Now, if you think Art is fundamentally important to human beings--not as a notion but as a practical reality--the present anti-artistic (i.e., anti-humanist) thrust of the present party-political climate has to be worrying. Art is not decoration, or something pretty by someone dead. It's not escapism or entertainment. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with any of these things but they're not Art. Art is more even than ideas. Art is the exploration of ideas: an attempt, I think, to make sense of the experience of being human through a process of creative skepticism. This in turn means Art is best at work when it's being prickly, querulous, and hostile to complacency of thought. It is obvious how Art itself is a problem for the new right: too may questions do not sit well with the smug face of an apparently immovable government. [...]

a whole new generation who cannot remember alternatives to "marketplace" meretriciousness is coming to fruition, and that, surely, has an effect on how younger people view what Art (and people) are