The Genesis of the Theory of "Art for Art's Sake" In Germany and in England (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Genesis of the Theory of "Art for Art's Sake" In Germany and in EnglandIn considering its slow growth, we shall be able to see some thing like an evolution in the narrowest meaning of the term an evolution because there is interchange Of ideas, and to a certain extent, a building up Of the new on the foundations of the old. But the unexpected so frequently happened, and divergencies, not to be accounted for in the previous thinking, were so com mon that perfectly ordered development is not to be looked for. We cannot lose sight of the individuality of many of the men who propounded these Opinions. A very few of them were actually trained thinkers or philosophers: by the nature of things, these only would be apt to know and to judge the ideas Of their predecessors, to select what seemed true, and to add what they believed necessary. The others, the great majority, were artists rather than philosophers. Many of these were scornful of meta physical opinions, or even of critical ideas. It follows that their artistic creeds were not the result of study and prolonged re¿ec tion, but of individual experience, of inspiration or of whatever we may wish to call it. Their critical opinions are to be found in letters and in prefaces rather than in treatises, for many of them, like Wordsworth, found it necessary to create the taste by which their work was to be relished. Necessarily then, their theories are personal, - egotistic, we may say, - and belong to the body of art for art's sake teaching only by chance rather than by intent.It is exactly because of the variety of the elements Of this doctrine, and because of their gradual amalgamation and still slower acceptance (or inspection) by the masses that the move ment took a long time in acquiring identity through a definite title. A study of the emergence of the phrase in its French form and in its English equivalent is illuminating.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.