The necessity of art

There is in the world to-day a conviction of sin about art. People realize more every year that the badness of our architecture, decoration, music, drama, which has been our legacy from the immediate past, is an offense against the highest that is in us; they are discarding both the bleak indifference of our puritan tradition and the decadent hedonism which was a reaction against it : everywhere in all the arts there is improvement a return to sincerity, simplicity, beauty; and the improvement is due to the growing conviction of the high seriousness of art. We are less tempted to regard the arts because of their delightfulness as a mere pastime; we are discovering that in them we touch the eternal world that art is in fact religious. The object of art is not to give pleasure, as our fathers assumed, but to express the highest spiritual realities. Art is not only delightful : it is necessary.