A good artist both sees how things are and senses how things ought to be, instead. This can't be a particularly pleasant way to go through life. Oscar Wilde is, I think, an artist in whom that dichotomy is particularly evident; much of what he writes skewers the inanity and evil of what the world values, but the sad-beautiful fairy tales he wrote for his children (which you should all read, you soulless people you) demonstrate his keen awareness of what is truly worthwhile.

All art tends to be painful in that respect. We see, really see, the true, the good, and the beautiful, but only for a moment; then we are plunged back into the humdrum, the crass, and the dull. The sudden ascent, and the equally sudden descent, disquiets our soul, possibly permanently. Hurts so good, though.