This is a quote from Emerson that Peter found. It exactly backs up some of what I was trying to say in the post of Nov 14. For the word "poetry", in the following, substitute the name of some current art form with a wider audience and more cultural impact.

For, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life
of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, who
re-attaches things to nature and the
Whole,--re-attaching even artificial things, and
violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper
insight,--disposes very easily of the most
disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the
factory-village, and the railway, and fancy that the
poetry of the landscape is broken up by these; for
these works of art are not yet consecrated in their
reading; but the poet sees them fall within the great
Order not less than the bee-hive, or the spider's
geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast into
her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she
loves like her own.