What is art for art's sake?

Question

What is art for art's sake?

Answer 1

Answer #1 is excellent, but perhaps it will suffice to say the term was meant to express the determination of the artist to present his, or her, idea concerning a thought, feeling, event, additude, or conception of a physical or non-physical presence without the intention of meeting the standards of others..

Answer 2

Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendition of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, ''l'art pour l'art'', and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function. Such works are sometimes described as "autotelic", from the Greek autoteles, “complete in itself”, a concept that has been expanded to embrace "inner-directed" or "self-motivated" human beings.

Art for Art's Sake is basically a call for release from the tyranny of meaning and purpose. From a progressive modernist's point of view, it was a further exercise of freedom. It was also a ploy, another deliberate affront to bourgeois sensibility which demanded art with meaning or that had some purpose such as to instruct, or delight, or to moralize, and generally to reflect in some way their own purposeful and purpose-filled world.