art for arts sake

"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"
"L'art pour l'art" (translated as "art for art's sake") is credited to Théophile Gautier (1811–1872). Some argue Gautier was not the first to write those words. They appear in the works of Victor Cousin,[1] Benjamin Constant, and Edgar Allan Poe. Poe argues in his essay "The Poetic Principle", that or "self-motivated" human beings.