and expressive power” of art as something included in “art being important,” but that’s, to me, a minor difference.

With regard to many/most about artists’ intent, OK. My interest here is not, as some seem to believe, to address the issue of artists and their relationship with the community. (I will continue to suggest that there may be ways of expanding opportunity for as well as the depth of artistic expression in artists being more community aware, but that’s a very different topic.) My concern is with arts organizations and there again you make a good point. I conflate subconsciously because I come to this work from having been a composer and conductor. The artist frame of reference is easy to fall into. But my work in this blog and in my books, except where otherwise stated, is intended to focus exclusively on the relationship between arts organizations and their communities.

Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful comments.

January 14, 2016 at 3:07 pm

Thanks Doug. This is a great series of clarifications about what you were intending to say. So helpful to me, and to the conversation.

I agree that “art for art’s sake” is problematic, both internally among art communities and externally in more public discourse. I still believe there is an internal and external importance to the idea that the focused pursuit of aesthetic expression has extraordinary worth. Full stop. It is one of MANY worths, or potential values. But it is one.

At the same time, I often advise artists and arts organizations that their best path to achieving what they might define as a “pure” artistic goal is NOT to ask for other peoples’ money (taxpayers, donors, foundations, corporations, even friends and family), nor to consume public resources that might be put to other use. That request demands a different definition of worth, sometimes aligned with aesthetic intent, sometimes not. It also invokes a comparative conversation…this dollar could go here or there, which is better?

Also grateful for the artist/arts organization clarification. It’s such a sand trap to conflate the two. I frequently step into it myself.

January 14, 2016 at 3:45 pm

Shoot. Now I should clarify. I think artistic effort is well worthy of other people’s money, and public resources. God yes. I’m just saying that asking and receiving those things changes the conversation required.

January 20, 2016 at 7:00 am

An interesting analogy about pipes and water. Flint, Michigan is having a severe crisis because lead from the city’s water pipes has leached into the water supply. Between 6000 and 12,000 people are suffering from severely elevated levels of lead in their blood. The problem evolved when the city switched to using water from the Flint River which is highly corrosive. Pipes and water strongly affect each other.

In the same way, arts organizations can deeply affect the art they produce. The Met orients itself toward its wealthy patrons and produces expensive, lavish productions. Money is concentrated on that one house while the USA ranks only 39th in the world for opera performances per capitia.

Orchestras have become so expensive that contemporary works are given only glorified sight-readings. Jet set conductors and soloists are flown and work with so few rehearsals that superficial, perfunctory performances have become common. To rethink the relationship between the arts and community will also require changing the relationship between the arts and the organizations that present them. The relationships between all three are deeply symbiotic.

[…] Art for Art’s Sake Revisited One of my most widely read (and/or infamous) posts is Art for Art’s Sake: There’s No Such Thing. The thrust of that essay was that art always does something and is always for someone and … read more AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-01-12 How all classical concerts should be Dancing violinist! Pandemonium in the audience! Here’s a story from my friend David Snead, formerly Vice President of Marketing, Brand and Customer Experience at the New York Philharmonic. And now President and CEO of the Handel and Haydn Society, the plainly terrific chorus and period instrument orchestra in Boston. … read more AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-01-12 Thought for Morton Feldman’s Birthday As late as 1986, the year before his death, he confessed, “I have no complaints about my career, but I always wondered why it really doesn’t take hold.” … read more AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2016-01-12 “You can’t do what you want, but anything goes” Wow – speaking of Julius Eastman and Morton Feldman, the SUNY Buffalo Music Library has made available the tape and a transcript of the speech John Cage made at June in Buffalo in 1975, when … read more AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2016-01-12 [ssba_hide] […]

[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s actual post text did not contain your blog url ( http://www.artsjournal.com/engage/2016/01/art-for-arts-sake-revisited ) and so is spam.

an ArtsJournal blog

Art For Art’s Sake: The Philosophy of Creating Art Beyond Practical Purpose

• Art History Timeline
• Renaissance
• Renaissance Humanism
• Northern Renaissance
• High Renaissance
• Early Renaissance
• Neoclassicism
• Romanticism
• Art Nouveau
• Kinetic Art
• Post-Impressionism
• Primitivism
• Abstract Expressionism
• Avant-Garde
• Conceptual Art
• Constructivism
• Expressionism
• Harlem Renaissance
• Magical Realism
• Suprematism
• Contemporary Art
• Installation Art
• Photorealism
• British Pop Art
• Performance Art

Art for art’s sake is a philosophy that champions creative expression as its own reward.

It’s a pure approach, where the value of art is not tied to any moral, political, or utilitarian function.

We’ll jump into this aesthetic doctrine that emerged as a rebellious whisper in the 19th century and has since become a defining mantra for many artists.

In our journey, we’ll explore how this concept has influenced various art forms, from painting and sculpture to literature and music, and why it remains a compelling argument in today’s art world.

Stay with us as we uncover the essence of creating beauty just for the sake of beauty.

The Philosophy Of Art For Art’s Sake

Our deep jump into the philosophy of Art for Art’s Sake reveals a rich tapestry of ideals centered on purity in creative expression.

At its core, this philosophy champions the idea that the intrinsic value of art should be separated from any didactic, moral, or functional duties.

It’s an invitation to view art as its own entity, free from the constraints of societal obligations and utilitarian demands.

