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Posts Tagged ‘art’

Origin of Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 28, 2013| 3 Comments »

There is always so much to share from Andrew Sullivan’s site.  In a recent entry he pointed to a book called The Art Instinct, by Denis Dutton.

“Micah Mattix reviews …

“The first feature of our inclination toward art is that we seem to have a universal love of landscape paintings — and not just any landscape, but landscapes similar to those our ancestors would have encountered on the African savanna. A central pillar of evidence for his argument is a 1993 study commissioned by Russian painters Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid that surveyed people from ten diverse countries and found a surprising number of consistent aesthetic preferences. …

“Dutton suggests that this seemingly universal preference for paintings depicting open spaces, trees, water, and animals is related to our ancestors’ search for food and safety. Such landscapes would have presented opportunities for cultivation; and the presence of water and climbable clusters of trees — which could have served as lodgings for game and provided safety from predators — would have been preferred by hunter-gatherers to either a dark forest or desolate plains.” More.

Evolutionary psychology often seems like a stretch, but it’s fun to think about. I do like landscapes.  I also like abstraction. In any case, I’m sure my ancient Picts and Celts ancestors, if such they were, would have liked the 19th century painting Andrew picked to go with his entry.

Who can resist a Turner?

Image: Petworth Park: Tillington Church in the Distance, J. M. W. Turner, c. 1830, via Wikimedia Commons

 

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Street Art Lives on the Edge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2013| 5 Comments »

Most street artists don’t think in terms of permanent museum collections. They don’t expect their work to be admired forever. Still, it must be a little sad to see it torn down.

Meghan alerted me, by way of twitter, to the demise of Boston’s only graffiti park, Bartlett Yard, about to be demolished.  Dig has the story.

“Rosa Parks, Mr. Miyagi, and the Incredible Hulk gaze down from the wall, their faces nearly big enough to drive a bus through. A giraffe in a space helmet floats carelessly through the light purple cosmos,” writes Dan Schneider at Dig.

“This barely begins to cover the intricate murals found at the Bartlett Yard, an 8.6-acre parcel of land just blocks away from Dudley Square in Roxbury, formerly used as a bus garage by the MBTA. Since the beginning of the year, the property’s owners have allowed an event planning group called Bartlett Events to turn half of the property into a community art space.

“In May, Bartlett Events held Mural Fest, an open call for graffiti muralists, which drew an estimated 1,000 artists and community members together in a frenzy of aerosol, transforming the Yard from a 125-year-old dilapidated bus garage into the massive public art installation.

“If you want to take in the art at Bartlett Yard, however, you’d better do it soon.

“Come this November it’ll all be torn down to begin construction of Bartlett Place, a mixed-use development of housing with—in all likelihood—no graffiti. …

“The Bartlett Bus Yard has been out of commission since the late nineties, following a community-led effort to shut it down due to concerns about bus exhaust contributing to high rates of childhood asthma in the area. Since then the Yard has been abandoned …

“With a few weekends’ worth of hard work, however, several dozen volunteers were able to clean out most of the Yard’s two main buildings and surrounding blacktop prior to opening day.”

Residents express mixed feelings about the redevelopment, which some fear could lead to the dreaded gentrification and push out lower-income people. Others think it will be good to have more variety.

In any case, it sounds like the artists want to stay around even if the art is  ephemeral.

For Jason Turgeon,  an environmental scientist and one of the founders of Bartlett Events, “the notion of trying to create a permanent graffiti museum would simply miss the point.

“ ‘I come from the Burning Man world, so I know that art doesn’t have to be here forever. Some people say, “You have to save this!” And I say “No, it’s okay. There will be more art after this.” ‘ ”

Read more at Dig.

Photo: DigBoston.com

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Street Art in Brooklyn

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I continue to be a fan of street art and the way it allows informal artists to express themselves while also letting passersby enjoy both homespun and professional achievements as they go about their errands.

In Rhode Island, there’s a painted rock. Everyone paints it, and no painting lasts for long. In the summer, paintings wishing someone happy birthday may last only a few hours, as mine did one Birthday Week when Suzanne turned 16 and John turned 21. (They didn’t wake up in time to see it.)

