Wednesday, May 10, 2006

A Question of Culture

What would happen if, instead of constantly asking about the use of art, our society began to ask itself seriously about the art of use?

2 comments:

Paul Burgin said...

What brought on this train of thought!

Andrew Philip said...

The train set out bemoaning the fact that much arts and culture policy seems to be couched in terms of how useful the arts are for achieving the policy aims of other Government departments. Even much arts funding is devoted to that aim, rather than valuing the arts for in and of themselves.

I'm far from being against those outcomes or funding streams, but I'm worried about what their apparent dominance says about the utilitarian attitude of our policy makers and society towards the arts. That set me playing with the relationship between the terms "art" and "use".

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