Art for art's sake—the usual English rendering of (), a French

slogan A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan or a political, commercial, religious, or other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group ...

from the latter half of the 19th century—is a phrase that expresses the

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

that 'true' art is utterly independent of all social values and utilitarian functions, be they

didactic Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasises instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is a conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to explain. ...

moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...

, or

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

. Such works are sometimes described as '' autotelic'' (from Greek: ''autoteles'', 'complete in itself'), a concept also applied to "inner-directed" or "self-motivated" persons. The phrase is sometimes used commercially. A

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

version of this phrase, (), is used as a motto by

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...

film studio, appearing in the film scroll around the roaring head of Leo the Lion in its logo.

History

The phrase "'" had been used by Parisian intellectuals since the beginning of the 19th century, but it was

Théophile Gautier Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and rema ...

(1811–1872) who first fully articulated its current metaphysical meaning in the prefaces of his 1832 poetry volume ''Albertus'' and 1835 novel ''Mademoiselle de Maupin''. The phrase also appeared in the lectures and writings of Victor CousinArt for art's sake
(revised ed.). ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

''. 9992015. and Benjamin Constant. In his essay " The Poetic Principle" (1850)

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...

argues:

We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake ... and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force:– but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake.

"Art for the sake of art" became a bohemian

creed A creed, also known as a confession of faith, a symbol, or a statement of faith, is a statement of the shared beliefs of a community (often a religious community) which summarizes its core tenets. Many Christian denominations use three creeds ...

in the 19th century; a slogan raised in defiance of those—from

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

to the later

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

advocates of socialist realism—who thought that the value of art was to serve some

purpose. It was a rejection of the Marxist aim of politicising art. "Art for the sake of art" affirmed that art was valuable in itself; that artistic pursuits did not need moral justification, and indeed, could legitimately be morally neutral or subversive.

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral a ...

wrote the following, deprecating the accustomed role of art in the service of the state or official religion, as had been common practice since the

Counter-Reformation The Counter-Reformation (), also sometimes called the Catholic Revival, was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to, and as an alternative to or from similar insights as, the Protestant Reformations at the time. It w ...

of the 16th century: "Art should be independent of all claptrap – 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." In this brusque dismissal, the artist also rejected sentimentalism. All that remains of

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

in this statement is the reliance on the artist's own eye and sensibility as the arbiter. In English art and letters, the slogan is associated with Walter Pater and his Aesthetic Movement, which self-consciously rebelled against Victorian moralism. It first appeared in print in English in two works of 1868: Pater's review of

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditiona ...

's poetry in the ''

Westminster Review The ''Westminster Review'' was a quarterly United Kingdom, British publication. Established in 1823 as the official organ of the Philosophical Radicals, it was published from 1824 to 1914. James Mill was one of the driving forces behind the libe ...

'', and Algernon Charles Swinburne's study ''

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

''. However, William Makepeace Thackeray had used the term privately in an 1839 letter to his mother in which he recommended

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...

's '' Miscellanies'', writing that Carlyle had done more than any other to give "art for art's sake ... its independence." A modified form of Pater's review appeared in his ''Studies in the History of the Renaissance'' (1873), one of the most influential texts of the Aesthetic Movement.

Arnold Bennett Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaborati ...

made the facetious riposte: "Am I to sit still and see other fellows pocketing two guineas apiece for stories which I can do better myself? Not me. If anyone imagines my sole aim is art for art's sake, they are cruelly deceived." In Germany, the poet Stefan George was one of the first artists to translate the phrase () and adopt it for his own literary programme, presented in the first volume of his literary magazine ''Blätter für die Kunst'' (1892). He was inspired mainly by

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics ...

and the French Symbolists whom he had met in Paris, where he was friends with Albert Saint-Paul and consorted with the circle around

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French Symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools o ...

Criticism

By Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...

argued that there is 'no art for art's sake', the arts always express human values and communicate core beliefs:

When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless—in short, ', a worm chewing its own tail. "Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!"—that is the talk of mere passion. A psychologist, on the other hand, asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this merely a "moreover"? an accident? something in which the artist's instinct had no share? Or is it not the very presupposition of the artist's ability? Does his basic instinct aim at art, or rather at the sense of art, at life? at a desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as '?

By Marxists and socialists

Marxists have argued that art should be politicised for the sake of transmitting the

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

message.

George Sand Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (; 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her pen name George Sand (), was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. Being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balz ...

, who was not a Marxist but a socialist writer, wrote in 1872 that ' was an empty phrase, an idle sentence. She asserted that artists had a "duty to find an adequate expression to convey it to as many souls as possible," ensuring that their works were accessible enough to be appreciated. Senegalese president, head of the Socialist Party of Senegal, and co-founder of Negritude, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and anti-colonial Africanist writer Chinua Achebe have both criticised the slogan as being a limited and Eurocentric view on art and creation. Senghor argued that, in "black African aesthetics," art is "functional" and that in "black Africa, 'art for art's sake' does not exist." Achebe is more scathing in his collection of essays and criticism entitled ''Morning Yet on Creation Day'', in which he asserts that "art for the sake of art is just another piece of deodorised dog shit ic"

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...

, one of the developers of Marxist hermeneutics, discusses the slogan in his seminal 1936 essay " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". He first mentions it in regard to the reaction within the realm of traditional art to innovations in reproduction, in particular

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

. He even terms the "'" slogan as part of a "

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

of art" in bracketing off social aspects. In the Epilogue to his essay, Benjamin discusses the links between

fascism Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...

and art. His main example is that of

Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...

and the thinking of its mentor Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. One of the slogans of the Futurists was "''Fiat ars – pereat mundus''" ('Let art be created, though the world perish'). Provocatively, Benjamin concludes that as long as fascism expects war "to supply the artistic gratification of a sense of perception that has been changed by technology," then this is the "consummation," the realization, of "'." Diego Rivera, who was a member of the Mexican Communist Party and "a supporter of the revolutionary cause," claims that the art for the sake of art theory would further divide the rich from the poor. Rivera goes on to say that since one of the characteristics of so called "pure art" was that it could only be appreciated by a few superior people, the art movement would strip art from its value as a social tool and ultimately make art into a currency-like item that would only be available to the rich. Chinese communist leader

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

said: "There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.""Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art" (May 1942), ''Selected Works'', Vol. III, p. 86. Via '' Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong'', accessed via the Marxists Internet Archivebr>here

Notes

External links