There has also been some amazing work by experts on that rock, too, but it gets respect for only a couple days. It’s essential to capture it with a camera.

Yesterday I passed along an idea to a gallery owner that she liked. How about painting the painted rock to look like a rock!? Crazy, huh? She may do it, too. She has a painting of rocks in the current show that she could replicate. She knows she’d have to take a photograph, though, or the rock might be painted over before anyone sees it.

Meanwhile, here’s a nice story about street art in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

Amy O’Leary writes at the NY Times, “Growing up, Joseph Ficalora would sit on the roof of his family’s steel fabrication business. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, in the 1980s, it was one of the few safe places outdoors. The view was grim. The streets were dirty. Graffiti was endless. …

“Most people want to hold onto their past as it was, but Mr. Ficalora has found greater comfort in obliterating it, bathing the neighborhood in paint.

“Today the rooftop of [his] family business, GCM Steel, offers an eye-popping panorama of street art. More than 50 multicolored murals have transformed a swath of nearby buildings into a vast outdoor gallery called the Bushwick Collective, anchored at the intersection of Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.” More.

Photo: Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Gaia, well-known among street artists, paints — legally — on a building in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

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Turning Old Books into Sculpture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I got this lead from Andrew Sullivan. He wrote a post about a paper sculptor who made the commissioned work below, a kraken destroying a galleon. (I know, the kraken in The Island of the Aunts is a holy, nonthreatening creature, but elsewhere it’s more like a giant squid.)

“Justin Rowe is an artist and paper sculptor from Cambridge [England]. After graduating from Norwich School of Art in 1998, he began working for Cambridge University Press as an academic bookseller.”

The BBC says, “Justin Rowe started carving up the pages of old books as a hobby in 2010, using a small rotating-bladed scalpel. …

“Mr Rowe ‘lifts’ illustrations from ‘junk books’ to create scenes and illuminated installations.

“His intricate hobby began when he wanted to create a Christmas window display for the Cambridge University Press bookshop where he works as a senior bookseller.” More.

I wonder if Justin Rowe had anything to do with the stealth art project in U.K. libraries that we blogged about here. Also quite gorgeous.

Photo: Justin Rowe

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Giant Whirligigs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Summer makes me think of Fire Island, where I spent much of my childhood, and Stone Harbor, where my husband spent much of his.

Stone Harbor was also where my husband’s parents and many relatives retired. Uncle Al lived next door to my in-laws and made wooden whirligigs for family and friends: a seagull, for example, or a Mr. Sawyer who appeared to saw wood when the wind blew.

Recently I read the obit of a man who was widely known for his whirligigs, Vollis Simpson of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Martha Waggoner wrote about him for the Associated Press and the Globe.

“Where others saw trash, Vollis Simpson saw whimsical, wind-powered whirligigs, creations with hundreds of moving parts that turned and twirled.

“The whirligigs were made from recycled heating and air conditioning systems and reflector material Mr. Simpson patiently cut into thousands of tiny pieces that made the works shine when lights hit them in the dark. His work was featured in museums, backyards, dentist offices, and the 1996 Olympics.

‘‘ ‘I got caught with a lot of material, and I worked it out,’ he said in a 2010 interview. …

“Some of Mr. Simpson’s whirligigs stand as high as 50 feet … They can weigh as much 3 tons.

“He built the contraptions near his machine shop in Lucama. More than 30 of them were on display there until last year, when an effort to restore them began. That process is about halfway complete, with a few of the larger whirligigs still in the pasture, waiting to be moved.

“The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park is scheduled to open in November in Wilson, about 10 miles from his home.” Read more about him here.

Photo: Ellen Albanse for The Boston Globe
Mr. Simpson’s “Giant Whirligig” is shown near the entrance to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

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Heavy Rain Stuns Dogwood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Heavy rain Friday night stunned our dogwood. I include before and after, plus a gaggle of other photos from my springtime meanderings.

