Arnold Schoenberg on art for art’s sake

    Unless art is composed for art’s sake, believed Arnold Schoenberg, it shouldn’t be called art:
    No artist, no poet, no philosopher and no musician whose thinking occurs in the highest sphere would degenerate into vulgarity in order to comply with a slogan such as “Art for All”. Because if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art. . . . One thinks only for the sake of one’s idea.
    And thus art can only be created for its own sake. An idea is born; it must be molded, formulated, developed, elaborated, carried through and pursued to its very end.
    Because there is only “l’art pour l’art”, art for the sake of art alone.
(Quoted from page 124 of Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, by Arnold Schoenberg. Leonard Stein(ed.), Leo Black (tr.) University of California Press,1985.)
    For a brief biography of Arnold Schoenberg, click here.