“It was a dangerous thing for art to separate itself
from life, dangerous for both art and life. When the artist no longer felt his
public close to him, when art could no longer justify its existence or find its
meaning and its normal use in society, in manners and morals, it did not pine
away, as might have been expected—it did not die, for the laurel of Apollo is
tenacious, and dies only with the race itself
that once nourished its deep roots. No, art did not die of this: it lost
its head. The history of modern art is inexplicable otherwise; the artist who
has lost a sense of his public is not fated to stop producing but rather to
produce works with no destination."—French Nobel Literature laurate Andre
Gide (1869-1951), “The Importance of the Public,” translated by Angelo P.
Bertocci, in Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality, edited by
Justin O’Brien (1959)
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