The Concept of Art for Art's Sake

Extract

THE cult of “art for art's sake,” which had a great vogue at the end of the last century, was, in pictorial art, set aside, or rather absorbed between the two wars by other cults of a similar nature, such as the cult of pure form, of plastic form, of cubism, and these in their turn have been pushed into the background by the sinister spectre of the unconscious. There are genuine problems behind these cults, and they are by no means easy problems. The cult of art for art's sake fell into disrepute; but this was not so much because of its artistic products as because of the kind of life which the devotees of this cult thought they were entitled to lead.