Interestingly, this concept isn’t confined to a single form or era; it permeates across multiple disciplines, from the luscious oil paintings of the Renaissance to the rebellious street art of the modern cityscape.

• Key ideals in Art for Art’s Sake: * Art’s intrinsic value separate from moral or functional roles * Creative freedom without societal constraints * Recognition of art as an autonomous entity.

Our exploration of art would be incomplete without acknowledging the profound influence of this philosophy on various art movements.

From Impressionism to Dadaism, artists have been propelled by the desire to create works that stand alone, without the need for justifications or explanations.

It promises a sanctuary where beauty can flourish without an agenda, allowing each creation to exist solely for our amusement and wonder.

In the current landscape, the ongoing relevance of Art for Art’s Sake is undeniable.

Even as the digital era ushers in new forms of art with avant-garde techniques, the foundational quest for beauty remains untainted.

It’s a reminder that Even though the evolving mediums and methods, the essence of art persists – an evergreen homage to aesthetics that need no purpose other than to simply be.

Influences On Various Art Forms

In dissecting the expansive reach of the “art for art’s sake” philosophy, we’ve witnessed its profound influence on a multitude of art forms.

In visual arts, it propelled the creation of movements like Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism , where artists like Claude Monet and Jackson Pollock revolutionized artistic expression.

These movements prioritized aesthetic value and emotional resonance over narrative or moral messages, showcasing the pure essence of color and form.

In literature, figures such as Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe became icons for embracing this philosophy, crafting works that explored the beauty of language and provocative storytelling.

Their masterpieces, like The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Raven , serve as prime examples of how language and structure can be manipulated to deliver an experience that exists solely for its own sake.

Within the realm of film, we find directors such as Federico Fellini and Jean – Luc Godard , whose films exemplify the idea that a cinematic piece should captivate with visual splendor, innovative techniques, and unique narratives.

Films like La Dolce Vita and Breathless defy traditional storytelling, emphasizing mood, character, and the director’s personal style over explicit plots or character motivations.

• Visual Arts – Fostered movements like Impressionism – Emphasized aesthetics and emotional impact,
• Literature – Celebrated beauty and structure in the narrative – Created enduring and evocative masterpieces,
• Cinema – Pioneered innovative cinematic techniques – Focused on mood, style, and directorial vision.

The persistent exploration of the “art for art’s sake” credo has also made its mark on modern digital art and the evolving field of video game design, where the sensorial magnitude and interactivity forge an unparalleled immersive experience.

Titles like Journey and digital installations by teamLab immerse audiences in worlds crafted purely for sensory wonder, untethered by the constraints of conventional storytelling or practical function.

Through these various mediums, the core tenet of “art for art’s sake” cascades like a reverberating echo— it’s not merely a historical concept but a living, breathing force in contemporary creative endeavors.

It affirms our belief that sometimes, beauty and expression are paramount , transcending utility, didacticism, and narrative.

The Impact Of Art For Art’s Sake In Literature

The “art for art’s sake” philosophy deeply influenced the world of literature, redefining the boundaries between written words and their aesthetic qualities.

Literature became a canvas for authors to paint with prose, unconstrained by didactic objectives or moral teachings.

We see this impact vividly in the works of Oscar Wilde, whose novel The Picture of Dorian Gray defies traditional moral structures, focusing instead on the beauty and decadence of the narrative.

Writers such as Edgar Allan Poe took the mantra to heart, crafting stories and poems that elevated style and sound to an art form in itself.

Poe’s The Raven , with its rhythmic cadence and internal rhyme, reflects beauty in the sound of words, showcasing how sound can evoke emotional responses just as visual art does.

The reach of “art for art’s sake” extended beyond individual works, fostering entire movements that celebrated linguistic artistry:

• Symbolism revolutionized poetry by valuing mystique over explicit meaning.
• Aestheticism promoted the idea that the experience of beauty was the most important aspect of literature.
• Modernism broke with traditional forms, emphasizing innovation and experimentation.

The ideas sown by “art for art’s sake” continued to germinate, spreading their roots into the soil of contemporary writing.

Today, the narrative techniques and thematic focuses pioneered by early adopters of the philosophy are foundational in various literary genres.

Novels, poems, and even short stories often prioritize the sensory experience of language, the rhythm, and the flow, affirming that literature is not merely a vehicle for conveying ideas but also an artistic exploration of form and beauty.

Art For Art’s Sake In The Modern Art World

In current times, art created purely for aesthetic appreciation continues to thrive, often reflecting the core of the “art for art’s sake” philosophy.

We see a significant footprint in various mediums from installations to digital art forms.

Artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst captivate audiences with art that often divorces from conventionality and societal themes.

Their works, like Balloon Dog or For the Love of God , serve as contemporary symbols of art’s autonomy.

Films and visual media also embody this philosophy, with directors like Wes Anderson and Pedro Almodóvar using stylistic storytelling that emphasizes visual grandeur over narrative.

Movies such as The Grand Budapest Hotel project an idiosyncratic aesthetic that is distinct and memorable.

These films prioritize a sensual experience that stands alone from plot-driven storytelling, highlighting craftsmanship in filmmaking.

The influence of “art for art’s sake” is evident in:

• Innovative uses of color and form that prioritize sensory experience,
• Non-linear narratives that focus on the medium’s possibilities,
• Creative freedom that challenges conventional desires for storytelling and utility.

Even though the inevitable interplay of art with politics, society, and economy, there’s still a strong argument for art existing primarily for its own sake within the modern art world.

