"The crowd travels from room to room, considering the canvases "beautiful" and "sublime". He who could have transmitted something to his fellow man said nothing, and he who could have understood, understood nothing.
This is what is called "art for art's sake".
The destruction of the deepest sonority, which is the life of colors, the useless dispersion of the artist's forces, this is "art for art's sake".
The artist seeks material reward for his skill, his inventive power and his sensitivity. His aim is to satisfy ambition and greed.
In place of a deep and cooperative work between the artists, the rivalry for the acquisition of material goods arises. They complain of excessive competition and consequent overproduction. Hatred, partiality, envy and intrigue are the consequences of this materialistic art, devoid of meaning.
The spectator distances himself from the artist, who, in an art devoid of purpose, refuses to see the end of his own life and seeks to go further. "Understanding" is educating the viewer and drawing him into the artist's point of view. Earlier we said that art is a child of its time. An art thus conceived can only reproduce what in the atmosphere of the moment is already taken for granted. This art, which does not contain in itself any future potential, which is a mere product of the present time, and which will never conceive of a tomorrow, is a castrated art. It has an ephemeral duration and, deprived of its raison d'être, dies when the atmosphere that generated it changes."
In Studies, on Kandinsky
Irina Marques