What is meant by the phrase “art for arts sake” ?
ART FOR ART’S SAKE The phrase “art for art’s sake” expresses both a battle cry and a creed; it is an appeal to emotion as well as to mind. Time after time, when artists have felt themselves threatened from one direction or another, and have had to justify themselves and their activities, they have done this by insisting that art serves no ulterior purposes but is purely an end in itself. When asked what art is good for, in the sense of what utility it has, they have replied that art is not something to be used as a means to something else, but simply to be accepted and enjoyed on its own terms. The explicit and purposive assertion of art for art’s sake is a strictly modern phenomenon. The phrase itself begins to appear only in the early years of the nine- teenth century, and it is some time after that before a recognizable meaning and intention can be said to emerge. This is quite as would be expected. For before there can be any need and reason to assert that artistic activity is self
