Art for art's sake

L' art pour l'art [ laʀpuʀlaʀ ] (French, literally meaning the "art for art ", literally " art for art's sake "; ars gratia artis sometimes in Latin ) is a figure of speech. In it, the view is expressed that art is self-sufficient, is allowed to make any external purpose subservient.

She has the meaning: to do something about its own sake, without any ulterior motives of applications, business benefit. The phrase is also pejorative for: do something useless, be playful. In this sense, it refers to a counter-position to views of art with dedicated non- politically committed target direction such as tendentious literature or agitprop.

The turn was a French art program theory of the 19th century, which was particularly represented by the so-called Parnassian. It is unclear who has marked them as the first; are called Théophile Gautier, and Victor Cousin. With it, especially the priority of artistic form and aesthetic design is highlighted. In France, the conception of art was primarily by Gustave Flaubert and Charles Baudelaire, represented in Oscar Wilde's England and in Germany by Stefan George. In the U.S., she represented the most consistent of the Abstract Expressionist painter Ad Reinhardt attributed.

The phrase is seen in movies of the studio Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer, where she is taken in Latin in the movie golden band around the MGM lion (ars gratia artis ).