Artists and filmmakers echo the aesthetics-led approach, ensuring that our cultural landscape remains rich with works that challenge, excite, and prioritize beauty and style.

This commitment to aestheticism ensures that the resonance of “art for art’s sake” endures, reflected vividly across the canvas of contemporary creativity.

What Is Art For Art S Sake – Wrap Up

We’ve seen the enduring legacy of “art for art’s sake” shape our cultural landscape, empowering artists to prioritize beauty and style.

This philosophy continues to resonate in contemporary mediums, from digital art to film, celebrating aesthetic qualities and creative freedom.

Our exploration reveals a world where art thrives on its own terms, often independent of societal or political expectations.

It’s clear that the spirit of “art for art’s sake” remains a vital part of the artistic community, ensuring that the pursuit of pure beauty in art is as relevant today as it was in the past.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “art for art’s sake” mean.

“Art for art’s sake” is a philosophy that promotes the idea that art should be valued for its beauty and aesthetic quality, rather than for any practical, moral, or narrative functions.

How Did “art For Art’s Sake” Influence Literature?

This philosophy influenced literature by allowing authors to prioritize the aesthetic elements of their work, shaping literary movements like Symbolism, Aestheticism, and Modernism, and affecting the writing styles of authors such as Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.

Can “art For Art’s Sake” Be Seen In Modern Art Forms?

Yes, “art for art’s sake” can be seen in modern art forms through the use of innovative colors and forms, non-linear narratives in films, and artistic freedom in digital and visual media.

Who Are Some Notable Figures Associated With “art For Art’s Sake”?

Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe are notable literary figures associated with the “art for art’s sake” movement, which also connects to broader movements such as Symbolism and Aestheticism.

Does The “art For Art’s Sake” Philosophy Disregard The Social And Political Aspects Of Art?

While “art for art’s sake” focuses on aesthetic values, it doesn’t completely disregard social and political aspects.

However, it does posit that art can exist independently of these dimensions and be appreciated for its beauty alone.

How Does “art For Art’s Sake” Impact Creative Expression?

“Art for art’s sake” encourages creative freedom and expression by prioritizing aesthetic qualities over didactic or utilitarian purposes, allowing artists to create without constraints of conforming to societal, moral, or narrative expectations.

Grand Manner In Art: The Art of Elevating Historical and Mythological Subjects

The Flâneur In Art: Observing and Capturing the Essence of Urban Life

Matt Crawford

Related posts, what is proportion in art: essential guide [with examples & tips], dutch golden age: masterpieces from a flourishing art scene, what is simplicity in art the complete guide, vorticism art: the short-lived but influential british art movement, school of london: celebrating figurative painting in the mid-20th century, what is installation art definition, history & famous artists, leave a reply cancel reply.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

Registration is closed.

Pin It on Pinterest

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on History

Example Of Art For Arts Sake By E M Forster Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: History , Human , World Civilization , World , Civilization , Society , Politics , Art

Words: 1000

Published: 12/06/2019

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

In this essay Forster explores the importance of art and its status relative to science, society and politics, essentially he is exploring aesthetics, and does so in a style that is erudite but at times witty, self-deprecating and wry. The original date of publication 1951, in a volume entitled Two Cheers for Democracy is importnat and this paper will explore the importance of that context later. The essay reproduces the words of a speech Forster delivered in Cambridge, Massachusetts on November 22nd 1949, as some references in the text make clear. Forster’s essay is a passionate but logical argument aboiut eh primacy of art, written at a time of enormous leaps in scientific knowledge and at a historical moment when human civilization itself seemed threatened. Forster begins by stating bluntly “I believe in art for art’s sake” (207). He then goes on to the stereotypical image of the artist towards the end of the nineteenth century – “sixty years ago,” flamboyantly dressed “in an embroidered dressing gown” or “a blue velvet suit or a kimono” (207). This witty denigration on Forster’s part is deliberate and is meant to distance his argument from the public image of the writer a solitary, slightly eccentric and effete aesthete, concerned only with experience. He may even be referring to Oscar Wilde who did dress outlandishly and who also advocated “art for art’s sake.” Forster, however, goes on to clarify that a belief in “art for art’s sake” does not necessarily imply that you believe that art is the only thing that matters in human society. He states directly: “Art for art’s sake does not mens that only art matters” (208). He concedes that we live “in a complex world, full of conflicting claims.” In other words, Forster accepts that the artist lives in a world where society needs plumbers, train drivers and scientists; the artist cannot be cocooned from the social realities of the time he/she lives in. The next stage of his essay seeks to define what it is about art that makes it so important human society and in human culture. He uses examples form drama (Macbeth) and art (Seurat’s painting La Grande Jatte) to argue that what makes art unique in the field of human accomplishments is that a work of art “is a self-contained entity, with a life of its own imposed upon it by its creator. It has internal order” (208). And it is this “order” imposed y a human creator that makes art unique, Forster argues, and what gives human beings aesthetic pleasure. Forster then proceeds to discuss what he means by “order” and concludes that in the broad sweep of human history periods and places where “order” existed were few and far between, Forster demonstrates his grasp of human cultural history by deliberately taking an all-encompassing view of human development, referring to ancient Athens, Renaissance Italy, eighteenth century France – arguing that such moments are especially propitious for the artists. However, he moves on to criticize the rate of scientific change and argues that it is not conducive to producing the conditions in which great art is produced; nor does it create order. On the contrary it produces disorder and confusion, such is the rate of change. Scientist might counter that the Periodic Table of the Elements or Newton’s Laws of Planetary Motion are examples of order in the area of scientific knowledge. However, these examples do not have “internal order” which Forster has already identified as the characteristic of works of art. Newton’s explication of our solar system and the precise maps of astronomers come from without: human beings have merely observed them and recorded what they have discovered – they are not responsible for creating that order, but merely seeing it.

