Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Art for Arts Sake
Supposing you were a potter, and you went to your bin of clay and scooped out a lump, and threw it on a wheel, and took the result, and baked it, and glazed it, and baked it again, and at this point the minister arrived and asked what you were up to, and you had the wit to say, 'I am attacking adult illiteracy' - you would be a very savvy potter indeed. This is precisely the kind of potter the government has been on the look-out for. This is the kind of rhetoric they have wished to reward.
"Too often," writes Jowell, "politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of its instrumental benefits to other agendas - education, the reduction of crime, improvements in wellbeing..." One might quibble, perhaps, at this way of putting it: too often it is the politicians themselves who have forced others to justify their activities in these terms. Too often they do so still. [more]
Via Arts Journal
"Too often," writes Jowell, "politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of its instrumental benefits to other agendas - education, the reduction of crime, improvements in wellbeing..." One might quibble, perhaps, at this way of putting it: too often it is the politicians themselves who have forced others to justify their activities in these terms. Too often they do so still. [more]
Via Arts Journal