Art Matters - Reflecting on CultureHere BOOKSHELF considers two books that mark the Millennial moment in terms of cultural policy and look back over cultural history - and then in Issue 45, two books to equip us for management in the 21st century. Building Jerusalem - Art, Industry and the British Millennium Art Matters
- Reflecting on Culture Who are these books for? With Pick/Anderson the answer is clear. It is a humorous survey of British cultural history in the period embraced by the two Queen Elizabeths. With much interesting new material, it is a socio-cultural analysis holding up well with Alvin Toffler, Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart and Robert Hughes. Brave is the person who after these reflects on culture! Building Jerusalem does so unselfconsciously, debunking a few myths whilst reminding us of the absurdity of referring to the arts as the 'creative industries.' Tusa invokes Gerry Robinson's ghastly phrase "a limited amount of deliverable priorities" in distancing himself from inappropriate 'arts language' but, sadly, his own writing has something of the luvvy in it ("Art is all the things that the rest of life is not") and he does urge "addressing issues"! His book is not about culture, in the usual sense, not even that part of culture we call the arts, but a particularly arbitrary facet of them: the publicly provided and subsidised one and not even in Britain as a whole at that, but in England - a limited reflection on culture indeed! Tusa is no Raymond Williams; he stands too close, not recognising the extent to which he is institutionalised into thinking of the small metropolis-dominated public arts world as 'culture'. He does recognise the danger of a pot-pourri in publishing a collection of disparate essays and lectures each having its raison d'etre yet there is a disjointedness from which event he most distinguished collection of essays may suffer but one expects an integrity and probably an ellipticality, which these sadly lack. There are piquant and valuable moments, if only because the book itself is an oddity, one born of a particular moment in our cultural history and it will go on my Arts Management student reading lists, as a way of illustrating the way we live and arts manage now. Building Jerusalem will certainly feature; not because of its oddity or the paucity of publications relevant to students of arts management either! Sub-title notwithstanding, it contains much to contribute to an enlarged understanding of the whole of British cultural history and synthesises material from various intellectual disciplines, placing the arts within the wider cultural context. This is essentially also a series of essays but with a strong leitmotiv. In this it is a worthy continuation of works by Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart. In humour more Simon than Richard, it is enjoyably scathing on the subject of the more arcane absurdities of the Arts Council and Arts Lottery. Reminding us of the significance, now and historically, of that lying outside the public arts support system, the authors point out the real realities and do so on the basis of empirical research, which itself comes as a breath of fresh air. Building Jerusalem in a useful addition to the Arts Management/Cultural History bookshelves and a book of more permanent value than Art Matters but both will appear on student booklists, so hasten the day paperback versions appear.
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