Art for Life's sake

A vast topic to talk about .
Now a days this is becoming a trend of changing art for life's sake.
What is art, and what is its purpose today? The controversy last year about government subsidy (though the National Endowment for the Arts) of work that many consider to be offensive is only the most publicly visible instance of contemporary uncertainty about the nature and function of art. Even while the buying and selling of artworks is a billion dollar business and while hundreds of thousands of people throng to major art exhibitions, contemporary philosophers of art admit that they cannot define their subject anymore. "We have entered a period of art so absolute in its freedom that art seems but a name for an infinite play with its own concept," states one eminent observer and critic of the arts today.
It seems to me that art in world is currently viewed under at least two antithetical and incompatible ideological banners, both inadequate to what I see (and will describe later in this essay) as a more demonstrably useful and universal view of the nature and function of art. The first or "fine art" approach demands largely a passive and hands-off attitude. It claims that art is sacrosanct, ennobling, mysterious - to be regarded with quasireligious reverence. The second robustly asserts democratization and individual expression, where art must challenge, provoke, disturb, liberate, and above all, itself be free.