Controversially, Forster observes that all that is left of ancient Greece is not the powerful commercial empire that dominated the Mediterranean before the Romans, but the glories of Greek tragedy (he mentions Antigone specifically); James I of England was a poor king, but Macbeth, written while he was king and partly as a tribute to him, survives. Forster is encouraging his readers to step back from our obsession with the day-to-day machinations of politics and statecraft to see and understand that, ultimately, while empires rise and fall, it is art that gives value, lasting value to human civilization. He also asserts, in the face f what we might call the democratization of art, that the creative artist should attempt to be “matey” or popular, for to do so risks those qualities which make him or her an artist. An obsession with popularity will prevent the artist from “the making of something out of words or sounds or paint or clay or marble or steel or film which has internal harmony and presents order to a permanently disarranged planet” (210). Society disintegrating is envisaged towards the end of the essay and Forster seemingly makes the grand claim that if it does, then the only thing that will be worth preserving for posterity are works of art. To recall his earlier point – society needs plumbers, but succeeding generations will not remember us for the advanced design of our shower systems. Thus, Forster concludes, art and the artist make a unique and uniquely valuable contribution to human civilization which is far more important ultimately than the contributions made by science – no matter how much those scientific advances improve the quality of our daily lives. My introduction stared that the context of when this essay was published was vital and it is with this that I want to end. Forster is writing at the start of the nuclear age and at the start of the Cold war. His remarks on the relative lack of importance of politics are meant to be a provocative reminder of what really matters, and his vision of a society destroyed is a response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and also explains his passion for art because what else will survive?

Works Cited

Forster, E. M. Selected Essays. 1980. London: Penguin. Print

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 2296

This paper is created by writer with

ID 280485281

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Surgical infection term paper examples, the effectiveness of pharmacotherapeutics and behavioral interventions research paper examples, sample creative writing on observation description, example of essay on cyber security, good course work on blake mouton managerial grid, operations decision research paper examples, good example of essay on politics of food commodity chain analysis, statistics db creative writing example, free politics trades and treaties in international management context essay example, example of essay on organizational development of cop21, sociology essay examples 9, example of text 1 the poetics of horror more than meets the eye by dennis l white essay, emerging adulthood essays, pathophysiology essays, neuropsychological essays, geoffrey essays, rrna essays, keynesian economics essays, keegan essays, arlie essays, bellamy essays, cornelius essays, beringer essays, flying saucer essays, roswell new mexico essays, coffins essays, morgue essays, amherst essays, spectator essays, emil essays, extremities essays, backflow essays, child and adolescent psychiatry essays, self blame essays, tutors essays, clumsiness essays, sensorimotor essays, negotiating college essays, challenging college essays, missing college essays, continuing college essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come Essay

One of the world’s most incredible genii, Botticelli with his idea of the fine art as the source of unceasing inspiration and the beauty that the world is based on, was a truly magnificent person. Devoting his entire life to the art of painting, he contributed to the humankind as much as hardly anyone in the world history did.

Because of the context underlying his stunning Primavera, one of the most well-known pictures of his, the grandeur of the artwork increases several times, filling it with the mystery and the magnificence of the ancient legends and myths.

However, before coming closer to the discussion of the painting itself, it would be a good idea to shed some light on the life of the great artist and the way in which his ideas shaped under the influence of the epoch and his own astounding genius.

It is essential to mention that the personality that had the greatest impact on Botticelli and his further personal development was the Florence symbol, Lorenzo the Magnificent (Malaguzzi 10). It must have been the Florence chic and the plethora of luxury that shaped the great artist’s idea of painting and fine art.

Both refined and intellectual (Malaguzzi 10), the artist managed to comprise the traditional sound and reasonable thinking with the incredible power of his amazing imagination, as Malaguzzi explained: ”A city of sound financial and mercantile tradition, already in the first half of the fifteenth century it had undergone a singular cultural development with its ensuring flowering of the arts” (10).

Inheriting the practical spirit of the city where the great artist was born, Botticelli still possessed the spirit of the Florence refinement and the passion for the refined art with its amazing and mysterious implications.

Speaking of the message that is hidden under the layer of paint in the Primavera, one can claim that Botticelli managed to interpret the ancient Greek myth in the most original and impressive fashion.

It is quite peculiar that the original intention of the artist is still a mystery even for the connoisseurs of fine arts in general and Botticelli in particular. Some consider though, that the painting was created to celebrate a certain event in the history of the state. According to the most popular assumption, this was the wedding of the Medici family that was in the focus of Botticelli’s attention as he created the incredible artwork:

The constant reiteration of the theme of love has led some critics to hypothesize that the Primavera was painted to celebrate the wedding of Lorenzo Minor and Semiramide Appiani, which took place in May 1482 (64).

