What art does
- sciart0
- 16 hours ago
- 2 min read
Excerpt: "Art—as a field of work and study and as a matter of qualitative rather than quantitative value—is threatened, misunderstood and undervalued.
No doubt this is because art is not an obvious form of self-advancement—it doesn’t make you thinner or, except in very rare circumstances, richer. It does, however, improve you, and “What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory” by Brian Eno and Bette A. explains how.
All the pretense one might anticipate in a book with both “theory” and “art” in the title is undone by its gestural, playful illustrations by Ms. A., a Dutch artist who illuminates Mr. Eno’s discussion of how art is “like a language that changes meaning depending on the listener.”
Take, for example, her cheerful drawing of hairstyles—they reflect “Bette’s Grandma’s feelings about haircuts”—which depicts the severe, shaven noggin of someone who “is against something” and a fluffier coiffure for one who “wants to get married.” Together Mr. Eno and Ms. A. contemplate the art inherent in “natural” haircuts and the “highly sculpted beehive” that suggests “time, formality, maintenance.” Ms. A. is the perfect foil for the king of the art-school rockers.
British popular music of the second half of the 20th century was profoundly influenced by the U.K.’s post-World War II art schools. While it will surprise no one that Paul Simonon, the Clash’s bassist, went to art school, the list also includes John Lennon and Pete Townshend.
The art schools were easy to get into and their teachers were well regarded. The schools’ core view was that the postwar world would be creative, incorporating a number of disciplines. Their graduates would be in tune with culture, ready to work in design (both industrial and graphic), fashion, advertising and entertainment, well-prepared for a world in which there was a lot to buy and sell to newly flush teenagers. Mr. Eno, born just after the war, attended Ipswich School of Art, earning a diploma in fine arts from the Winchester School of Art in 1969."
Art, he says, is a way to explore feeling without creating “inescapable consequences.”