The Interconnection of Art and Life

Is there any inherent meaning and purpose to the arts? That question is one that has come to me in recent days, especially through our readings of Virginia Woolf and Dorian Gray.
 The message of A Room Of One's Own, in such ways as it doesn't pertain to women and history, begins with the presumption that for women to be involved in fiction, to be depicted in it, to create it, would be a goodly and wonderful thing. She assumes that art is the work of genius, with all its precepts and requirements to achieve its inherent greatness. We don't say why, but we presume art is a wonderful thing.
As far as I have gotten in The Picture of Dorian Gray, we are still being bombarded by a certain characters fool opinions concerning the desirism of hedonism and beauty for its own sake, straight-out asserting that beauty is the most important thing, not for its ability to bring happiness to others but for its inherent (though unexplained) value.
This line of thinking brings me to a video essay I'd seen a few years ago, pretty sure it was this one: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html. He mainly is discussing happiness ( I watched/read a great deal of essays upon the topic not that long ago ), but touches upon a study where people showed their preference for things that they owned, even people with memory disorders that couldn't remember what they owned. And so from there, I'd say that art matters because it is ours and we feel that it should matter because of that.
As for me, I guess I do believe in the value of fiction. I'll go along with one of the main threads of Gaiman's The Sandman, that we are a species of storytellers, and that their truth in no way effects their effect upon us. Yet I also feel that personally I have too great of a tendency to fall into fiction and never come out again, bouncing from world to world and never touching down on solid ground. There is great value in stories, but there is greater value in life and more value in our own stories than those of others.