Art for it’s own sake is pure idealism, anti-materialist, and bourgeoisie self-indulgence.

Art cannot exist for its own sake because all art exists in a historical context. The idea that art is or even can be some pure self-expression, some kind of raw creative exercise, is quite literally the height of idealism.

All art is in fact an act of communication rooted in shared experience, history, and biology. Denying this is engaging in bourgeoisie idealism. It’s a pretense that meaning exists or can exist in the abstract divorced from the material. It’s a pretense that the value of a thing exists or can exist in the thing rather than it’s function for a human or for humanity. This is why art “for its own sake” is idealism, because art cannot be for its own sake and engaging in the myth that it can be for its own sake is anti-material anti-scientific anti-dialectic idealism.

All art is an act of communication and denying the communicative function of a specific work of art is denying that something is being communicated. A denial of responsibility for the communication. Recognizing that all art has a communicative function places a burden upon the artist to be conscious of what they are communicating.