American sublime.(Hudson River school of landscape painting)

Is there a notion less American than "art for art's sake"? When we invoke the doctrine, we usually mean the exact opposite. In nine cases out often, when an American speaks of the essential role of art he means that it can be made to do something useful. The nineteenth century, with its didactic tableaux, esteemed art as an instrument of moral instruction. The twentieth century mocked this attitude, even as it justified its own artistic products for their "consciousness-raising" properties. In either case, art is justified by what it does, rather than what it is.

Perhaps this is inevitable in a culture with an inherited Puritan ambivalence about the frank ...