The concept of "Art for Art's Sake" rejected the idea that the success of an artwork could be measured by its representational accuracy or the effectiveness with which it conveyed some form of narrative or intrinsic message. Instead, it implied that an art object was best understood as an independent and self-sufficient creation. Most commonly associated with abstract painting and sculpture of the mid-20th century, artwork that embraced the notion of art for art's sake communicated no distinct message to the viewer other than existing purely as an aesthetically pleasing work, and one that organized color and line into a formally satisfying whole.

• Art that existed for its own sake is autotelic, from the Greek term autoteles, which means "complete in itself."
• The artwork served no function â€" utilitarian, political or otherwise â€" other than to exist as a work of art.
• This concept is inextricably tied to Formalism, which implied that art was judged on its value; the value of art for art's sake was measured solely on its formal qualities of line, color, composition and texture.

The actual term "Art for Art's Sake" came from the French expression l'art pour l'art, a philosophy that maintained that art should contain no subjective pursuit or function other than to please the viewer. The writer credited with coining the term l'art pour l'art was French poet and literary critic Théophile Gautier, who studied with and worked alongside Manet, Baudelaire and Balzac.

Gautier's phrase later became something of a battle cry within French bohemian culture during the mid-19th century. For most academic artists of this time, plying their trade was an opportunity to celebrate certain ideals that were not intrinsically connected to concepts concerning art, such as mankind's moral values, the beauty of nature, and Christian sensibilities. These forms of art existed first and foremost as didactic messages of a political, social, or religious nature. "Art for Art's Sake" was a way for artists to rebel against this academic mode of thought, and to create art that had value simply as a work of art in and of itself, and not as a means to convey a moral message.

In New York City following the end of World War II, several artists living in the bohemian community of Greenwich Village began experimenting with pure abstraction as a way to bring painting back to a fundamental language of pure form. These actions were perceived in the art world as a manner of rebellion from the Marxist influenced Social Realist style in which artists used their paintings to convey a specific political and/or social message.

Pure abstraction, for the most part, denounced the use of all subject matter, and its practitioners strove to be released from the bourgeois tyranny of conveying meaning and purpose. Artists like Hofmann, Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and Newman all created abstract art that, by design, contained no didactic message whatsoever and only represented the artist's spiritual relationship with the canvas.

The concept of media purity parallels art for art's sake. When a work of art that was produced in a pure medium and maintained a visual balance of formal elements, it was made for its own benefit, not to champion any political cause or moral value. Critic Clement Greenberg believed that medium purity was best understood through works of absolute abstraction and plastic representation. Such artworks served no other purpose than to be paintings that are pleasing to the eye and achieve a visual balance.

"Art for Art's Sake" has been criticized by numerous theorists and critics, chiefly by those who adopted a Marxist perspective for deconstructing art. The Marxist and anti-Fascist philosopher Walter Benjamin, in his 1935 manifesto, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," referred to l'art pour l'art as "a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of 'pure' art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter." In the manifesto's epilogue, Benjamin again derided l'art pour l'art as a form "self-alienation [that] has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art." In Benjamin's view, the concept of art for art's sake had the potential to be morally destructive, because without a political message, art lost its sense of authenticity. Art for Art's Sake, according to Benjamin, was a self-serving exercise on parallel with Fascism.

Another opponent of "Art of Art's Sake" was African novelist and literature professor Chinua Achebe, who once expressed the belief that it is an inherently Western and Eurocentric practice to create art with no higher purpose or association. Achebe's criticism, however, is far from Benjamin's Marxist/Socialist objection. In a 1985 interview Achebe said, "An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists' he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question … That is precisely why an artist will never get into any rigid association. Even if he is in such an association, you will find him saying things that are quite strange for that association." These associations referred to anything political, moral, religious or otherwise. It was not the responsibility of the artist to infuse his art with a politically charged message, but the artist was nevertheless obliged to have at least some opinion, otherwise the artwork was merely a hollow object.



"Let us not any longer be ensnared by the siren songs of 'culture,' 'broadmindedness,' 'art for art's sake.' There is only one culture - the proletarian culture, the culture of the Free Man."
- Martin Ahern, excerpted from the magazine The Young Worker, August-September 1922

"... the avant-garde poet or artist sought to main the high level of his art by both narrowing and raising it to the expression of an absolute in which all relativities and contradiction would be either resolved or beside the point. 'Art for art's sake' and 'pure poetry' appear, and subject matter or content becomes something to be avoided like a plague. It has been in search of the absolute that the avant-garde has arrived at 'abstract' or 'nonobjective' art - and poetry too..."
- Clement Greenberg, excerpted from "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"

"Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake."
- E.M. Forster