Yet there is another suggestion that seems quite credible:

…such a reading does not exclude another more subtle interpretation, in which the mythological figure of Venus and the other goddesses appear against the abstract scenario of neoplatonic philosophy, whose themes were debated in the Academy of Careggi (Malaguzzi 64)

Therefore, the story of the painting is veiled with mystery around it. Analyzing the elements of the picture and applying the Plato’s ideas to it, one can possibly reveal the truth. In addition, it would be reasonable to consider Aristotle’s theory as well, since it will allow to understand the true idea of the Primavera.

The tender and fragile images in the picture make one think of the Four Cardinal Virtues that Plato enumerated in his all-embracing work, namely, Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice. Like these four pillars, which the world stands on, the picture is shot through with the idea of virtue and benevolence; it seems that the entire artwork follows the secret melody within and moves in the specific, slow and peaceful, rhythm. With help of the inner harmony that the picture is breathing with, the Primavera turns into a truly live, meaningful and significant piece of art.

taking a closer look at the Primavera, one can see clearly that the picture has incorporated the essence of the Plato and Plotinus’ ideas; however, the artwork does not possess a single element of the conflict between the two theories that the philosophers developed.

Thus, it is evident that the Primavera is created according to the ideas of Harmony that Plato suggested: treating love “as the power which impels one to seek the beautiful” (Hofstadter 203). Indeed, the entire composition is pierced through wit the idea of the beauty as the power that dominates the entire world. However, it must be admitted that in Botticelli’s interpretation, this power is not the blind and chaotic element that leaves people’s lives in wreckages and makes then turn into the primitive.

As Hofstadter explained, “[…] it is also an interpretation of Plato through which we can understand the distinctive originality of Italian Humanism which gave a new direction to the understanding and interpretation of art” (203). Thus, Botticelli reveals the new shapes that the ancient ideas can take, in his Primavera.

In accordance with Plotinus’ ideas Botticelli created his picture filed with the most mysterious ideas; yet the key principle, art for the sake of art, remained untouched: “The aim of art is beauty; and beauty itself is the value of harmonious proportion, brought down from the cosmos to art” (Hofstadter 15). Filled with the inner harmony and balance, the Primavera is a perfect specimen of Plato and Platinus’ ideas intertwined together with the stirring genius in a single artwork. As Malaguzzi explained,

For Plato in fact there existed two different kinds of love, impersonated by two similar but different goddesses. One was the so-called vulgar love, impersonated by Venus Pandemia, the generating principle of mankind. The other was divine love, belonging to a higher dimension, impersonated by Venus Urania (64).

In the Primavera, it is clear that the two opposing ideas clash to create the divine harmony. However, these are not only the ideas of Plato and Platinus that the Primavera incorporates. Taking a closer look at the refined lines of the painting and its subtle colors, one can see distinctly that Botticelli also considered the ideas of Aristotle.

Considering the famous Aristotle’s decision, the decision “to analyze change in terms of the actualization of potentiality” (Lear 63), one can claim that the style and the manner of painting reflect the given idea in the most explicit way. The characters in the picture are not stiff, but as if caught in the middle of a motion – it seems that they are about to leave the frame of the picture and step into the reality.

The fluctuation of shapes has been perfectly captured in the painting. Moreover, the picture represents the famous golden mean as the essence of virtue as Aristotle interpreted it: “Every virtue is a mean, or middle ground, between two extremes” (M: 8, S: 9). Using the magnificence and decorum in his painting according to the ideas of Aristotle (M: 8, S: 10), Botticelli creates the artwork that does not depict the beauty, but is the beauty itself.

Offering both an intriguing trip into the past and sufficient food fro thoughts, the Primavera is one of the most mysterious and enchanting work of arts of the century. With help of his genius, Botticelli managed to seize the very idea of Plato, Plotinus and Aristotle’s ideas and at the same time depict beauty as it is, pure and virgin. This is the Primavera – the spring of art, the new era of the humankind. This is Botticelli.

Works Cited

Hofstadter, Albert, and Richard Francis Kuhns. Philosophers of Art and Beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Print.

Lear, Jonathan. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Print.

Malaguzzi, Silvia. Botticelli . Firenze, IT: Giunti Editore, 2004. Print.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, March 22). Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come. https://ivypanda.com/essays/art-for-the-sake-of-art-the-spring-has-come/

"Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come." IvyPanda , 22 Mar. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/art-for-the-sake-of-art-the-spring-has-come/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come'. 22 March.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come." March 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/art-for-the-sake-of-art-the-spring-has-come/.

1. IvyPanda . "Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come." March 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/art-for-the-sake-of-art-the-spring-has-come/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Art for the Sake of Art: The Spring Has Come." March 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/art-for-the-sake-of-art-the-spring-has-come/.

• Your Image of the Child by Loris Malaguzzi
• Primavera 2021: Young Australian Artists Exhibition
• Raising Young Genii: Learning Several Languages in the Early Years
• Botticelli as a Representative of the Early Renaissance
• Chic Chac in Jordan
• The Renaissance Period and Sandro Botticelli
• International Delicacies Company's E-Commerce
• Lorenzo de Medici's Life and Influence on High Renaissance Art
• Botticelli's and Doré's Illustrations to Dante's Inferno
• Popular Culture From the Fifties to Heroin Chic: Feminism
• Sister Sainte-Alphonse by Antoine Plamondon
• Marcel Duchamp’s Invention of ‘The Readymade'
• Beyond the Boundaries of the Ordinary
• Visual Documentation on the Work of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
• Lecture Review: Visions of the Demimonde: Albert Tucker in Paris

Victorian Era

From Georgian to Edwardian

Art for Art’s Sake

In the early nineteenth century, French philosopher Victor Cousin coined a French slogan “l’art pour l’art”, which has the English meaning ‘Art for art’s sake’.  Although writer Théophile Gautier did not use the exact words, he wrote in the preface of his novel ‘Mademoiselle de Maupin’ of 1835, the idea that art should be valued as art only. The artistic pursuits should have their own justification. This slogan became a bohemian slogan later on.

