What I think Oscar Wilde meant in this quote is that art has no utility, it isn’t a hammer or a horse, it doesn’t help us accomplish tasks or work.
As much as it is fun to rebel against this thought and make a grandiose list of the ways art is useful, I think that ultimately, he’s right.
Art doesn’t have a ‘use’ like a tissue or a shirt or a textbook full of infographics. It’s something else. I can’t say what it does have, but I do have to agree that it has no use.
I think what Jerry Saltz has to say about art being an operating system makes a lot of sense. Maybe the funniest part of this to me is remembering how much computer operating systems are flawed, and have to reboot. But if I think of the word “operating system” and try to forget the way this phrase is used in terms of computers, it does get very close to how art works.
Art is useless. It isn’t used. It operates, yes, but it can’t be applied. It’s something we can use to communicate, but it can’t shelter our feet against rocks like shoes do. Art is useless, but it still works. It performs movements of energy from one area to another. Art threads through our lives in perfect daylight or peripherally. Like a feeling, art can be the most noticeable thing in the world, or something we forget within a moment.
The moment that art has a use, it ceases to be art.