The elephant mural is at the entrance to Boston’s Chinatown. The fancy light fixture is outside Trade restaurant. The fence with crocheted wheels is at the Davis Square subway stop. The fountain is next to a rose garden honoring the mother of President Kennedy, Rose. The urban birdhouse is in the Greenway. The herring gull is at Boston Harbor. The Canada Geese are too prolific. The Mudworks sign is in Fort Point. And the flowers are at Verrill Farm.

dogwood-late-May

rain-pummeled-dogwood

elephant-mural-chinatown

trade-restaurant-lamp

earth-day-concord-mass

davis-square-somerville

rose-kennedy-garden-fountain

birdhouse-downtown-boston

gull-boston-harbor

canada-geese-goslings

fort-point-sign

verrill-farm-concord-mass

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Amazing Origami

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

A WordPress blogger who clicked on one of my posts has a nifty site, here. The blogger is Razvan, from Romania. Razvan apologizes for a lack of fluency in English, but I am grateful for any amount. Wish I could speak other languages.

You will like Razvan’s origami. Here’s a description of the fruit basket below.

“I want to introduce another model Origami: 3d origami fruit basket, this 3d origami model  consists of about 3,000 pieces. Origami 3d basket is 25 cm diameter and 9 cm tall and is made of around 1,100 pieces.Pieces are made from rectangles of paper with dimensions of 5.2-3.6 cm and took me about 16 hours to finish. 3D Origami fruit are  made of around 170-500  pieces . Pieces are made from rectangles of paper with dimensions of 3.8-2.7cm and took me about 24 hours all.”

I hope Razvan checks out a couple of my past posts on paper art. This one is from Tokyo Bling. This one involves a stealth project in English libraries. And Peter Gentenaar’s Flying Paper Jellyfish and other paper artworks are gorgeous.

3-D Fruit Basket Origami: Razvan at Razcaorigami.

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Outsider/Insider Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

An artist discovered at 64 has a gallery show in New York.

Jim Dwyer writes at the NY Times, “For more than three decades, [Rafael Leonardo] Black, 64, has made a portal to the world in dense, miniature renderings of ancient myth and modern figures: Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the Watergate break-in; Shirley Temple as a sphinx; the head of the surrealist André Breton as the head of John the Baptist; Marianne Faithfull in multiple incarnations.

“Until recently, few people ever saw his work because he had almost no visitors. He held paying jobs as a typist in a law firm, a salesman at Gimbels and then Macy’s, and as a secretary in a school. Most recently, he has worked mornings as a part-time receptionist in a hospital. …

“ ‘I just never made the effort to sell it,’ Mr. Black said. ‘I never expected to be able to make a living at it, but I’ve always done it since — well, I guess, since I’ve known my self.’

“Then [in May], a Manhattan gallery owner, Francis M. Naumann, mounted ‘Insider Art,’ an exhibition of 16 works by Mr. Black. Ten of them sold within days, at prices ranging from $16,000 to $28,000.

“ ‘People liked them, people who know art,’ Mr. Black said. ‘It makes me very happy.’ …

“Late last year, [his friend John] Taylor passed along Mr. Black’s number to [another] friend, Tej Hazarika, who publishes in the art world. Mr. Hazarika urged Tom Shannon, an artist and inventor, to look at the work. In turn, he brought it to Mr. Naumann’s attention. …

“ ‘If you are going to make a picture, you have to make something that’s in concert with the way the world operates,’ Black said. ‘There’s a line from the Lovin’ Spoonful: “You came upon a quiet day, and simply seemed to take your place.” ‘ ” More.

Photo: Victor J. Blue for the NY Times
“There’s a saying: ‘Everybody writes poems at 15; real poets write them at 50,’ ” said Rafael Leonardo Black, who draws miniature figures.

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Art Therapy and Cancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

No one needs to be told that art is healing. I find it can cheer me up when I’m just having a bad day. I even tell coworkers who are stressed out, “Go over to Fort Point and look at some art.”

But for those who care more about data than folk wisdom, there is research.

Genevra Pittman writes at Pacific Standard, “Music, art, and dance therapy may relieve anxiety and similar symptoms among people with cancer, according to a new analysis of past studies.

