If any of you artists out there are going through a ‘what’s it all about, then?’ phase, here’s some food for thought:
Julian Burnside’s 2004 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address: Why Bother?
Peter Garrett’s 2006 Currency House Speech: Arts & Public Life.
And John Carey’s survey of what it all maybe perhaps might possibly be about: What Good Are The Arts? – note that he comes down firmly on the side of literature as the alpha-artform… He’s helpful in his survey of research into what art is and does, and highly entertaining while he’s about it: have a look at the transcript of his conversation with Ramona Koval in Big Ideas on ABC Radio National, Australia’s sanest radio station.
Then there’s Ellen Dissanayake’s What Is Art For? if you’re still wondering.
While for the bigger picture, look at John Barrow’s The Artful Universe. Thus fortified, try the arty bits of How The Mind Works by that rascally reductionist Steven Pinker; and chew on V.S.Ramachandran’s ideas on The Artful Brain.
