What is the Point of Art?

Hello to all regular readers and a warm welcome to all the first timers.

(Note: a slightly longer edition this time because the topic demands it. But I’m sure it will be worth it.)

What would you say if I ask you: what is the point of literature, or poetry? To put that in a more general sense, what is the point of art?

At first, this might seem like a strange question. Now, a generic answer would be something like: art reflects who you are and lights up what you might become.

Art alleviates loneliness. You can grieve in a poem, you can relate to a character in a film or a book, or a painting might make you forget all your worries, and so on.

Life is chaotic, but art gives shape to all the chaos we see or face. We’re story-driven creatures, so art gives form to what might otherwise feel random or unbearable.

Now, I find myself reflecting on this question again and again since I finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray last month.

You might have found yourself in a similar situation if you’ve read the book. For those who haven’t read, consider what Oscar Wilde has written in the preface:

That’s kinda a mic drop statement in modern terms, isn’t it? Now what does that mean?

To get at what he means, we need to remember the context: the 1890s, when Victorian society still thought art should enrich humans. That is to say, it should be morally, socially, or at least educationally useful.

This was Wilde’s direct reaction against the Victorian era's dominant belief that art must serve a moral or didactic purpose.

Useful things vs. Useless things

Wilde clearly distinguishes between objects made for a purpose (a hammer, a car, a chair, etc.) and those made for pure admiration (a painting, a poem, a sculpture, etc.).

He suggests that making something useful, while forgivable, is often a mundane act. But when one creates a useless thing, the only excuse for doing that is out of pure and intense admiration. This useless thing has no function other than to be beautiful, which is the only true justification for its existence.

If something serves no function—say, a piece of music that makes you weep but solves no problem—it earns its existence through admiration and through the human act of valuing beauty. Conversely, if someone admires a useful object too much, they risk confusing utility with art.

The Paradox of Art's "Uselessness" 

When he says “all art is quite useless,” he means that art doesn’t serve any purpose; we can’t put it to any use. For Wilde, art doesn’t have to serve an end beyond itself.

For the sake of example, let's say a computer is useful for a lot of things like complex calculations, work, or entertainment; a car is useful for going from one place to another; a bag is useful to keep things so we can carry them easily; and so on. But a painting, a poem, or a symphony doesn’t owe anyone “usefulness.”

In this sense, art's "uselessness" is its highest form of utility. It serves only the purpose of being beautiful. This is often misunderstood as a dismissal of art's value, but it's the opposite: it elevates art to a realm above practical concerns.

If art had to justify itself by usefulness, it would stop being art and become propaganda, or design, or instruction.

Now, why does it matter? Wilde was pushing back against the Victorian moralists, but the question still matters today in our modern culture and era, where we are constantly told to measure what we do and for what purpose.

If we ask of every poem or painting, “But what does it do?”, then we kill the essence of it. Wilde's statement challenges us to reconsider how we value art. He implies that the moment we try to impose a "use" on art, we diminish it.

Wilde's ideas invite us to appreciate things for their intrinsic value. His work, and this preface, is a reminder that some of the most profound human experiences—love, beauty, and art—are not "useful" in a practical sense, but are essential to what it means to be human. It helps us reject the utilitarian mindset.

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But then you can argue that art—as in literature, poetry, paintings—does teach us a lot about reality and history and human nature and a whole lot of things.

So does it really help when you reduce the purpose of art to just aestheticism?

That's an excellent and crucial point. And it seems to directly contradict Wilde's claim.

But this is where the nuance of Wilde's argument, and the subtle provocation in his words, comes into play. So, I think, he’s not saying that art fails to teach us anything. Rather, he is arguing that its primary purpose is not to teach.

He rejects instrumentalisation of art. The argument is that art is not supposed to serve some external agenda. The “use” of art, he implies, comes naturally, almost accidentally, through our engagement with it. We can’t help but learn from it, even when the artist insists they were merely “playing.”

For example, a novel like To Kill a Mockingbird was not written with the primary purpose of showing readers the injustice and racism faced by Black people in America. Its purpose, in Wilde's view, was to create a compelling, beautiful, and emotionally resonant narrative. The fact that it also educates us about racism and marginalisation that Black people face is a powerful effect or a byproduct, but not its fundamental reason for being.

Wilde provokes us into realising that the power of art is not in its assigned duties but in its unpredictable effects. We, and perhaps even artists themselves, can’t legislate what it will mean to people.

If an artist sets out with the primary goal of teaching a moral lesson or historical fact, Wilde would argue that they are compromising the aesthetic purity of their work.

The moment art becomes a tool, it loses its soul. Its beauty and power should come from its own internal logic—its use of language, colour, form, and composition—not from the external message it is trying to convey.

So, yes, art is never just art. Even when it’s created for art’s sake, it slips into the cultural bloodstream and does work: it remembers, it resists, it teaches, it seduces, it provokes.

The deeper irony here is that Wilde’s “useless” works continue to shape moral, political, and aesthetic debates over a century later. 

He claimed “all art is quite useless,” yet The Picture of Dorian Gray is a full-blown moral fable about vanity, beauty, and corruption. He may have denied art’s utilitarian value, but he wrote a novel that still unsettles readers about the cost of desire.

Now, think about this: Let’s say if Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling with some elaborate diagrams explaining crop rotation or drew something to explain geometry instead of angels and prophets, which can be immensely useful, but then, would anyone travel across the world to crane their neck at it in awe?

The paradox is that art's very uselessness—its freedom from an external agenda—is what makes it so powerful and effective in conveying profound truths. When a work of art is beautiful for its own sake, it can bypass our intellectual defenses and speak directly to our emotions and intuition.

As always, I’ll leave you with something to think about before concluding: if art always ends up teaching us something, even against its creator’s intent, does that mean all art is secretly useful, or does its usefulness come only from the beholder, never from the thing itself?

That’s all for this week, guys.
Will see you again next weekend.

Until then
Stay curious

Zaid

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