“Researchers who analyzed results from trials conducted between 1989 and 2011 said the benefits tied to creative arts therapies were small, but similar to those of other complementary techniques such as yoga and acupuncture. …

“The analysis included 27 studies of close to 1,600 people who were randomly assigned to receive some form of creative arts therapy or not, during or after cancer treatment. Patients with breast cancer or blood cancers—such as leukemia and lymphoma—made up the majority of study participants. Music, art, and dance therapy programs varied in how often sessions were conducted and over what time span. …

“On the whole, people with cancer who were assigned to creative arts treatments reported less depression, anxiety, and pain and a better quality of life during the programs than those who were put on a wait list or continued receiving usual care.” More.

I didn’t get into art therapy when I had cancer, but I’m sure I would have liked it. I did have a booklet created by past patients that contained daily readings, and more often than not the choices hit the spot. The patients named the booklet “No Other Way but Through.”

Photo: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Art therapy program

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Wal-mart as Artist Model

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

There’s an in-demand artist who goes to Wal-mart to find subjects. His name is Brendan O’Connell. Maria Godoy writes about him at National Public Radio.

“Most people would be hard-pressed to call Wal-Mart a source of artistic inspiration. … Yet that’s exactly what artist Brendan O’Connell sees in the sprawling big-box stores. For the past decade, O’Connell has been snapping photographs inside dozens of Wal-Marts. The images have served as inspiration for an ongoing series of paintings of everyday life — much of which involves shopping, which O’Connell calls ‘that great contemporary pastime.’ …

“Wal-Mart stores, he notes, are ‘probably one of the most trafficked interior spaces in the world.’ In the tall, open, cathedral-like ceilings of Wal-Mart’s big-box stores, he sees parallels to church interiors of old. …

“As artistic matter, [Wal-mart is] a part of everyday life that seems to have resonated with lots of people. Since [a February New Yorker profile began a] media blitz …  sales of O’Connell’s work have jumped dramatically, he told me [in April]. ‘I sold more in a week than I did in some years,’ he says. …

“The people doing the buying, he says, come from all over the country.

” ‘What I’m struck by is this relationship to brands,’ he says, noting that buyers have called to inquire about specific paintings: ‘ “Do you still have the Corn Flakes? … I want the Maxwell House.” Whatever brand it is that they have a personal relationship with. And that, to me, is fascinating.’ ”

“O’Connell’s work is probably out of the price range of the average Wal-Mart shopper,” adds Godoy. “But he’s passionate about a project to bring art to the masses. The idea behind everyartist.me is to create a collaborative art project involving 1 million elementary school kids across the country. And all the recent attention on his Wal-Mart series has helped jump-start funding for the project … he says.”

(Thank you, Andrew Sullivan, for the lead.)

Image: http://www.brendanoconnell.com
Blond with yams

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The Invention of Paint Tubes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Another good lead from the voracious reader of magazines in my household.

This Smithsonian story shows how a relatively simple invention made it possible for the Impressionists to do much more painting outdoors, en plein air.

Perry Hurt writes, “The French Impressionists disdained laborious academic sketches and tastefully muted paintings in favor of stunning colors and textures that conveyed the immediacy of life pulsating around them. Yet the breakthroughs of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and others would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for an ingenious but little-known American portrait painter, John G. Rand.

“Like many artists, Rand, a Charleston native living in London in 1841, struggled to keep his oil paints from drying out before he could use them. At the time, the best paint storage was a pig’s bladder sealed with string; an artist would prick the bladder with a tack to get at the paint. But there was no way to completely plug the hole afterward. And bladders didn’t travel well, frequently bursting open.

“Rand’s brush with greatness came in the form of a revolutionary invention: the paint tube. Made from tin and sealed with a screw cap, Rand’s collapsible tube gave paint a long shelf life, didn’t leak and could be repeatedly opened and closed.

“The eminently portable paint tube was slow to be accepted by many French artists (it added considerably to the price of paint), but when it caught on it was exactly what the Impressionists needed to abet their escape from the confines of the studio, to take their inspiration directly from the world around them and commit it to canvas, particularly the effect of natural light.

“For the first time in history, it was practical to produce a finished oil painting on-site, whether in a garden, a café or in the countryside.” More.

