The Uselessness of Art

Abstract

When Oscar Wilde, in the preface to Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891, wrote All art is quite useless, his words heralded not the beginning, not even the heyday, but arguably the end of Aestheticism. Four years later, in 1895, after his last trial and conviction, an English newspaper proclaimed with evident glee, The aesthetic cult, in the nasty form, is over.1 Indeed Aestheticism, in the form exemplified by Wilde and Pater and Swinburne and Gautier, did seem to die in the 1890s, even if vestiges of it reappeared in Bloomsbury and Cambridge in the 1920s. Although my theme is taken from Wildethe uselessness of artit is not my aim to try to revive Aestheticism. In the end, as was recognized by its protagonists and its enemies, Aestheticism was not ultimately a view about art, but a view about life. T. S. Eliot rather archly criticized Pater's view of art, saying that it impressed itself upon a number of writers in the 'nineties, and propagated some confusion between life and art which is not wholly irresponsible for some untidy lives.2 Even W. B. Yeats, who might seem less troubled by untidy lives, said of Pater's novel Marius the Epicurean: taught us to walk upon a rope tightly stretched through serene air, and we were left to keep our feet upon a swaying rope in a storm.3 most damaging condemnation, however, came, famously, in 1936, when Walter Benjamin proposed, perhaps a bit unfairly, that the logical consequence of Aestheticism is Fascism: efforts to aestheticize politics culminate in one point. That one point is war.4 Even applied more narrowly to art, Aestheticism is unappealing in many respects: it overemphasizes beauty in art (indulgent or decadent beauty at that); it inclines toward formalism in art criticism; and in art making it tends to prioritize appearance and design over substance and seriousness. However, closely related to Aestheticismsome say they are identicalis the doctrine of art for art's sake. In fact that phrase was already becoming cliche-ridden by the early 1870s (the French l'art pour l'art had been coined seventy years before then). terms 'aesthetic' and 'aestheticism' had largely supplanted talk of art for art's sake after 1868, the year of Swinburne's study on William Blake and Pater's essay on William Morris, which both used the latter phrase.5 Nevertheless, art for art's sake, for all its irritating tautologousness, has never quite gone away. Perhaps it says so little that no one could reasonably reject it. Who but the most philistine would suppose that art might be valued for being something other than art? Yet, of course, in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons, the slogan has been rejected. It has been condemned as dangerous, decadent, immoral, and a rejection of all that makes art important. Indeed, Benjamin, in the passage alluded to earlier, is associating Fascism not just with Aestheticism and the aestheticizing of politics, which is at least understandable, but with art for art's sake, which, to my mind, is preposterous. Fascism, he says, in the culmination of l'art pour l'arti case I want to build on behalf of the uselessness of art rests not on Aestheticism (even if that was behind Wilde's own thinking), but at least partially on a reworked notion of art for art's sake. first thing to note is that art for art's sake makes no mention of the aesthetic. It does not, for example, say that art should be valued for the sake of aesthetic qualities alone, even if that is a commitment of Aestheticism. point is important, for it shows that although art for art's sake and Aestheticism have strong historical links, they can be pulled apart conceptually. By doing so, it