His business as an artist is to speak out, to make a clean breast. But what he has to utter is not, as the individualistic theory of art would have us think, his own secrets. As spokesman of his community, the secrets he must utter are theirs. For the evils wich come from that ignorance the poet as prophet suggests no remedy, because he has already given one. The remedy is the poem itself.
Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciouness.
I hope you don't mind this definition of art is not in my own words. It expresses much better then I, what I believe. The duty of the artist is to mercilessly apprehend reality and represent it. After God, Art is dead. Anything original from the wellspring of ones heart and soul, physically or conceptually manifested and named as such.