Dear artist friends, I can picture what it would have been like for you traveling by train after an outing to some scenic spot before this invention. “Oh, Madame, I am so terribly sorry. I’m afraid my cobalt pig’s bladder burst!”

Photo: Chrysler Museum of Art
The tin tube, below, was more resilient than its predecessor (the pig bladder), enabling painters to leave their studios.

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Roads That Glow in the Dark

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

You may get a kick out of this BBC story on the intersection of art and engineering.

“Artist Daan Roosegaarde has teamed up with Hans Goris, a manager at a Dutch civil engineering firm with hopes of reinventing highways all over the world.

“They are working on designs that will change with the weather — telling drivers if it’s icy or wet by using high-tech paint that lights up in different temperatures.

“Another of their ideas is to create a road that charges up electric cars as they drive along it.

“Daan Roosegarde said: ‘I was completely amazed that we somehow spend billions on the design of cars but somehow the roads … are still stuck in the Middle Ages.’

“In the past he has designed a dance floor with built-in disco lights powered by dancers’ foot movements.

“They plan to trial their specially designed glow-in-the-dark paint on a strip of road at Brabant, which is near the Dutch border with Belgium, later this year.”

Read more.

Photo of a glow-in-the-dark road: Roosegarde

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Fort Point Artwalk

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The 13th Fort Point Artwalk was 4 to 7 today. (Saturday and Sunday, the Artwalk will be 12 to 5.)

We got started a little late because we had dinner first at Trade, but we definitely enjoyed what we had time to see.

The Boston Design Museum at the corner of Melcher and A streets had art made of moss in frames that caught my eye. We also liked seeing the models for the Street Seats contest that I blogged about a while back.

Across the way, Ari Hauben’s show was energetic and amusing. Hauben teaches art to kids with special needs in Boston, and he has strong feelings about the country’s current emphasis on standardized tests — especially for the student population he knows best.

He and an optical-engineer friend from Rochester, NY, acquired 50 Melcher Street, and for the current show, Hauben papered the floor with standardized tests. He put up large, green chalk boards with pedagogical insights and opportunities for guest commentary.

And he was eager to explain just how he creates the current works from Instagrams sent him by friends. The website says,  “His style could be defined as blending pop and street art techniques into mixed media works. The process predominantly involves newspaper, epoxy, spray paint, and layering techniques that are integrated into a variety of visual platforms.”

The prices are indicated by grades: A, B, C, D, F. I especially liked a picture of weathered yellow sheds and the work called Peach Farm, below. Lots more variety, here.

WCVB’s Chronicle interviewed Hauben here.

Art: Peach Farm by Ari Hauben

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Lunch Lady Superheroes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Author-illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka knows the power of a kind word. He found his calling largely because of two words from a children’s book author who visited his elementary school class.

And he got through a difficult childhood nourished on the kindness of strangers, including lunch ladies, an unjustly maligned species he has honored in a superhero series. (“Serving justice! And serving lunch!)

Linda Matchan has a lovely story at the Boston Globe about Krosoczka.  (I want to call your attention to how nicely she describes him, here: “with impossibly spiky hair that looks as though he penciled it in himself.”)

“Until recently,” writes Matchan, “Krosoczka was very guarded about his childhood. That changed last October when he got a call from the organizer of a TEDx program at Hampshire College, modeled after the TED Talks series. …

“Scrambling for a topic, his wife urged him to talk candidly about his childhood. With no time to come up with other options, he delivered a moving talk about his early years and the people who inspired and encouraged him. The talk caught the attention of the TED editorial team, which featured it in January on TED.com.

“He spoke in his talk about his mother — ‘the most talented artist I knew’ — who was addicted to heroin and often incarcerated. ‘When your parent is a drug addict it’s kind of like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football … Every time you open your heart, you end up on your back.’ …

“Third grade was the year something ‘monumental’ happened. Children’s book author Jack Gantos came to his school to talk about what he did for a living. He wandered into the classroom where Krosoczka was drawing, stopped at Krosoczka’s desk and studied his picture.

“ ‘Nice cat,’ Gantos said.

“ ‘Two words,’ said Krosoczka, ‘that made a colossal difference in my life.’ ”

More.

