Is art important?

A colleague from an online writers' workshop asked a question about what the hell is meant by saying an author is minor or major writer. What makes a writer "important"? This question was inspired by a comment made by the late Arthur Miller who deemed Carson McCullers as a "minor author".

The question has been playing on my mind a lot recently. What is art for? Does it matter?

This is what I came up with (although it may be absolute guff):

It has to do with some perceived value of "importance" of the the author's work. Quite how this "importance" is defined is a bit of a mystery.

I don't know what makes art important. I don't even know if art is important to the world at large at all. It's important to me, both as a viewer and a creator. But what makes one novel, say, more important than another? The subject it tackles? The way it explored that subject? Or does it not have anything to do with quality but how popular it is? Is Bridget Jones' Diary important because it sold so many copies? Does its popularity automatically mean that it must say something important about modern women?

Does a popularity imply that there must be something inherrent in the work worth studying because it touched so many people? Is artistic value, literary importance, retrospectively shoehorned into a piece of work once it becomes apparent how popular it is and, therefore by implication, how profoundly it has spoken to its contemporary audience?

Is Frankenstein important because it is a great novel or because it was the first "horror" novel? Is it important because of the subject matter and the questions it raises about scientists playing God? Is its importance actually based on whether it is any good or not? Personally, I think it is a dreadful novel but I appreciate that it effectively created the horror genre and its influence is still felt in art today and its themes are even more relevant now than they were in Shelley's day.

So perhaps literary importance of a book or writer can be defined as that which transcends questions of quality of writing or even of sales but someone who provokes discussions and arguements not only among contemporary audiences but far beyond.

Or perhaps an important author is someone he manages all three: quality of writing, impressive sales and posing of pertinent questions about the world at large.

On the other hand, maybe art has most importance to the artists who create it.

I suppose the other question you could ask is whether certain books (or any work of art) is inherrently important or whether importance is bestowed upon a work by concensus. Can something only be important if enough people say it is important? If so, does it also matter who says it is important? Can an important group of people judge if a work is important or can anyone? Who decides the importance of the people deemed important enough to judge the importance of a work? And so on.

Or can importance be assigned to a work by a silent but appreciative audience who may not even be aware of each other? If a work of art affects a whole bunch of disparate people who then go out into the world and, under the influence of that work, do something they would not have done otherwise, something that benefits more than only themselves, couldn't that work be deemed important even if the nobody is aware of the influence it has had? But, then again, if nobody is aware of a work's influence, how can anyone justify ascribing importance to it? If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it...

Does any of the above actually matter? All this philosophising may be a diverting mental exercise for me but is the pursuit of a satisfatory answer important? Would any of the above be more important if Arthur Miller had said it and not me?