The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.

Baldwin’s line argues that art is not chiefly a vehicle for delivering settled conclusions, moral lessons, or ideological “answers.” Instead, it reopens inquiry—exposing the living, unresolved problems that societies and individuals try to close off with comforting narratives, official histories, or conventional wisdom. In this view, art’s value lies in its capacity to disturb certainty: it makes the familiar strange, reveals what has been suppressed, and forces audiences to confront complexity where they expected clarity. The quote also implies a critique of propaganda and didacticism; when art becomes merely an “answer,” it can conceal the deeper questions of power, identity, suffering, and responsibility that Baldwin believed must be faced honestly.