Igor Toronyi-Lalic

In defence of the Arts Council

The Arts Council forcing ENO to move to Manchester is the inevitable logical conclusion of turning art from something that has a value in and of itself into a social Band-Aid. Photo: Richard Baker / In Pictures / Getty Images

I once knew a monster who said she could not read Proust because there were no figures in Proust with whom she could identify…

Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Aesthetics’ (1958-59)

Getting an audience to identify themselves in a work – ‘being seen’ – is one of the only reasons why art is commissioned, celebrated or even allowed to exist today. In other words, the 21st century world belongs to Adorno’s monster: we just live in it. 

The 20th century’s definition of art, as expressed by another Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse, where ‘art is committed to that perception of the world which alienates individuals from their functional existence and performance in society—it is committed to an emancipation of sensibility’, is dead. 

Art has been put to work. It must be useful, and seen to be useful; it must put its shoulder to the wheel of individual, regional or national self-improvement.

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