Art, why?

I just read the first articles in philosophy now issue 108 that has art as the signature topic for this issue.

My first immediate question - why do philosophers bother about art(and about aestetics in general). The world goes around, people live their lives with or without art. It seems rather uninteresting to care so much for something that useless. Or? Let´s see what they have to say:

In the editorial Grant Bartley starts with the paradigm shift where Marcel Duchamp changed the attitude of looking at art as something beautiful to mean just like anything an artist produces.

Art also changed usage, from being something that cultivated "taste" to more look on the world in new ways.

Tracing art history from romanticism via modernism to post-modernism one can try to see what comes after, supposedly by looking at the state of the art of art. Maybe, as the author Bartley suggests, there will be a shift to pluralism, to accept all kind of values?

Finally, in the editorial, the question, what is good art is asked. After some discussions- What is good is defined by the individual. By you and me.

In the lead article Vargas Gomez discusses "art as an encounter". Or rather, how is the subjectivity of the artwork to be seen from a painters and a viewer point of view.

While art in later days have been more accessible to all Vargas sees a "loss of perspective on art".  He argues that to really appreciate a painting you have to understand the "values" that comes with the painting. Or rather, the values the observer has will be mixed with the values the artist weaves into the artwok.

Now what is those "values"? For a starter, the artist always have a purpose even if just randomly splatting some ink on a canvas. What the artist produces is something subjective, not like an engineer that produces a mobile phone (maybe). It is the "spiritual value" of the painter that is weaved into the artwork.

Now, for the viewer it is the task to understand these values, the "unique spirituality" of the painter behind the artwork being viewed. And maybe, the community as a whole will have to find it´s own sprirituality to find the proper place for art in society. An openness to the artists spirituality and the viewers own spirituality is the name of the game to get a sense of fulfilment.

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Well, the articles kind of presupposes that art is something to care about. Translating directly from swedish, walking around in museums or galleries is for the "cultural elite". You know, Upper class ladies that protested against USA in Vietnam in ´68. A little exaggerated, a middle class guy like me can really appreciate Musee d´Orsay.  But for sure, even the commoners gets confronted with movies,  music,  architecture. But do we really "try to find the values" of those kind of artworks? Well, maybe. I watched, for maybe the 15th time the brilliant animated movie "Anastasia" together with my now 16 years old daughter, a father-daughter thing we have together. And for sure,  there is values there. That the czar is kind of the good guy, that Rasputin was the cause of his downfall. That people starved during the czar regime is not mentioned at all. A view that kind of clashes with the semi-communistic swedish view that we and maybe our community shares. Yes, maybe it enriches us to try to appreciate art to see the world.

Maybe I have started to see some kind of point in caring about art philosophically. But I prefer reading a book or an article, I think.