Etymology

art for art's sake

Today it means: Art with no function; whose only purpose is beauty. Full definition →

French l'art pour l'art
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. French · calque ofl'art pour l'art
  2. English todayart for art's sake

Calque of French l'art pour l'art, a phrase credited to Théophile Gautier. See the Wikipedia article for more.

Words from the same roots

Frenchl'art pour l'art all →

ars gratia artislarpurlartism

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.