I don't think we really disagree, Conniekat, I probably just didn't say it right..  lol

This is from a book written by a great artist about the craft.  He says it much more eloquently than I can:  (this is not a direct quote, I'm just taking from it what applies to art in its visual form; he is talking about the art of fiction, but he also talks about how it applies to art in all of its forms...) -

On Aesthetic Law and Artistic Mystery -

• What the beginning artist usually wants is a set of rules on what to do and what not to do.  Some general principals can be set down, and some very general warnings can be offered, but on the whole the search for aesthetic absolutes is a misapplication of the artist's energy.  When one begins to be persuaded that certain things must never be done and other things must always be done, one has entered the first stage of aesthetic arthritis, the disease that ends up in pedantic rigidity and the atrophy of intuition.  Every true work of art - and thus every attempt at art - must be judged, primarily but not exclusively, by its own laws.  If it has no laws, or if its laws are incoherent, then it fails - usually - on that basis.

Trustworthy aesthetic universals do exist, but they exist at such a high level of abstraction as to offer almost no guidence to the artist.  Most supposed aesthetic absolutes prove relative under pressure. (here's what I basically meant in the above post) They're laws, but they are slippery at best.

Art depends heavily on feeling, intuition and taste.  It is feeling, not some rule, that tells the abstract painter to put his yellow here and there, not there, and may later tell him that it should have been brown or purple or green.

In other words, art has no universal rules because each true artist melts down and reforges all past aesthetic law.  To the true artist, anything whatever is possible. Invention, the spontaneous generation of new rules, is central to art.  And so it follows that for the beginning artist, as for the great one he/she hopes to become, there can be no firm rules, no limits, no restrictions.  Whatever works is good.  One must develop an eye for what - by his/her own informed standards - works. 

My interpretation of what he means when he uses the work "works" is that it makes people feel something, captures their imagination, and hence is entertaining at least on some level.  So IMHO, that is the main purpose of it, the reason for it, and if it accomplishes that much, anything else is open for debate...  ;-)

M