Table of Contents

What is art for art’s sake movement in 19th Century?

The concept that art does not need any clarification or justification, that it does not need to serve any purpose, and that the beauty of the art itself is sensible enough for pursuing them was highly adopted by leading British and French writers and artists such as Oscar Wilde , Walter Pater, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This group of artist pioneered a rebellious movement against Victorian moralism which is known as the Aesthetic Movement.

English Aesthetic Movement

The slogan ‘art for art’s sake’ is associated with this movement in history, which advocated that art should be kept separated from any social, political and economic influence. Famous Poet Edgar Allan Poe mentioned in his essay a very similar argument, ‘this poem written only for the poem’s sake’.

The slogan appeared in two works published simultaneously in 1868, one was in Pater’s review of William Morris’s Westminster Review and other in the Algernon Charles Swinburne’s William Blake. Walter pater mentioned in his most influential text of the Aesthetic Movement ‘Studies in the History of the Renaissance’ in 1873.

The writers and artists of the Aesthetic Movement advocated that there was no connection between morality and art. The art should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey a sentimental or moral message. The art should only show what the artist wants to show from the beauty of art.

Art and the Industrial Revolution

The slogan ‘art for art’s sake’ was a European social construct. It was largely a product of the Industrial Revolution. In most of the cultures from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, the artistic image was a religious practice. In medieval Europe, art was primarily used to decorate religious places and churches. Later the rise of the middle class initiated a demand for the ornamental art, portraits, illustrations, paintings, and landscapes for their home and offices. However, the industrial revolution created a void in the social structure where a large number of people had to leave in urban slums. This change of equation raised the question for the traditional value of the art and rejected romanticism.

During the same time, the academic painters felt a responsibility to improve society by presenting art, paint or images that reflect conservative moral values, such as Christian sentiments or virtuous behavior. However, the modernists rebelled against this thought and demanded the freedom to choose the style and subject of the art themselves. They felt that the religious and political institutions were influencing the artist’s work area and restricting individual artist’s liberty.

These progressive modernists challenged the conservative middle-class’s demand for art and adopted an antagonist attitude to stand at the forefront of the modern age of art and culture.

Latin Version and MGM Logo

The slogan is used commercially as well. The Latin meaning of the slogan ‘Art for art’s sake’ is “ARS GRATIA ARTIS’. This phrase is used by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, majorly known as MGM’s logo. The phrase is used as motto which appears in the logo of MGM behind the head of Leo the Lion.

Post-Modernism and Art for Art’s Sake

A failure of tradition was signified in the First World War and demonstrated that technological and scientific progress would not create a better world alone. This created a new cultural movement ‘Dadaism’ which declared that modernist art had rejected all prevailing artistic standard by imposing anti-art cultural work.

The concept of ‘art for art’s sake’ remained significant in a discussion about the importance of art and censorship. Art increasingly became a part of public life, in the form of film media, print media, and advertising.  Later the art became a mechanical rather than manual art and lost the control of an individual artist.

However, as the modern era emerged, Art falls in the hands of civic institutions and government bodies. This institutions which have no ability to appreciate art themselves impose restrictions on artistic expression and limited the individual’s liberty to create the art to show the beauty of the art itself. In today’s world, the slogan becomes significant again where the art should be for art’s sake only.

Vintage Home

• Edwardian Houses
• Edwardian Interior
• Costume Rental
• Georgian Lighting
• Victorian Furniture
• Fabric Colours
• Floral Arrangement
• Victorian Tables
• Bedroom Designs
• Victorian Lamps

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

Newcity Lit

Books, poetry, comics and the literary world of Chicago

Art for Life’s Sake: Essential Reading About the Healing Power of Music

by Sara Rauch | April 8, 2024

• Book Reviews

Renée Fleming/Photo: Andrew Eccles Decca

Last year, over Thanksgiving weekend, I developed an ear infection, the first of my adult life. It took six weeks, four antibiotics, two visits to the emergency room, and one curious primary-care physician to resolve. The pain was bad, but worse was that I lost hearing in my right ear during the course of the illness. The accompanying vertigo and pressure made listening to music almost impossible. As the date for my children’s school holiday concert neared, I dreaded going. When I arrived, the scene in the school cafeteria was one of anticipation. Groups of bilingual elementary schoolers sat on the floor at the foot of the stage; their families, friends, teachers and siblings crowded into the remaining space, spilling out into the hallway. My youngest wore a red nose and tail; my oldest had practiced holding an invisible burro’s rein until his gestures were right on beat. The ambient noise made my head throb, but as the classes filed up into their rows, I turned my good ear toward the stage.

Most people instinctively understand the connection between music and well-being. We need only to hear an old song to take a walk down memory lane; we sing to soothe our babies and to teach our children; we share mixtapes (or playlists) with friends; we select a song to commemorate a marriage. Music, regardless of genre, is a means of connection, solace, movement, education and emotion.

“Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness,” the new anthology edited by Renée Fleming, explores all of these aspects of music and more. The book amplifies and underscores its central premise—music is beneficial to human well-being—from myriad angles, featuring a diverse mix of essays, from the scientific to the personal, by artists, scientists, researchers and educators. All share the opinion and experience of music as a bridge to healing.

As it turns out, those working on the intuition that music (and, by extension, all art) is essential to the human experience and has a positive impact on our quality of life and overall health, are right. Music’s influence on the human brain is intricate, far-reaching, and, thanks to the research, quantifiable.

In recent years, classical vocalist Renée Fleming has made it her mission to bring attention—and importantly, funding—to the intersection of music and wellness. She collaborates with programs like the National Institute Of Health’s Sound Health Initiative, and she hosted a video series called “Music and Mind LIVE,” which, like the book that shares its name, brought together artists and scientists to discuss the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics. As Fleming writes in her introduction, “My hope is that this anthology will introduce readers to the scope of current research and practices that result in powerful health benefits of music and the arts, so that they might share the awakening that I experienced when I discovered the extraordinary breadth of this emerging field and its implications.”

Indeed, the breadth of the book makes it difficult to summarize. While there is some disagreement over whether humans are culturally or biologically musical, differences which cognitive psychologist Aniruddh Patel elucidates in his essay, maybe in the end it doesn’t matter which is correct. What matters is music’s powerful place in human development. “Music and Mind” contains sections on music in clinical settings, arts engagement in education, music as therapy, research methodology, and more. If the book covers an expansive number of possibilities, most results point to the same finding: music has profound significance in terms of our quality of life. For example, music therapy helps psychiatric in-patients explore their feelings and build awareness toward extended recovery; underserved youth thrive when given access to free high-quality music education; those living with Parkinson’s find ease of movement in dance classes; songs can be used to help bring language back to those experiencing post-stroke aphasia.

Neuroaesthetics is a “subdiscipline of cognitive neuroscience that… investigates the neurobiology of aesthetic experiences.” It takes as a starting point the brain’s extraordinary capacity for neuroplasticity (essentially, the brain’s ability to grow and evolve, even after traumatic injury) and explores the means by which arts-based therapy can benefit those living with degenerative neurological diseases like MS and Parkinson’s; PTSS; neurodivergence; chronic pain and long COVID. The discoveries in this field have the potential to influence the cultural conversation about what place music and the arts will occupy as we move into the future. Research of this caliber is necessary to fund more educational and therapeutic programming, as well as convincing insurance companies to get on board with coverage.

Renée Fleming/Photo: Andrew Eccles

Fleming’s legacy includes tenure as the first creative consultant for the Chicago Lyric Opera, where she adapted “Bel Canto,” Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel about a female opera singer held hostage alongside a group of businessmen in an unnamed South American country, for the stage. In her characteristically thoughtful essay, Patchett recalls of choosing Roxane’s vocation, “I had seen a grown man transfixed by the voice of a soprano. I knew such things were possible.”

Sound is all around us, all the time. Sound permeates barriers, like walls, in ways that visuals cannot; sound carries on air currents and even comes to us via our skin, which absorbs sound via receptivity to vibrations, something I learned while reading Joanne Loewy’s essay on music psychotherapy. Researchers are drawn to the “biopsychosocial model” that music presents: music can be both passive and active, individual and universal; it affects the body and the mind, the community and the culture.

Interestingly, there’s room in this discussion for silence, too. The world around us is noisy—becoming noisier by the minute, especially as we return to something like normal post-pandemic—and the constant barrage has negative consequences for all living beings, humans included. Neuroscientist Nina Kraus, in her essay, writes: “Sound is one of the vectors by which all living organisms are linked in unified ecology.” Because human-generated noise disrupts this connection, it impairs our “neural differentiation of the constituent parts of common sounds,” among other things. Indeed, what I missed least during my bout with half-silence was the omnipresent growl of my neighbors’ leaf blowers and riding lawn mowers, because thanks to climate change, yard clean-up now enjoys an extended season.

“Music and Mind” is a thorough, persuasive body of evidence for the healing power of music. Read it as both source and inspiration; the anthology is a monumental achievement and a timely reminder that we neglect the arts at our own peril. To echo Deborah Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center, as she so powerfully phrases her movement away from the expression “art for art’s sake”: “I now believe in art for life’s sake.”

The bilingual program my kids attend brings together English and Spanish speakers from across a city whose schools are considered “underperforming.” Music and art persist here, despite the odds. Often, at school events, families of bonded classmates don’t speak the same language. This can be challenging, but it is also inspiring to watch our children help us bridge gaps. That day in December, in the acoustically imperfect cafeteria that still smelled of industrial gravy and green beans, with only half of my hearing intact, I witnessed a community form, united in the enchantment of our children singing “Mi burrito sabanero” and doing the Reindeer Pokey, together.

“Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness” Edited by Renée Fleming Viking, 464 pages

Sara Rauch is the author of “What Shines from It: Stories” and the autobiographical essay “XO.” Her author profiles and book reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, Lambda Literary, Los Angeles Review of Books, Curve Magazine, and more. She lives with her family in Massachusetts. www.sararauch.com

Related Stories

APRIL 2024: BREAKOUT ARTISTS

• Privacy Policy
• Newsletters
• Chicago Film Project

Copyright Newcity Communications, Inc. © 2024

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Elite College Admissions Have Turned Students Into Brands

By Sarah Bernstein

Ms. Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist in Brooklyn.

