Art for art's sake

The aesthetic movement was a sweeping philosophical stance.

It was encapsulated by the phrase, "Art for art's sake."

Meaning beauty is the ultimate goal.

Exactly.

That's poetry.

And, uh, the other thing he, he did, [laughs] well he used to say, he was not a cynical man, but he loved this phrase that he used to say if I'd, um, I, I can't remember where, where it came out of, but he used to say, "Art for art's sake, money for God's sake." I thought that was so funny.

And, uh, and obviously that, that became a, a, a 10cc song.

So let's get on to, to that part because y- you'd met Eric Stewart before.

Yeah.

But, um, and it was, uh, really to bring business into the, um, into the studio.

It really was art for art's sake, money for God's sake.

Because we were all involved in ...

We were unsure at first, our eyes darting sugar birds as humans draw near, but you were laughing like hell at your own jokes, like the one about the man at the movies who watched the MGM lion roar and wondered, "But wait, casa, I've seen this somewhere before." Lurched forward, falling, falling, pell-mell, whole body turned toward me, you were leonine and slightly terrifying little mutiny of mouth.

I've seen this somewhere before, floating engraved in the sky of my mind, conquering lion encircled by gold chain, mouth awake, fata morgana, sata masagana, and above the motto, "Ars gratia artis heart for heart's sake gold ribbon of celluloid film held up by no angels and below Talia's mask of comedy like a lucha libre mascara no nation but cacanation I cup my right hand into an O brown eye I lift to my eye and start rolling laughing is falling we were falling falling into the soufriere sky and suddenly your laughter was the room in which we now sank everything overturned by the bacchanal the salt shaker a glass of water and yes without realizing it we laughed About this poem.

Derek Walcott was a writer of great poetry and a teller of bad jokes.

This is the first poem of my sequence Birthday Letters, a nod to Ted Hughes of course, and such is its poetic mode, the birthday letter.

And Cle.

And today we're gonna talk about art for art's sake.

So, yeah.

Indeed.

'Cause they're awesome and we love visiting with them.

So, uh, they're-

... art for art's sake.

Then he's happy.

So it's like, I think it's, there is this art for art's sake kind of ideology, I think underpinning my, uh, my own, uh, sort of ideology, which is, is it going to make me happy? uh, I don't want to do this to do, to, to sacrifice myself for, uh, uh, for whatever, for anything, you know, like I want to do this because I want to live a life that is worthwhile.

And maybe that's a super millennial thing, you know, like maybe that's like a, a truly like, uh, of our generation thing, but maybe it's not, I don't know.

It seems rational, you know, like, why would I not just want to do all the things I want to do? Like I want to study, uh, paint layers, you know, and like research papers to find more things.

I think, like...

Yeah, like...

Just this idea of art for art's sakes, I've been thinking about a lot.

And I think, like...

...

I can see it so much more today than, say, about 50 years ago, when there was a real movement, um, that called itself Art for Art's Sake.

Yeah, yeah.

And even that, saying Art for Art's Sake, is a political stance.

Mm-hmm.

You know, saying you are not political is making a political statement.

Fancy a pannier or skirt all formed of little strips of material bedizened with red and black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.

In one of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams, I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation: “Old Pharaoh will not be pleased.

He loved his daughter, the dear man.” One strange circumstance which was not at all calculated to restore my equanimity was that the apparition had but one foot.

The other was broken off at the ankle.

In his creative writing, he wrote poetry, fiction, and, um, wrote about the ballet.

So in poetry, he moved from early romantic to the sculpted miniatures, uh, in 18-- uh, between 1852 and 1872, sculpted miniatures of Emma, a camée, a book which made him a leader of the Parnassian school, form-obsessed, anti-didactic, deliberately cold in its worship of beauty.

Um, he came up with the phrase, "Art for art's sake," and he helped popularize it in the scandalous preface to his novel, 1835 novel, Mademoiselle de Maupin, where he interested- insisted that true art needs no moral, religious, or practical justification.

And this idea of art for art's sake, you know, basically, we can, we can have... give it a grand, uh... and, and, and I hear this a lot from visual artists.

Van Dyke, LHD.

Professor of the History of Art in Rutgers College and author of Arts for Art's Sake, The Meaning of Pictures, etc.

Longmans Green & Company, 91 and 93 Fifth Avenue, New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta.

Copyright 1894 by Longmans Green & Company.

The Yellow Book sprang into a bright existence, flamed, and died.

Art for art's sake was slain by the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Mr.

Wells, in addition to fantastic romances, wrote stories about shop assistants and knew something about biology.