The Play's the Thing
'No great artist sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.' So spoke Oscar Wilde, a prominent representative of the Aesthetics movement and defender of the 'art for art's sake' philosophy. Aesthetics embraced this idea as a response to utilitarian social philosophies and the ugliness and practicality that was symptomatic of the Industrial age, there near the end of the Victorian era. 'Art for art's sake' declares that art has no function other than to exist as a representation of the artist's self-expression - it just IS. Art can and should exist only as art; it has no moral justification, no responsibility to teach. (There's a related concept from the Greek thinkers: that something is 'autotelic', or 'complete in itself'.) Critics of the movement insist that art must attempt to communicate something, to connect individuals if it is to have any value, and that 'pure art' solidifies the ...