Art for art’s sake

It is often held that art derives its meaning from its usefulness for something else. Socialist realism demanded that art workers make political struggles to the content of their work. Art must serve the oppressed masses. Without political content it is unacceptable or is attributed with a tacit political message. It is similar in a commercial culture where it is implicit that art must be marketable and have a price to have any value. Producers have to include content in their work which sells. They are required to be driven by marketability. Non-market-driven work does not exist in this system. Art must serve the mass market of consumers.

Nietzsche turned this goal dependency around arguing that authors of culture have to be inconsiderate with their work. (Safranski p 238 ) They cannot have their orientation to cultural production dragged down by the requirements of the masses but need to persevere despite the suffering or demands of other people. Only in this way can quality works emerge of historical significance.

Kafka takes another angle on justifying art in relation to the “real world”. For him the real world needs to justify why anyone would want to leave the world of art and enter
into bad reality. (Safranski p 242 )

Art has a kind of ecstatic existence. It allows us to depart the mediocrity of human functional existence and enter a symbolic, constructed world of visual, poetic and musical difference.

Art is like the world of dreams. It is a spacetime with its own reference criteria and does not stand in a dependency relationship to political, economic or functional needs.

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