Photo: Bill Greene
Jarrett Krosoczka declared May 3 (his favorite lunch lady’s birthday) “School Lunch Superhero Day.”

Author-illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka knows the power of a kind word. He found his calling largely because of two words from a children’s book author who visited his elementary school class.
And he got through a difficult childhood nourished on the kindness of strangers, including lunch ladies, an unjustly maligned species he has honored in a superhero series. (“Serving justice! And serving lunch!)
Linda Matchan has a lovely story at the Boston Globe about Krosoczka.  (I want to call your attention to how nicely she describes him, here: “with impossibly spiky hair that looks as though he penciled it in himself.”)
“Until recently,” writes Matchan, “Krosoczka was very guarded about his childhood. That changed last October when he got a call from the organizer of a TEDx program at Hampshire College, modeled after the TED Talks series. …
“Scrambling for a topic, his wife urged him to talk candidly about his childhood. With no time to come up with other options, he delivered a moving talk about his early years and the people who inspired and encouraged him. The talk caught the attention of the TED editorial team, which featured it in January on TED.com.
“He spoke in his talk about his mother — ‘the most talented artist I knew’ — who was addicted to heroin and often incarcerated. ‘When your parent is a drug addict it’s kind of like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football … Every time you open your heart, you end up on your back.’ …
“Third grade was the year something ‘monumental’ happened. Children’s book author Jack Gantos came to his school to talk about what he did for a living. He wandered into the classroom where Krosoczka was drawing, stopped at Krosoczka’s desk and studied his picture.
“ ‘Nice cat,’ Gantos said.
“ ‘Two words,’ said Krosoczka, ‘that made a colossal difference in my life.’ ”

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Art for Art’s Sake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Getty Images

I have been as keen as anyone to talk about the arts in terms of their economic contributions to communities. (You have to defend the arts in the language people understand.) But in the end, a focus on economic return is limiting. There are other values on the spectrum from “art for art’s sake” to “art for the economy’s sake.”

How about art for wonder’s sake, joy’s sake, self-expression’s sake, mystery’s sake — for the sake of just seeing what comes out and where it leads?

Over in Scotland, Tiffany Jenkins of The Scotsman is having a fit about Maria Miller, the Scottish Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Sport?!), who expressed her own take on the arts in a recent speech.

Says Jenkins, “The speech began with the right noises – ‘culture educates, entertains and it enriches’ – but quickly took a wrong turn, concentrating on what culture can ‘deliver,’ specifically for the economy, using sentences such as: ‘It allows us to build international relationships, forging a foundation for the trade deals of tomorrow.’ ”

Uh-oh.

“It matters,” writes Jenkins, “because of what happened with the funding body Creative Scotland, where there was a major negative reaction … in part due to an agenda that instructed the arts to be about the economy …

“To her credit Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet secretary for culture and external affairs for Scotland, was reported on Twitter responding to Miller’s speech stating: ‘The Scottish Government does not see arts and culture as a commodity.’ …

“That the arts are central to the economy is not an isolated idea, or a new one. … [But] it is a philistine approach that misses the value and point of culture. It is true that the Edinburgh festivals, for example, bring a strong financial return. … But even in this case, the financial return is not the best thing about the festivals – or why people come back every year to perform or to watch. They do it because they love it, enjoy it and are driven to participate in something meaningful. …

“Let us not forget the economic climate in which the Arts Council was established. This was a period in the 1940s, after a devastating war, when Britain was in a dire financial situation. The funding body was set up not to use the arts to get the country out of the economic crisis, in the blunt instrumental terms they are discussed today, but to stimulate ‘the best’ work.

“Economist John Maynard Keynes, the council’s first chairman, wanted to bring forth a ‘creative renaissance’ that was artist led, and acted at ‘arm’s length’ from the government, a vision that I would have no trouble with if it were realized today.” But it isn’t, complains Jenkins. Many of her concerns are pretty universal.  More.

It’s an argument we will never hear the end of, having been debated in every generation. I am coming down firmly on the side of “yes, and…”

In other words, the arts can be great for the economy, but that is just the tiniest part of why they are great.

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