There is always more bad art around than good art, and more people like bad art than like good art… Good art is good for people precisely because it is not fantasy but imagination. It breaks the grip of our own dull fantasy life and stirs us to the effort of true vision. Most of the time we fail to see the big wide real world at all because we are blinded by obsession, anxiety, envy, resentment, fear. We make a small personal world in which we remain enclosed. Great art is liberating, it enables us to see and take pleasure in what is not ourselves. Literature stirs and satisfies our curiosity, it interests us in other people and other scenes, and helps us to be tolerant and generous. Art is informative. And even mediocre art can tell us something, for instance about how other people live. But to say this is not to hold a utilitarian or didactic view of art. Art is larger than such narrow ideas.
Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (1997)
Use the link below to read more about the life and work of British novelist and philosopher IRIS MURDOCH (1919–1999):
https://philosophynow.org/issues/139/Iris_Murdoch_1919-1999
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