What is the purpose of art? Pablo Picasso believed it was to wash the dust of daily life off our souls while Proust contended it was to reawaken us to extraordinary beauty of the ordinary world. Leo Tolstoy held that the aim of art was to instruct: we read and write stories to be better people. According to the great Russian novelist, we should read Pride and Prejudice— not for Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth’s witty banter or the delightful charm of high society and British manners — but to learn valuable lessons about love. Romance is not enough, Jane Austen teaches us, and we shouldn’t judge a potential paramour on first impressions alone.
Aesthetes, on the other hand, held the philosophy of “l’art pour l’art”: art for art’s sake. A 19th century intellectual and artistic movement, aestheticism asserted art was valuable in and of itself— it didn’t need to have a moral purpose. Unlike Tolstoy, the aesthetes, most notably poet, playwright, and lover of lavish capes Oscar Wilde, maintained art (at least, good art anyway) was concerned with one thing: beauty. Art seduced the senses; it didn’t stand on a soapbox to lecture or promote a political opinion.
Needless to say, aesthetes who made art for its own sake were condemned as degenerate debauchees and hedonistic pleasure seekers. As 19th century Europe entered the industrial revolution, factories rose, millions moved from the quiet countryside to the noisy commotion of crowded cities, and goods that once took months to make could be produced quickly on a mass scale. In the efficiency-obsessed industrial age, it was thought immoral to pursue pointless pleasure. After all, what’s the “use” of a poem or painting or sculpture? Why labor to capture the loneliness of a diner in the middle of the night or the loveliness of a floral tea cup, jar of apricots and loaf of bread when you could be doing something useful? Art seems frivolous when there are crops to grow and railroads to build.
In this clever, charming 1890 letter to one of his fans, Wilde concedes that all art is rather useless. Much like a flower or sunrise or sunset, art is a thing of beauty— that’s it. But just because art is useless doesn’t mean it has no value. Though our capitalistic society contends a thing is only worthwhile if it can be exchanged for dollars and cents, making art is its own reward. As Brenda Ueland wrote in her endearing classic, one of the most important intrinsic rewards of making art is the “stretched understanding, the illumination. By painting the sky, Van Gogh was really able to see it and adore it better than if he had just looked at it. In the same way…you will never know what your husband looks like unless you try to draw him, and you will never understand him unless you try to write his story.” With his trademark irreverence, Wilde explains that—above all— art brings us bliss:
“My dear Sir
Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.
Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde”
Our society tells us that writing a book is only worthwhile if it becomes a New York Times bestseller, a film only if it wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. If our portrait of a Parisian couple never hangs in the Louvre and is only ever featured on the mantel of our mother’s living room, we will be fools; if we dedicate our lives to our art but never “make it”— never publish our work, never experience the exhilaration of seeing our book at Barnes and Noble— we will have failed. Why had we worked so hard? Why did we devote years to something that never “got us anywhere”? Wasn’t all that time a waste if— like Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vincent Van Gogh— our work was lost to the dusty oblivion of history and we died tragically unknown?
For Wilde, the answer is a resounding no. Even if we write a book no one reads or toil for years and squander our life savings to make a film audiences loathe, we should not regret it. We’re always better for having created.
[…] “All art is rather useless,” dapper dandy and master of witticisms Oscar Wilde once quipped. Art might startle and surprise, astound and astonish but it has no practical purpose. After all, a play can’t fold the laundry, a poem can’t fix a flat tire, a painting can’t change your motor oil. Van Gogh’s “Wheat Field with Cypresses” can’t end global warming; Cezanne’s apples and oranges— no matter how charming— can’t cure cancer or rebuild coral. So why bother to scribble a sonnet or compose a villanelle? According to Kurt Vonnegut, postmodern genius behind such masterpieces of counterculture as Slaughterhouse Five and sage behind some of the wisest writing advice, we should paint and write and act and sing and dance and draw because making art helps us better understand ourselves and the world. Will our still life save the rain forest? Will our exhibit of black-and-white photographs find a more sustainable alternative to traditional fossil fuels? No, but trying to capture something will stretch our understanding and deepen our appreciation of whatever we write and draw. Or as Brenda Ueland once wrote, “By painting the sky, Van Gogh was really able to see it and adore it better than if he had just looked at it. In the same way…you will never know what your husband looks like unless you try to draw him, and you will never understand him unless you try to write his story.” As sensible adults, we want results. If we spend all day at our desk, we want something to show for our work; if we devote years to writing a novel, it better win the Pulitzer Prize and become a New York Times bestseller; if we go through the trouble of painting a Renoir blue sky, it better hang in the Louvre. What’s the point of dedicating untold hours to writing or painting if it never earns us acclaim? if it never sells and increases our net worth? It’s so important to make art because it reconnects us to our inner child. Unlike too-serious, too-solemn adults who believe we are what we accomplish, children understand there is more to the day than a to-do list. Children don’t make mud pies or build sandcastles or construct bed sheet fortresses because they want to be the envy of their friends or see their essay published. They don’t care if their crayon drawing is hung proudly on the fridge or is forgotten in a junk drawer. They create because it brings them joy. For them, making art is its own reward. Vonnegut believes we can all learn from children. Even if we write and never publish a word, even if— like Van Gogh— we sketch thousands of paintings only to die tragically unknown, no time is wasted. We’re always better for having created. With his zany wit and exuberant, playful love of life, Vonnegut implores a group of Xavier High School students to live creatively. In this lovely letter, featured in the altogether inspiring Letters of Note: Volume 2, he writes: I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana. What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula. Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK? Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. God bless you all! Kurt Vonnegut Being creative doesn’t have to be pompous or pretentious; it doesn’t have to be a poem or a painting on a canvas. Everything is art: how you stir your tea, how you organize your spice cabinet, how you arrange a bouquet of flowers, how you frost a cake, how you tell bedtime stories to your children, how you kiss your husband goodnight, how you greet the day, how you laugh, how you love, how you dress, how you wear your hair, how you decorate your home. Want to learn more about how you can be an artist of the everyday? Rejoice in Proust on how art reawakens us to the extraordinary beauty of ordinary things and 3 things I learned from Sarah Ban Breathnach. […]
Well you got me. This was exactly what I needed to hear, especially after a being in somewhat of a rut and not really finding purchase in my fiction writing. Thanks for this!
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[…] “A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We ga… master of witticisms Oscar Wilde wrote in an iconic 1890 letter, “Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower.” […]