“I just can’t think of anything,” my student said.

After 10 years of teaching college essay writing, I was familiar with this reply. For some reason, when you’re asked to recount an important experience from your life, it is common to forget everything that has ever happened to you. It’s a long-form version of the anxiety that takes hold at a corporate retreat when you’re invited to say “one interesting thing about yourself,” and you suddenly believe that you are the most boring person in the entire world. Once during a version of this icebreaker, a man volunteered that he had only one kidney, and I remember feeling incredibly jealous of him.

I tried to jog this student’s memory. What about his love of music? Or his experience learning English? Or that time on a summer camping trip when he and his friends had nearly drowned? “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “That all seems kind of cliché.”

Applying to college has always been about standing out. When I teach college essay workshops and coach applicants one on one, I see my role as helping students to capture their voice and their way of processing the world, things that are, by definition, unique to each individual. Still, many of my students (and their parents) worry that as getting into college becomes increasingly competitive, this won’t be enough to set them apart.

Their anxiety is understandable. On Thursday, in a tradition known as “Ivy Day,” all eight Ivy League schools released their regular admission decisions. Top colleges often issue statements about how impressive (and competitive) their applicant pools were this cycle. The intention is to flatter accepted students and assuage rejected ones, but for those who have not yet applied to college, these statements reinforce the fear that there is an ever-expanding cohort of applicants with straight A’s and perfect SATs and harrowing camping trip stories all competing with one another for a vanishingly small number of spots.

This scarcity has led to a boom in the college consulting industry, now estimated to be a $2.9 billion business. In recent years, many of these advisers and companies have begun to promote the idea of personal branding — a way for teenagers to distinguish themselves by becoming as clear and memorable as a good tagline.

While this approach often leads to a strong application, students who brand themselves too early or too definitively risk missing out on the kind of exploration that will prepare them for adult life.

Like a corporate brand, the personal brand is meant to distill everything you stand for (honesty, integrity, high quality, low prices) into a cohesive identity that can be grasped at a glance. On its website, a college prep and advising company called Dallas Admissions explains the benefits of branding this way: “Each person is complex, yet admissions officers only have a small amount of time to spend learning about each prospective student. The smart student boils down key aspects of himself or herself into their personal ‘brand’ and sells that to the college admissions officer.”

Identifying the key aspects of yourself may seem like a lifelong project, but unfortunately, college applicants don’t have that kind of time. Online, there are dozens of lesson plans and seminars promising to walk students through the process of branding themselves in five to 10 easy steps. The majority begin with questions I would have found panic-inducing as a teenager, such as, “What is the story you want people to tell about you when you’re not in the room?”

Where I hoped others would describe me as “normal” or, in my wildest dreams, “cool,” today’s teenagers are expected to leave this exercise with labels like, Committed Athlete and Compassionate Leader or Environmentally Conscious Musician. Once students have a draft of their ideal self, they’re offered instructions for manifesting it (or at least, the appearance of it) in person and online. These range from common-sense tips (not posting illegal activity on social media) to more drastic recommendations (getting different friends).

It’s not just that these courses cut corners on self-discovery; it’s that they get the process backward. A personal brand is effective only if you can support it with action, so instead of finding their passion and values through experience, students are encouraged to select a passion as early as possible and then rack up the experience to substantiate it. Many college consultants suggest beginning to align your activities with your college ambitions by ninth grade, while the National Institute of Certified College Planners recommends students “talk with parents, guardians, and/or an academic adviser to create a clear plan for your education and career-related goals” in junior high.

The idea of a group of middle schoolers soberly mapping out their careers is both comical and depressing, but when I read student essays today, I can see that this advice is getting through. Over the past few years, I have been struck by how many high school seniors already have defined career goals as well as a C.V. of relevant extracurriculars to go with them. This widens the gap between wealthy students and those who lack the resources to secure a fancy research gig or start their own small business. (A shocking number of college applicants claim to have started a small business.) It also puts pressure on all students to define themselves at a moment when they are anxious to fit in and yet changing all the time.

In the world of branding, a word that appears again and again is “consistency.” If you are Charmin, that makes sense. People opening a roll of toilet paper do not want to be surprised. If you are a teenage human being, however, that is an unreasonable expectation. Changing one’s interests, opinions and presentation is a natural part of adolescence and an instructive one. I find that my students with scattershot résumés are often the most confident. They’re not afraid to push back against suggestions that ring false and will insist on revising their essay until it actually “feels like me.” On the other hand, many of my most accomplished students are so quick to accept feedback that I am wary of offering it, lest I become one more adult trying to shape them into an admission-worthy ideal.

I understand that for parents, prioritizing exploration can feel like a risky bet. Self-insight is hard to quantify and to communicate in a college application. When it comes to building a life, however, this kind of knowledge has more value than any accolade, and it cannot be generated through a brainstorming exercise in a six-step personal branding course online. To equip kids for the world, we need to provide them not just with opportunities for achievement, but with opportunities to fail, to learn, to wander and to change their minds.

In some ways, the college essay is a microcosm of modern adolescence. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either a forum for self-discovery or a high-stakes test you need to ace. I try to assure my students that it is the former. I tell them that it’s a chance to take stock of everything you’ve experienced and learned over the past 18 years and everything you have to offer as a result.

That can be a profound process. But to embark on it, students have to believe that colleges really want to see the person behind the brand. And they have to have the chance to know who that person is.

Sarah Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .