Analysis Of Art For Art's Sake

Edgar Alan Poe wrote, “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….this the poem written for poem’s sake” (thepoeticprinciple). This can also be said of art. Art should not be judged by its fulfillment of a purpose, but should simply be the ability to express or exhibit feelings of emotion. Art has been considered the basic beginning of the senses that creatively project inner feelings and are executed onto external images. The expression of “Art for Art’s Sake” was a notion that art should be independent of politics or religion and should stand alone and appeal to the eyes or ears.

Art for Art’s Sake is considered a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but was seen as early as the cave paintings of wild boars done by Paleolithic Age Man which evoked feelings of fear and interest (thepoeticprinciple). The Paleolithic man expressed what he saw and felt. Throughout history, art has been used to service politics, war, and religion. By the early twentieth century, progressive modernism came to influence the extent that conservative modernism soon fell and was ridiculed as an art form. Conservative modernists, the scholastic painters of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, believed they were doing their part to improve the world. In contrast to the conservative modernists, who introduced images that held or reflected good conservative moral values and included examples of angelic behavior or provided good Christian sentiment, the progressive modernists sought to change the techniques and expressions previously held. ...

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...ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and like - all these have no kind of concern with it (americanvisions).” Art should be considered in terms of color, line, shape, space, composition, and should be removed from the question of meaning and purpose or whatever social, political, or progressive statements the artist had hoped to make. It has been argued that, because the purpose of art is to protect and increase the values and delicacy of civilized human beings, art should attempt to remain distant from the uncomfortable influences of contemporary culture. Art is subjective to the viewer. Art is a melting pot of technique and mediums with each example differing from the next. Art is the expression of emotion, thoughts, sight, and feelings. Art is for the purpose of Art – Art for Art’s Sake.