Eleonora Belfiore says the cultural sector suffers from justification anxiety, which is particularly intense in times of austerity.
Pinning down definitions of the words “culture” and “arts” has always been notoriously difficult. But over the past 60 years, fast and profound social, economic, technological and cultural changes have blunted these terms even further, and significantly broadened the range of what is perceived as “legitimate culture” and labelled as “arts”.
In the age of the internet and digital TV on demand, we are all able to create culture as we consume it. John Carey’s declaration in What Good Are the Arts? that “a work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person”, hardly feels as incendiary as it once might have...
There is little doubt that challenging traditional forms of authority has resulted in the broadening of our cultural horizons. This has inevitably also meant that our understanding of culture has developed, becoming ever more complex and more democratic... (Click here to read more)
Pinning down definitions of the words “culture” and “arts” has always been notoriously difficult. But over the past 60 years, fast and profound social, economic, technological and cultural changes have blunted these terms even further, and significantly broadened the range of what is perceived as “legitimate culture” and labelled as “arts”.
In the age of the internet and digital TV on demand, we are all able to create culture as we consume it. John Carey’s declaration in What Good Are the Arts? that “a work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person”, hardly feels as incendiary as it once might have...
There is little doubt that challenging traditional forms of authority has resulted in the broadening of our cultural horizons. This has inevitably also meant that our understanding of culture has developed, becoming ever more complex and more democratic... (Click here to read more)